"I 2000 dell'Appennino" by Alberto Osti Guerrazzi

"I 2000 dell'Appennino" by Alberto Osti Guerrazzi is much more than a book: it is a shared project, a shared feeling, a bond that cuts across us all and ties us together with metaphysical strings of passion for the mountains.

The new edition has some changes compared with the first: to begin with the cover, rough to the touch, which gives a pleasant feeling of greater substance to the book, which in any case would not need it, given its 318 pages. The space for maps has been reduced; in part they might be superfluous and too lacking in detail for proper use.

When I met Alberto Osti Guerrazzi, for me the hiking guide “I 2000 dell'Appennino” was wrapped in an aura of mystical magic.

For many years, and still today, Alberto's guide has wandered around the house with a sly air, partly stirring my desire for the mountains, partly trying to suggest some alternative route.

Each of us owes a debt to a book that has in itself all the qualities of its creator. Humility, affability, a creative and imaginative sense capable of shaking any hiker out of stay-at-home laziness, even the most listless. The straightforwardness and simplicity of a job well done.

If I already had a debt then, towards a book that had so often been with me in the mountains, I feel I have an even bigger one today, faced with the new, extensively revised and expanded edition.

Then Alberto and I met up again in what is today the Club 2000m project, and for me, knowing that he was working on the second edition of that magnificent book gave me enormous joy.

But just as I was watching Alberto's work, he too had been observing the doings of the Gruppo Aria Sottile, the passion with which we lived “roaming the mountains”. Collecting the summits over 2000 metres has always been a fun game, almost childlike, which gave us the chance to see summits and paths that, without Alberto's guide, we would probably never even have imagined discovering.

In our wanderings we took hundreds of photos, some of which, who knows how... then ended up under Alberto's passionate gaze. I didn't think I had taken any great pictures of our mountains, and yet Alberto wanted some of our photos in his book.

Unthinkable, truly unthinkable, for me, for Doriano... to see our work published side by side with the work of other passionate hikers and mountaineers: G. Albrizio; M Sances; G. Mariotti Bianchi; A. Tabladini; A. Sansoni; A. Papadato; P. Lancia and many others.

I 2000 dell'Appennino by Alberto Osti Guerrazzi is much more than a book: it is a shared project, a shared feeling, a bond that cuts across us all and ties us together with metaphysical strings of passion for the mountains.

The new edition of "I 2000 dell'Appennino"

The new edition has some changes compared with the first: to begin with the cover, rough to the touch, which gives a pleasant feeling of greater substance to the book, which in any case would not need it, given its 318 pages. The space for maps has been reduced; in part they might be superfluous and too lacking in detail for proper use. Greater space, as already said, has been given to the photographs, because a hiker's motivation starts very much from these. The descriptions have all been revised and corrected.

In the Apennines there are, according to the list certified by the Società Geografica Italiana (Italian Geographical Society), 241 summits of a height equal to or greater than 2000 metres; of these, 107 are considered main summits and 134 secondary summits. The guide gathers the detailed description of the normal routes of ascent to the 107 main summits and gives precise directions on how to reach the secondary summits.

Objective successfully achieved. The book is bound to be as big a hit as the first; I recommend buying it even to those who have the first edition.