Dutch Alpine Team

The Dutch Alpine Team is competing in the Mammut Peak Project challenge. Yesterday I’ve wrote the motivation for fase 2 (the selection of the teams).
Here is what I’ve wrote:

14 days ago I’ve got this email from Mammut with “Congratulations, you’ve made it into the next round!” as the subject…NICE! 

Now 300 team leaders are selected for this next round and half of it (150) will be selected to participate in the actual Peak Project.

The next step for us was to select a mountain which we wanted to climb and present it to Mammut. Here you’ll find the motivation for our mountain I’ve just submitted to the Mammut jury:

After spending some hours thinking which mountain to climb we’ve came up with a few criteria to which the mountain should comply to:
- unique; we think a lot of people will go for the famous mountains like Matterhorn or Mont Blanc so it has to be unique.
- original: the mountain has to have some original ‘features’; a link with Mammut 150th anniversary.
- time: the team has to be able to complete the climb within a rather small time window; a long weekend would be optimal.
- reachability: because of the rather small time window the mountain needs to be reachable in short time. This was a difficult one as a lot of the mountains we’ve put on our shortlist aren’t that easy to reach.
- difficulty: not all of my team members are equally experienced (some have more experience in rock climbing and others in alpine) so I have to take that in mind; I wanted all (5 at the moment) of the Dutch Alpine Team members to be able to join. Unfortunately one of the team members isn’t able to join so for this trip it’s 4.

Once we’ve got this list with criteria the search for ‘our’ mountain started on summitpost.org by selecting mountains based on height and located in Europe. At first we were looking at mountains of a height which included the number 150 so with a height of 3150 or 4150 meter. Some interesting mountains came up and where put on the short-list like Cima Brenta which is 3150 meters high. This mountain did comply with some of the criteria but not all and it was, in our opinion, not original enough.

We then thought why not search for a mountain which was first climbed in the year Mammut has been founded; 1862. It turns out that there are a lot, even famous ones like Grossglockner, Dent Blanche, Täshorn, etc. But once again these are not original enough.
Also we’ve found some rather unknown or less famous mountains…..the feeling one of these had to be it grown bigger….

One of the mountains on the list is Monte Disgrazia which my team and I have chosen to climb. It is maybe not the most spectacular, highest (3678m) or difficult (PD+ rating) one but it fully complies with the criteria and even more:

Unique: It’s not famous so little change other teams would select this mountain
Original: It was first climbed in 1862 (the year Mammut has been founded) by a Swiss guide named Melchior Anderegg (after which the team leader is named).
Time: the hut from where to climb can be reached in 4 hours. Also the climb itself will take about 7 hours.
Reachability: from The Netherlands it’s easy to drive to the area.
Difficult: the normal route has a PD+ rating so all team member are able to join the climb.

Taking all above, and especially the 2 points for originality we are sure this has to be ‘our’ mountain!