Interview with The Walking Nose, between paths

Hi Alessandro, tell us how it all started. Did you start as a child with your family or was your passion for walking born alone?

My mom could say about me that as a child I hated walking and that I tried in every way to avoid being around too much.

Fast forward to middle school when I went to a retreat with my parish, and that’s when I bought my first hiking backpack.

Another time jump to get to the first day of the Academy of Fine Arts where I met Marco Fontichiari. PCT (Pacific Creat Trail) finisher and quite eccentric character. It was from him that I learned about the Path of the Gods and it was through the stories of his amazing adventures in the United States through California, Oregon and Washington that I decided to start walking.

I tried twice to do the Path of the Gods without success in the summer of 2015 and on my third attempt in May 2016 I succeeded but at the price of great pain in my knees.

How was your YouTube born instead? Did you make videos before?

As I centralized before I did cinema and photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna but at the beginning of the course I was much more focused on photography. Especially reportage and photo journalism.

The turning point was The Erasmus in England after I attended the Photography course at Coventry University for a year. During that time I got very close to YouTube especially Casey Neistat and John Zahorian.

At that time I was still suffering a lot of pain in my knees and so I had set aside trekking for cycling. I was very confident but my enthusiasm was shattered when I got home for the Christmas holidays and tried to do the Path of the Gods by bike in two days. I also failed that time.

After the bikepacking I decided to try the Adrian’s Wall Trail. A trekking of 130 that goes from coast to coast of England and runs along the ruins of Hadrian’s Wall, the ancient Roman border.

That wasn’t a pleasant experience either but I learned a lot from my mistakes. Especially that with photography I was not able to fully represent what had happened to me. That’s why before coming back to Italy I did the West Highland Way in Scotland and I tried to document it with vlogs. And that’s where the YouTube channel was born.

How do you organize your life so that you can always stay in training and maybe study or work? 

Unfortunately, I’m much more sedentary than I appear to be. I can spend a week without walking considerably if I have to edit videos or organize trekking.

Sometimes I work as a video maker but I don’t actively look for them and try to devote all my attention to the preparation of both personal and guided trekking (to which I will dedicate myself in the future) and videos for the channel.

Not studying anymore and being very free I can decide to leave for one of the treks that I have already organized at short notice so I can adapt a lot to the weather.

The best experience you’ve had so far with “walking”?

In general the people I meet. And probably from this point of view the most powerful experience has been the Camino de Santiago. Now revised in light of the much harder hikes I’ve done it seems almost like a walk with three climbs along the way but what it gives you from a human point of view is priceless.

Tell us about the Jordan Trail? The most beautiful moment and the most desperate?

The Jordan Trail is brutal. Sand, stones, very little water and the absence of a marked trail make it a very hard trek.

The most beautiful moment was undoubtedly finding a small oasis within the branch of a Wadi (canyon). We had spent the morning without water after finding an empty cistern the night before. And the afternoon loaded with 6L of water after passing through a village on the main road that cuts through Jordan.

There were no desperate times. More of a constant tension that led us to always have to keep our attention on navigation and manage our daily mileage in relation to the water we were carrying. A very hard moment was certainly transporting 6L of water and food for three days (9kg total plus a base weight of 6) as soon as we left the village where we were supplied. We had to cross a plateau orienting ourselves only with the compass and paper for about 15km.

How much does equipment play a role in what you do?

I’m a bit of an equipment maniac. Both in terms of technology and, of course, lightness. I consider myself an ultralight hiker (when possible) and so I try to bring only the essentials and be as light as possible so that I can walk longer and enjoy more time in nature without any pain.

I use like many American hikers trail running shoes. More precisely La Sporiva Ultrarptor (I am on the 4th pair). As they say team that wins you don’t change. I like that we have a rigid structure but at the same time are very cushioned. I like them so much that I’ve done 1300km with a pair, which I don’t recommend.

I’m currently wearing Jack Wolfskin clothes and she has offered to send me a lot of clothes that I feel really good in.

Three things that you always carry with you and that you couldn’t do without?

My Therm a Rest Neoair X-Lite air mattress, my Liteway 0C quilt and the Garmin in-Reach mini that lets me let my mom know I’m alive wherever I am.

Do you have any future plans in mind? Plans you’ve postponed?

Soon I hope to be able to do the Translagorai and then dedicate myself to the Dolomites that I have yet to explore in depth. There would also be the GR20, but the ban on free night bivouac blocking me a lot. The biggest project I postponed was the Sentiero Italia but I see the positive side. I had more time to prepare many more trekking and study to become an even more prepared walker.

A place you have visited and to which you don’t want to return? 

The suburbs of Amman.

What about your future plans? What are you studying? How would you like to make a job your passion?

Fingers crossed in a very short time (a few days) I will be an environmental hiking guide so the project is to organize guided trekking and to make people walk a little bit. At the moment for the sake of knowledge and to enrich my environmental background I am studying geology.