Italian Alps – day 2

Bivacco Alpe Mottac – Bivacco Lidesh

8.7.2024 Monday

→ 18 km ↑ 1615 m – total 39,3 km

Alarm’s at 7:30am, which we completely ignore. It’s white outside and I’m completely wrecked. But I have to pee, barefoot, since the shoes are still completely wet. I fall back asleep for another hour. Jozef makes breakfast and coffee and tries to get me out of the sleeping bag. It only works once a chamois shows up grazing outside the window.

It’s our first morning and everything takes forever, since I don’t have a proper system yet. On top of that I try to write the blog in the morning, since I forget things otherwise. Getting into wet socks and shoes is quite the challenge. We set off at 10:30am. The Germans next door left about 40 minutes before us. First we’ve got a descent of 780 meters over 2.7 km ahead. Unbelievably steep. It takes us over an hour going down. We pass another bivouac, or rather 4 separate buildings, each with a stove, firewood, a table and a sleeping loft. We top up water and cross a pretty wobbly bridge over the Rio Fiorina river.

What we just went down, we now climb right back up. We continue through forest, over 30 switchbacks upward. Switchbacks are better than going straight up. Once we clear the steepest part, we take a food break, exactly at noon.

We continue at a gentler pace through forest and past crumbling houses that partisans once hid in. Views over the valley slowly start opening up, and it walks better from here.

We watch chamois playing on a snowfield. We meet 2 hikers! We reach the Alpe Scaredi shelter, surrounded by cows.

We take a break here and even get to use a toilet, quite the rarity, a squat toilet, but a toilet nonetheless. We decide what’s next. At the next pass we’ll either head to a shelter and call it a day, or take the dotted-line ridge route (the hardest difficulty rating). We fill our bottles completely, we’ll see once we’re at the pass. Along the way we cross another snowfield.

There’s signal here, so Jozef calls work and I check out other sleeping options. I decide we’re taking the harder route. It starts gently, but gradually we get onto a rocky ridge. It looks worse than it actually is, since you can’t see the trail, but once you’re actually on that stretch, it’s really there.

But it is fairly demanding, you need to be genuinely careful, drop-offs on both sides, but stunning views when the clouds don’t cover them. The first half is fine, but once we start descending it’s through all kinds of scrub and constant up and down, seemingly endless.

Pretty exhausted, we reach Bochetta di Terrza pass. It took us over 2 hours. We take a food break. Only 2.8 km left to the shelter, but part of it’s still the dotted-line route. We start climbing Monte Torrione. There’s almost no trail, we navigate by GPS and a few painted markers. It’s pretty rough going up, and this isn’t even marked as the hardest level, we’re worried about what the way down will bring. The last few meters we scramble up on all fours. From here the trail looks a bit more used, so it’s a bit easier going, with the occasional chain. It leads us down into some kind of gorge. I’d seen ladders marked on the map, but I hadn’t expected to be descending this entire gorge on a chain.

Good thing we’d done via ferratas before, since I’m not sure I’d have managed this otherwise. The trail continues rolling along a contour line to Passo Crositt pass. From there it should get easier. In the distance we can already see Bivacco Lidesh. The route keeps getting tougher than we’d expected, but we finally get there just before 8pm. Well, that was brutal, we’ve had quite enough. Not that it wasn’t beautiful, we just hadn’t expected this level of difficulty at all. We’re alone at the shelter, which even has a proper bunk bed, and there’s a really lovely view from here.

We walked the whole day in damp shoes, so once we take them off, it’s a lovely aroma. I have to leave the socks outside. I pull off about 12 ticks, Jozef 1. We take a proper shower today too, we need to help it along with a mug, but at least we’ve got that view to go with it. Jozef cooks pasta for dinner and I finally manage to catch up on the blog. Off to sleep, we really earned tonight’s rest.