Photo story by Matteo Berbenni - 14th April 2016

It was October 2012, when Alessandro and I decided to go for All Saints Day to the mountains, in the name of naturalistic photography. We soon left Rome by car heading to the Cogne Valley in Val D'Aosta. We made a short stop in Cervinia to admire the Matterhorn mirrored in the waters of the Blue Lake, but the weather conditions did not help us and that image remained a dream. We spent a few days immersed in the valleys around Cogne where we managed to take photos of different specimens of chamois, at that time already with the winter coat. The fact that the Matterhorn was around the corner attracted us a lot, so we decided to venture into the Swiss side of the Alps for a couple of days, looking for the perfect snapshot! In less than no time, we arrived in Zermatt and we looked for an accommodation for a couple of nights before going back to Rome. The weather was very bad, it was incessantly snowing. We spent an entire day wandering along the streets of downtown, looking and looking at the weather reports, waiting for a turning point: the weather forecast finally said that on the following day there would have been high pressure.

On the following morning, after a quick breakfast at the hotel at 6:00 in the morning, we took the first cogwheel train to the Gornergrat. It was dark, almost night. On board there were only workers and the cutter put on the train to make his way through the snow made a loud noise. We finally reached the top and the doors opened; after having passed a proper wall of snow, we arrived in front of His Majesty the Matterhorn, just in time to see him kissed by the first rays of the sun. In less than a second we put together our equipment and we began to shoot. The beauty of the place, wrapped in the whiteness of the snow, made us immediately forget the time spent getting bored in the city and we did not even realize that the -17°C were freezing our fingers. Between one shot and the other, I was stunned in front of that natural spectacle. I will always remember the colours of the dawn.

After those shots, as the time left before returning to Rome was decreasing, we immediately went down to Zermatt using every stop of the train to take a few photos. On the afternoon we went to the Matterhorn Glacier Paradise before going back to Rome, tired but satisfied.

Here are some frames of the day.