Italian Alps – preparations
Plan A
I was thinking about what to call this trip. Our original plan was the Tour de Monte Rosa (TMR) route around the Monte Rosa massif (4500+ m), with stunning views of the Matterhorn. The 162 km route runs through Italy and Switzerland, with over 11000 m of elevation gain.
The closer we got to our flight date, the more complicated things got. Getting to the starting point turned out to be a real headache. After a few hours I found a decent way to reach Macugnaga. A week before the flight I planned out a route with sleeping spots and where we’d continue afterward, since the TMR itself is about 7 days. I planned it heading east along the Italian-Swiss border all the way to Lago Maggiore. On Thursday I read a report from 30 June about the TMR. Above 2800 m the passes are impassable without winter gear, and that’s not going to melt in a week. And there’d been flooding in Macugnaga, as well as in Zermatt the week before. So I flip the whole route around and hope the situation improves over the next two weeks. Here’s what the plan looks like.
Edit after the trip: we changed a lot along the way. You can find the route we actually walked here.
Luckily, getting to Lago Maggiore is simpler, and if none of the 7 connections give us trouble, we can make it from Partizánske in 10.5 hours. I spend all Friday at the computer, three maps open, googling all kinds of shelters and setting up the site to post the diary. On top of that I try to pack properly, since I always forget something the last few times. I lay everything out neatly, take photos, and check it with last year’s gear list.
Jozef works all day, since the work piled up this last week. In the evening, completely worn out, we still go to a Chikilikitua concert. After the concert I finish packing the last few things. I’ll cover the full gear list in a separate article.
6.7.2024 Saturday
We get up before 8am. I head to Kaufland for last-minute supplies, and after the holiday it’s a total madhouse. At home I’ve got a list of things I still need to sort out. Time’s running short. Jozef takes our luggage, he is going to drop off the work laptop and the car, and we meet at the station. Surprisingly I make it 5 minutes before the train leaves. The train’s a bit late. It picks up a few more minutes along the way. We miss our connecting bus, so we have to run a kilometer to the stop where the airport bus leaves from. We make it! We’re at the airport exactly two hours before the flight. We repack our things into Jozef’s backpack, which is checked-in luggage. It’s surprisingly light, not even 10 kg. We clear security fast, and then have over an hour before boarding. They don’t weigh the bags, so the boarding goes quickly. I’d checked in that morning, so we have good seats. Jozef’s in the front row, and I’m by the emergency exits, in the aisle. The flight attendant explains how to open the exit in an emergency. Only two girls sit there, so she asks how old we are. My seatmate says 19, and I say 27. She looks at me doubtfully, “Are you sure?” I am. Then I play a round of sudoku and sleep through the whole flight. We’re delayed, so I don’t know if we’ll manage our connections. Jozef and I agree to wait for each other at baggage claim. I nearly get lost at the airport, but we find each other. Luggage comes out fast. We go look for the bus. I’d planned for us to go to Bergamo and take a train from there to Milan, but right before the airport, when I see several signs on buses for Milan, it hits me that we can actually go straight there. So I check Google for whichever one goes first, and we take that one. We buy tickets for €12, which means we’ll have almost an hour to pick up the gas canister. On the bus we find out that the town we wanted to go to is forecast heavy rain, 100mm tomorrow. We have no idea what to do.
Plan B
We decide to head to the town of Domodossola, where the forecast’s a lot more favorable, and figure out where to go from there on the way. We get off at Milan’s central station. It’s a beautiful, enormous building. We hurry to the metro, buy tickets and head to Decathlon, where I’d ordered the gas canister online and just need to pick it up. It takes longer than I’d expected. We hurry back. We wait for the metro and there’s a chance we might still catch the train. I buy tickets right away through the Trenitalia website, and it goes surprisingly fast. The metro’s due at the station at 7:22pm, our train leaves at 7:25pm. We get off and run. It’s a real maze in there and we get a bit lost, but we manage to reach the platforms, of which there are at least 20. We’re on platform 2, which is about as far as it gets. We run for our lives. Jozef, of course, runs faster and hold the train. The train pulls away right after we board. I’m properly done. And we’re down to our last bit of water for the 2.5-hour journey, since we didn’t have time to buy more. On the train we look for somewhere to sleep and figure out where we’ll head tomorrow. In the town of Arona, by Lago Maggiore, we change to a bus. It’s pouring unbelievably. We agree that in weather like this we don’t want to go looking for a tent spot, so I book accommodation for €85. We reach Domodossola after 10pm. We check in and immediately drink a lot of water. Then we go get pizza. They say they’re closing, but they’ll still make us takeaway pizza. We get a mushroom one and a Tyrolean one. We eat it at the accommodation. I was starving, but since I hadn’t eaten much all day, a quarter of it was enough for me. And by the way, it’s not raining here. Overnight and tomorrow morning it’s forecasting heavy rain, so we set the alarm for 8:30am. This travel day really wore us out. Tomorrow I’ll reveal where we’re actually heading. You can hit SUBSCRIBE and you’ll get a notification when a new article comes up, since I have no idea what day or hour that’ll be.
