Interview to Andrea Favret
Andrea Favret is an outdoor enthusiast and his blog “Ritorno alle origini” (Back to the origin) (https://ritornoao.wordpress.com/) has collected more than 500 trekkings, each of them related with a photo album and a description with suggestions for who wants to complete the same trail.
Q: First of all we would like to know what you do for a living when you are not busy with your hobby, trekking and outdoor activity in general.
Andrea Favret: When I am not in the mountain? But I am always in the mountain! I am joking, of course… I am employed in the food service industry and I am a pizza maker. To be clear, my idea is not only to make a good pizza, but to try and create the classic Italian pizza, looking for exclusively Italian products and, where possible, biological and farm-to-table products. The challenge is not easy, but together with my employer, who has the same vision of things, we are slowly make it succeeding. We needed much effort, like finding the “type 1” flour of certified and controlled Italian production chain, and we will need to work much more…but we like it and it is very satisfying. Naturally, there is also my family which is the most important thing. I am from Friuli (an Italian region) but now I live in Veneto (another Italian region) with my partner Valentina and her two beautiful daughters, and I am now far away from the mountains. It is a choice that is paying off with incredible emotions. In addition, the ladies in the house are all mountain lovers so we can share the same passion.
D: You write that “the blog made me reborn and discover the mountain, the one you have loved so much when I was a child and that I had almost forgotten.” Do you want to explain what is behind this sentence?
Andrea Favret: This sentence is very personal. Extremely personal. Behind it there is a fearless life and a marriage gone badly. The mountain has always been a safety net for me and has become a crazy passion. Maybe, who knows, one day I will tell the whole story to someone really curious about it, since it is a really long one and the only person who had the patience to listen to me so far has been Valentina!
D: In your blog more than 500 trekkings are listed from 2012 until today (congratulations!). Do you want to explain to us what pushes you to tell people about your adventures, giving lots of free and useful information to all mountain enthusiasts?
Andrea Favret: I should explain why the blog exists and I like it to. In reality, this was born mainly for myself, as a sort of personal diary of my trekkings, just made available to everyone. The intention was remembering what I had done with pictures that otherwise would have remained in my hard disk. Now, often I open a link and look at my pictures of 4 years ago, with longer hair, tired face after climbing, the wonderful view of that day. Then, in time the blog has improving with articles and visits, like as it has been growing up, maintaining the initial structure of a diary. In fact, the trekkings are listed only according to a chronological order, and there is no other way to find them if not scrolling down, from one year to another one (or you can look for specific word in the “search” section). I could change how to visualize the posts of the blog, for example dividing between trekking and climbing or other criteria, but then “Ritorno Alle Origini” would lose its original structure and become a website, not a blog. I can, anyway, be proud to have more than 120.000 pages visited every year (in 2017) and it is a great pleasure, mainly because I do not index the site or do any SEO activity. It is a good result for a personal diary.
D: Among the over 500 trekkings in the list we imagine that it is hard to choose a single one, but, try to tell us which one in particular strikes a chord with you?
Andrea Favret: It is really hard to decide. Every trekking, skiing, climbing had given me emotions. I would tell about more than one, because I should also remember more people that if I did not meet I would have done what I had done! Tony who made me broaden my horizon, Fulvio with whom there has immediately been the trust you need to put your life to the other’s hand, Michele my old time friend, Marco, Stefano, Fabrizio…every time it have felt great emotions. But if I really need to choose than I would pick the winter trail to the Cimon del Cavallo in 2014, which I did alone. There was plenty of snow that year and the conditions were almost always awful. I was lucky enough to get the right day before the end of the winter: it was the 17th of March and it was my mother 60th birthday. With a lot of unconsciousness I climbed via the South summit, where there is no path, but it was the most logic way to do with pike and crampons. I could make it and I was back home at 11:45 of the morning, just soon enough for the lunch. I could not even have the courage to tell to my family, but I called Nicola, my great friend who is a great mountaineer who had tried the same year to climb that mountain without finding the right conditions, to tell him about the adventure. I don’t even know how I could climb up, and even more how I could climb down. I think I was crazy, the emotions were many and it will remain something I will never repeat again.
D: The next question can only be about your next trekking. Tell us what you have in mind for the next months…
Andrea Favret: First, I want to go to Arco and make some rock climbing. I can even bring Alice with me, the smallest of the family. Then, who knows, I can go skiing, and to do some great trekking, climb some cliffs in order to be ready next summer; but for sure I need to train to climb the Mont Blanc in August. Last year with Fulvio and Marco we have been in Mount Rosa and we have discovered the Western Alps. An epiphany! Now we want to climb the highest mountain in Italy. Let’s hope we will be able to succeed.
D: Our last question can only be about Bivo. You have tasted it: would you suggest it to others? And if yes, why?
Andrea Favret: You know well that I have tried it and try it again. I no longer try it, I use it. I can only remember the first impression which I still appreciate: fullness and lightness. These two things are the most important for who goes to the mountains. The nutritional values are great, the ingredients natural and Italian, the digestibility incredible. Maybe the taste at the beginning is not what you expect, but from the third pack personally I started to appreciate also the taste. In addition, the ease of carrying it and the ease of using it, other essential features to eliminate weight and avoid any problem with your tent and backpack. I think that all of this is more than enough to suggest Bivo. Well..I think this is all, no!?!? Now I leave for a walk in the mountain because you made me want to go now! Ciaooo
