Gottfried Debove and I set out to climb Piz Palu as a late season effort to close the 2001 mountaineering season.  Piz Palu is located on the Swiss-Italian border and is a truly beautiful mountain, characterized by three rock buttresses that give it the look of a massif, rather than just a single mountain. We took the cablecar to the Diavolezza hut (more like a tourist hotel than a hut) at 9753 ft. and did an acclimatization hike that afternoon to nearby Munt Pers (10,521 ft.) in perfect, alpine conditions.  After an overnight in the hut, our early morning wake up greeted us with about a foot of new snow and considerable wind.   We assessed the avalanche conditions and determined that all was good, then set out at about 5:00 AM for the summit.  The weather conditions were variable with a low cloud ceiling , intermittent snow and consistently driving winds. At about 11,300 ft. on the Valdret Pers Glacier, on of the groups well ahead of us turned around, concerned about the wind that would likely be howling at higher elevations.  We continued up through more and more fresh powder, and made it to roughly 12,500 where the high winds made negotiating the south, sheer face of the mountain hazardous. Since the remainder of the climb would be on an exposed ridge, we decided to descend to the hut.  There, a climber with an anemometer told us that he had made it to about the same point as we did and measured the winds at 100+ kilometers per hour...almost 70 miles per hour.  Good decision to turn around.

Map (route in red)