Mount Ziccher

Introduction

The ascent to this peak is quite popular and allows us to reach, with a not excessive difference in height, a beautiful panoramic point with a view that sweeps over both the adjacent Swiss pre-Alps with Gridone in the foreground and the most important 4000 m peaks in the Saas Fee area with the Himalayan east face of Monte Rosa. The alpine pastures you pass are also very scenic and from their slopes offer beautiful views of the upper Val Vigezzo and part of the Ossola bordering Swiss territory. The only difficulty of the route is encountered on the final ascent to the summit, which, depending on the conditions, can be delicate and where attention must be paid to the exposure of the middle traverse.

Description

From the posts on the left-hand edge of the car park, head towards a nearby hut, which you leave to the left, and then descend a few metres to reach a small metal bridge. Now go up into the sparse woodland, passing by the beautiful little church of the Blitz alpine pasture (1296 m), at which point you turn sharply to the left and, with the slope increasing a little, you soon reach a more open slope where you will find the panoramic huts of the Pragrande alpine pasture (1326 m); passing to the right of the huts, cut across the mountainside halfway up the slope and go up a marked ridge on the left that soon leads to the Oro alpine pasture (1473 m). Once past the huts, you will immediately find the signposts near a fountain, where you keep to the right to continue climbing the wooded ridge, which now becomes much steeper. Climbing up the ridge with difficulty, almost straight ahead, you will reach the end of the vegetation, where the slope flattens out temporarily, deviating slightly to the right to then reach the beginning of the final ridge of the climb, which takes you directly to your destination. Having reached this ridge, we turn sharply to the left and, remaining just below the ridge line, we reach an antecedent after which we cross a flat ridge to face the last and most demanding part of the climb. Remaining on the right of the outcropping rocks, we climb the short but exposed traverse that leads to the flat summit ridge, which ends a little further on with the small metal summit cross.