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.

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Domodossola – Bivacco Alpe Mottac

→ 21,3 km ↑  2085 m

The heavy rain didn’t really happen overnight, we could’ve managed fine in the tent. After yesterday’s travel chaos and changing destinations we were pretty low on morale, and I’m glad we ended up booking a room in the end. We pack our things properly and set off at 10:30am, first toward Lidl to restock, then for coffee, then into Val Grande National Park. We start right in town and head toward the village of Trontano. There’s a marked trail, but clearly not many people walk it. In lower altitude it looks like some exotic country: hydrangeas, palms, figs, kiwi.

We pass a fairly high-elevation railway that I’d thought was out of service. In the village we find out it’s actually still running. If we’d known, we’d have taken the train and started from here instead. From Trontano we’ve got a climb of almost 2,000 meters ahead to Passo di Basagrana pass. It’s tough going, we haven’t been out with backpacks in a long while. We stop at Rifugio Alpe Parpinasca. It’s closed, so we set up outside and take a food break with lovely views.

There’s a bivouac sign on the door, so you could sleep here. Next is 1000 meters of climbing over 4 km. We go slow. Every so often we come across mushrooms. We pass old houses, and I wonder what it must have been like to live up here.

There’s drinking water every 500 m, so we didn’t even need to carry any. Higher up there are loads of blueberries, still unripe though, and fields of Rhododendron ferrugineum. Through a fairly rough climb we cross a lower pass and new views open up. We continue at a gentler pace, but also through snowfields (we hadn’t expected those at 1800 m), and mostly have to go all the way around them since they’re pretty unstable.

As we keep climbing we enter a cloud and it starts drizzling. The last 100 meters to the pass are genuinely tough.

It’s really windy and rainy at the pass, 13°C, and we think about putting on rain gear, but decide to just head down fast instead. Once we descend a bit, it stops. We follow a path traversing Pizzo Tignolino. It’s fairly eroded and we move slowly. It starts drizzling again, so we try out our umbrellas.

It’s nice, we just need to adjust how it’s attached to the backpack. We’re hungry again, so we have a quick snack. We join a trail running along the ridge, and the journey is better from here.

The last two kilometers involve some scrambling and climbing around rocks. I’m genuinely done. After the last climb I spot Bivacco Alpe Mottac, just down the hill from here, and I get a burst of energy right away.

There are already three German women at the shelter, so we chat with them for a bit. We move to the other side of the shelter, since it was really warm in their part. I go straight to wash up and get water. The spring feels really far away, but I still manage a proper shower. On the way back I meet a chamois. Our shoes are completely soaked, so we build a little fire too. I make herbal tea and dinner is mashed potato with tuna.

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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.

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9.7.2024 Tuesday

→ 18,8 km ↑ 1551 m – total 58,1 km

Today’s a gorgeous day.

We don’t have much food left, so we need to head down into the village. It’s 5.6 km, so we tell ourselves this’ll be quick, if only it were a normal trail. Again it’s up and down, chains, and I feel like we’re just going in circles.

It takes us almost two hours to reach Finero. Right at the edge of the village two old ladies greet each other from their balconies across half the village, pretty funny how they shout “Ciao!” at the top of their lungs. We sit down for coffee and discuss what next. I suggest heading back to Domodossola, taking the train through the hills and hitchhiking north from there. But Jozef, who’s finally gotten involved in the planning, suggests we just go to the neighboring village of Malesco, restock supplies, and rejoin the route we’d originally planned. We hitchhike from Finero, and the very first car stops for us, a camper van. The woman in the back makes room for us. She took her shoes off when she got in, so we follow her lead, but it wasn’t a great idea. I think she’d have preferred a bit of shoe grime to that smell. Luckily it’s only 15 minutes. We get out at the square and go to the shop. It’s the pre-lunch rush. Surprisingly we manage it fast and with ease. We spread out on the steps in front of the town hall and even find an outlet there. We stay a good while, eat lunch, and I catch up on the blog.

We set off at 1pm. The town’s completely emptied out, it’s siesta. The sun’s baking, so we pull out umbrellas. First we head toward the next village, Craveggia, and then sharply up via switchbacks. We do 4 km with a 20% gradient.

Jozef’s going like a rocket, saying if he didn’t have his pack he’d be running… good thing he does have it, or he’d leave me here. At the top a view opens up over Val Grande, and on the other side an idyllic valley with old little houses.

We continue with a gentle climb to Bocchetta della Cima pass. From the pass we can already see today’s destination, Bivacco Greppi Emilio.

We go down a bit and pass a farm with cows and goats. Looks like a whole family lives there, kids, a dog, a cat, hanging laundry and a bathtub outside. They look at us like we’re some kind of apparition, probably not many hikers come through here. We say hello and climb the last few meters of elevation.

The bivouac’s locked, as I’d expected, but no matter, there’s a perfect tent spot here and a lake. We rest for a bit and go straight to wash up in the lake while the sun’s still out. Tonight we’ve got a two-course dinner, first some little ravioli with prosciutto and sugo (found in a tube today, better than ketchup), and then mashed potato with garlic, tuna and parmesan. It really got to Jozef and he goes straight to sleep. I go wash the dishes and take a few more photos of the tent.

We’re very close to the Swiss border now, so we’re out of internet, since it costs €5 for 50mb here. I try to write a bit more, so I can post it later, but lying down really pulls me toward sleep too.

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10.7.2024 Wednesday

→ 24,9 km ↑ 1699 m – total 83 km

A light show woke me up in the night. There was a storm somewhere in the distance, and it was lightning up practically every second. In a panic I woke Jozef up. But we couldn’t hear any thunder. I pulled buff over my eyes and tried to sleep through it. I also woke up after 4am, before sunrise, but just peeked out of the tent at the colored sky and went back to sleep. Alarm’s at 6:30am.

Today we’ve got a lot of kilometers ahead of us. Breakfast is mushroom soup with dry Italian bread, then coffee, a croissant, we pack up and set off. Right at the start we’ve got a pleasant climb to Bocchetta di Ruggia pass. We finally see our first marmot! It’s a nice trail, fairly flat, over rocks.

We go around a farm with a flyer posted about how to behave around dogs, and we spot 2 hikers camping nearby. I’m not feeling entirely comfortable. I thought I could hold it, but I can’t. I go dig my first hole. Ah, instantly better. We head down to Alpe Camana, where there’s another locked shelter. The trail continues alongside a stream, but right at the start we hit a problem. There’s about 2 meters of snow there. We look for a way around, but there’s a steep drop on every side. So we put on our crampons and cross straight through.

There’s a stream underneath it, so we go carefully, since there might be a thin layer of snow over it. We manage it, and from there a nice trail continues. We descend to about 1600 m. There are a lot of anthills, so I move fast. We reach the Torrente Isorno river, which needs fording. We take off our shoes and socks, so we don’t have wet feet all day again. It’s icy, but manageable.

And we’re climbing again, 430 meters over 3 km, up to the Alpe Cavegna shelter. My energy’s running low, so I need a bongo energy bar, but at least there are beautiful views around us.

We reach Rifugio Primo Bonasson. Some guys are doing repairs there, probably not open to the public anymore. They ask if we need water and where we’re heading. I can’t really tell him that, but there’s only one way up from here, to Lago Gelato. I also ask about snow conditions, and he says there’s a bit of snow, mostly on the north side, so we’ll see.

The shelter’s just a bit higher up, and we take a lunch break there, bread with salami. There’s a water trough too, but no water’s flowing. The shelter’s pretty spooky. It’s genuinely cold inside, dark, and the roof’s made of flat stones. We don’t linger. Fueled up, we climb to Bocchetta di Lago Gelato pass (2434 m), 400 meters over 1.6 km. There’s not much of a trail, we look for painted markers and navigate with mapy.cz. On the south side we already hit a snowfield. We put on crampons and cross it without issue.

Then we can’t find the marker, so we go straight up diagonally, almost vertical, and then rejoin the trail. It’s a real grind. A herd of ibex watches us from the opposite hill. On the other side there’s a continuous layer of snow. The lake has a fitting name, “Gelato” (frozen).

We don’t know how to get down. It’s pretty steep and our small crampons aren’t enough for it. Slipping could be dangerous because of the lake below us. We choose a gentle descent along the contour line. Of all days, we don’t have GPS on our watches today, exactly when we’d need it most. We keep pulling out the phone and checking the route. There are snowfields lower down too, but they’re manageable to go around now. It was pretty exhausting. When I think about how the TMR has at least three passes at 2800 m, we conclude we simply can’t do it this year. If we can’t do it properly, we’d rather choose a different route. On the way to Bivacco A. Sironi we think about our next steps.

Of course we keep losing the trail, since nobody walks here. It gets better once we reach the settlement of houses still maintained by someone. Totally exhausted, we reach the shelter. Neither of us feels like continuing. Jozef’s happy to find there’s a flush toilet there. We eat and try to find the motivation for more kilometers. We pull ourselves together and climb again to Passo della Forcoletta pass. It goes fairly well. From up top we get a view over Lago di Matogno, which would make a lovely spot to camp.

This pass faces east/west, so there’s only a bit of snow left now. Interestingly, on the east side visibility’s excellent, and on the west side it’s completely white.

Now for the worse part. It’s 8.7 km down to the village of Crodo, with over 1800 meters of descent. To the settlement of Aleccio above Crodo it’s 3.7 km, so we set that as our goal for now and we’ll see from there. Going down there’s a lovely built trail, probably from when people still lived up here.

When our motivation dips we have a bompar candy. Jozef explains to me how to calculate average gradient, since I’d wanted to include that here and hadn’t figured out how. It’s really simple, for example, if there are 10 meters of elevation over 100 meters of distance, that’s a 10% gradient. So you just need to scale it to 100 m and divide. We’ve got 8700 m /100 = 87, and then 1800/87 = 20.69%, which is our average descent gradient. We try to move as fast as possible, since we can see some dark rain clouds ahead of us. We pass a herd of cows, we’re back in civilization now, we make it to Aleccio in time.

Both our legs are in pretty bad shape by now, and it starts drizzling. There’s a flat area here, water, and a shelter, near some community center. A real downpour starts, so I catch up on the blog under the shelter roof. Once the rain stops we do a bit of a wash, pitch the tent, and dinner is, firstly, pasta with sugo and parmesan, then mashed potato with tuna. After the rain the sky cleared up and we’ve got a beautiful view. Tomorrow we just need to push on to Crodo and move somewhere else.

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11.7.2024 Thursday

→ 9,9 km ↑ 357 m – total 92,9 km

We get up at 6:30am to even more beautiful views. I used earplugs for the first time last night, a genuine game changer, I finally got a proper sleep. We pack up the tent fast and move over to the table. We pack our things, have instant noodles for breakfast, and pull ourselves together. A car passes down toward Crodo, and Jozef shoots me an annoyed look, since I’m not packed yet. If I had been, we’d definitely be hitchhiking. We’ve got 5.5 km left to Crodo, and 1000 meters down. So we go on foot.

The trail’s in fairly good shape, so we move quickly. We’re in Crodo before 9am. We go straight to hitchhike, since we don’t know how long it’ll take. Within 5 minutes a woman in her thirties stops for us, cats on her t-shirt and good taste in music, which we appreciate. She drives us to the station in Domodossola. That was fast.

We get coffee and plan the next few days. We take a train through Turin to Bussoleno and from there head on foot north, toward Gran Paradiso National Park. Then we go buy pastries, a blackberry cake for me and something like pizza for Jozef. We sit down in the square and figure out more details. We go straight to buy groceries for the next 3 days too. Jozef thinks we’ve got way too much, but what if we actually eat that much. Then we’ve only got half an hour left before the train. I’d wanted to do laundry too, but we need to go. The train to Novara takes almost two hours and it’s really hot. I charge all our devices on it. I write the blog and look up more route info. By chance I come across a snow map.

All our plans are in ruins again. I won’t even bother telling you what they are anymore. Almost all of Gran Paradiso is under snow, and even the GR 54, which we walked last year around this same time, isn’t passable. In Novara we have coffee and change to the train to Turin. Jozef double-checks whether some of our planned routes might still be doable. Maybe two days would work out. I don’t want to keep zigzagging around, so I convince him to head south instead. In Turin we buy some food for the road and beer. Even I have some of it. Instead of Bussoleno we ride one stop further, to Susa. In Susa it’s a “pleasant” 30°C and properly muggy. It’s 6pm and we’d still like to cover a vertical kilometer, so we don’t linger. The moment we step into the forest it’s a bit nicer, but there are more mosquitoes too. We pass through the village of Meana di Susa. It’s known for Giro d’Italia.

Beautiful switchbacks lead up to the pass, we’ll reach it tomorrow. It’s getting dark and we hear thunder. We look around for possible shelter. There’s a rest area in the forest just ahead of us, so we hurry there and pitch the tent. That’s it for today. There are also three Swiss guys there with off-road vehicles. The storm arrives, we sit in the tent, which is terribly stuffy and full of mosquitoes. Jozef can’t take it for longer, so he goes to shower in the rain instead. He’d already soaped up when the rain stopped, luckily there’s water here too. We make dinner and the Swiss guys come call us over, asking if we want beer or wine, so we go. I get boxed red wine in a glass cup, and Jozef gets a chilled beer. They drive around these hills in their cars, and they’d also had trouble with snow and had to turn back. Really only one of them talks to us, and he translates for the others. I finish my wine and don’t want more, they take that as some kind of precedent and stop offering Jozef beer either, even though he’d have taken another. We go wash our toxic-smelling clothes and I also take a shower. Down in town there’s some kind of festival going on, so music’s blaring. Good thing I’ve got those earplugs. We swat mosquitoes and go to sleep.

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12.7.2024 Friday

→ 23,1 km ↑ 2068 m – total 116 km

Alarm’s at 6:30am, but I only manage to pee and go get water before it starts raining. Jozef says something was going on here in the night. The Swiss guys kept a fire burning until 3am and apparently didn’t get along with some Hungarians who arrived late at night. We have breakfast in the tent, pack up, and wait for the rain to stop. It stops at 8:30am. We’d hung our washed clothes in the forest, and they’re surprisingly dry. The Swiss guys leave. We set off at 9am, with a beautiful 2000 meters of climbing ahead of us. We can either take the road or shortcut trails between the switchbacks. After over an hour we reach the spot where we’d wanted to camp yesterday. Clouds are gathering all around us and we hear thunder too. We continue another kilometer and reach a chapel just as it starts raining.

We take a break for food and tea. It stops raining, so we continue. Ten minutes later it starts again, but it’s just a light drizzle, so we pull out umbrellas and keep walking. A car stops to ask if we want a lift or need any help, we decline. We climb along the road with a gentle gradient and lovely views.

We reach Colle della Finestre after noon and fuel up on chocolate. There’s already fog here, so we wait a bit to see if it clears. I check the weather, it looks okay, so we set off. Wild weather was forecast for today, so I keep checking it constantly. The trail continues along an old 18th-century military road. It’s a genuinely pleasant climb, just heavy fog everywhere, but at least the little flowers cheer me up.

We hear some thunder, I check the weather again. We’re about to cross a ridge, so I hope nothing catches us up there. I decide it’s fine and we continue. I’m a bit tired and hungry, so we go rest for a bit in a half-collapsed house. I check the weather again and continue toward today’s highest point (almost 2800 m). The views open up a bit. We’re already descending when I realize that those clouds ahead of us don’t look good.

I check the radar, the storm’s heading right at us, and it’ll be here soon. A few hundred meters further there’s another ruined house, we run for it. It’s in even worse shape than the last one, but it covers us a bit and it’s at a pass, Colle delle Vallette, between two tall hills. The storm’s coming closer, we find the best spot and settle in.

We wait. It starts drizzling. Judging by the lightning it’s 3 km away, closing in fast. Hail starts falling. We pull out the umbrella to protect ourselves. We do have a roof over us, but a good chunk of it’s missing. The intensity builds, 3 cm hailstones start falling. The storm’s directly overhead. The whole thing lasts about three minutes, but I’m a bit shaken by it.

The trail continues along the ridge, so a storm like this could catch us up there. I check the weather again and it looks uncertain, I give it half an hour. It doesn’t improve at all. I’m starting to get pretty cold, so we decide to just camp here. The thermometer reads 9°C.

It’s a fairly good spot, just no water here. First we warm up a bit in the sleeping bags, then I go collect leftover hailstones so we’ve got water. For a moment the sun even peeks out, and moving around warms me up too. Jozef melts hailstones on the stove and I write the blog.

We end up with almost two liters of water, which I then filter. It’s really windy here, slapping the tent around, so Jozef anchors it down even more. I’ve got the blog ready, but the signal is only up on the hill outside.

I put on more layers and head out to post it. I nearly freeze, but I manage to upload it. Jozef’s already waiting with dinner, a change today, mashed potato with canned chicken. I’m glad in the end that we stayed here, even though the storm never came back, I was pretty exhausted by that point. On top of that, tomorrow’s forecast is beautiful weather, so we’ll get stunning views.

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13.7.2024 Saturday

→ 34 km ↑ 904 m – total 150 km

It was fairly cold overnight. In the morning the thermometer in the tent reads 5°C. Alarm’s at 6:30am, but we really don’t feel like facing that cold. We have breakfast in our sleeping bags, bread with ketchup and salami. Since we’re low on water, we skip coffee too. We pack up and set off properly bundled up. The sun’s out and the sky is clear.

Beautiful mountain views all around us. We continue along the road through Gran Bosco di Salbertrand Natural Park. We pass old military structures. We soak in the views and keep stopping every so often when we spot a marmot.

After two and a half hours, we reach the Casa Assietta hut. We’re the first ones there, and at the door the owner asks what we’d like. We say coffee. He offers us fruit cake too, and I can’t resist, though if I’d seen it first I probably could have. The coffee was good, from a moka pot, but the cake turned out to be dry sponge smeared with jam. I pay €8 and we head off quickly.

Traffic starts picking up, mostly cyclists for now, but the occasional motorbike too, even though they’re banned here on Saturdays. Doesn’t seem to bother them much though. We head down the fastest route, along the road. Just the motorbikes start getting pretty unbearable when 10 of them go by in a row. So we turn off onto a longer, but purely hiking-and-cycling route instead.

We descend the other side, through a lovely forest. By Lago di Laune we have lunch. We sit in the shade and I’m actualy a bit cold, it’s only 13°C. We continue descending a bit more and then join asphalt road. We went from the frying pan into the fire. There are motorbikes on this side too, of course, though a bit fewer. I get that they want to see the views too, but some of them just ride up and down turning it into their own personal motocross track. Not exactly a pleasant walk because of it. We could’ve been done with this stretch already and ended up dragging it out for nothing. Luckily, from Colletto di Costa Treceira, it’s downhill on a trail all the way to Sestriere.

Along the way we filter more water, since we’re probably a bit dehydrated. We had too little water last night, so we’re feeling it a bit. We reach town at 5pm. Sestriere is one of the biggest ski resorts in Italy, and it hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics. It has more than 400 km of slopes and the highest-altitude golf course.

Since it’s such a sports hub, we figured buying a gas canister would be no problem. How wrong we were. I went into 6 sports shops and every single one only had clothing, shoes and sunglasses. We go at least restock at the only grocery store. We’re low on gas, so we buy a cold dinner, fruit and vegetables, beer, and prosecco. Today up on the hill I remembered we’ve actually been together three years now, we’d just forgotten. It’s three kilometers downhill to the campsite. We walk past the golf course. We reach the campsite right before reception closes. They’ve got a spot, and we pay €34 for the night. After 9 days I go wash my hair, and for the first time this whole trip we get a hot shower. We dry, charge everything and do a bit of laundry.

For dinner we end up going to the pizzeria next door, since we really should make the most of the opportunity even with a pile of food already on hand. We each get one, eat them fast and go have prosecco in the tent. I catch up on the blog and start writing another entry too. Jozef’s already asleep.

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14.7.2024 Sunday

→ 26,9 km ↑ 1897 m – total 176,9 km

Since I went to bed pretty late and had some prosecco, I refuse to get up early. I finally wake up around 8am. We have a fairly slow morning, still charging our devices and having a hearty breakfast, since we’ve got a pile of food. We chat with a German who slept next to us, he is cycling from Munich to Nice. We set off at 9:30am. We descend gently to the village of Pattemouche. I’d wanted a coffee there, but nothing’s open. So we continue along the Torrente Chisone river. It looks like a pretty popular spot here. Lots of cars, people, and a really pleasant path that lets us move fast.

After 1.5 km we reach a hut, grab a quick coffee, and continue. We pass everyone. We go through Val Troncea Natural Park. It’s really beautiful here, though not quite as much as higher parts. After 7 kilometers the nice path ends, and so does everyone else. We start a climb of almost 1200 meters to Colle Clapis, not a soul in sight, just marmots.

The higher we go, the more beautiful the views. It’s tough, sure, but genuinely worth it. We really don’t get why nobody’s here. We conclude Italians just don’t feel like it. We have lunch at 1pm. Bread with brie, bacon, and we’ve even still got some vegetables. Ants pester us a bit there, which I really can’t stand, but I hold it together and don’t panic. We pack up and climb another 500 meters.

There are still occasional snowfields, which we try to go around. On one we even put on crampons. The views are unbelievable.

We’re at the pass by 3pm, and views open up on the other side, spectacular.

We descend the south side, where there’s no more snow and it’s a fairly nice trail, so we move fast.

I go pee, and one ant apparently stayed on my pee cloth and bit me right in my private parts. That’s exactly why I don’t like them! Jozef’s far ahead, so I hurry to tell him, hoping for some sympathy. After a bit the stinging fades.

We descend to the Alpe Plane hut, where I’d wanted coffee, but there are a lot of dogs there, so we’d rather continue. On top of that there are also some motorbikes and off-road vehicles here, so we hurry onto the trail. We even watch one off-road vehicle drive straight through a river, absolute mess. We shake our heads and continue on. We reach a lovely waterfall that needs fording below it. We take off our shoes and cross through the icy water, a pretty good refresher.

We continue with a gentle climb alongside the river and watch marmots. The real climb only starts on the last kilometer, 250 meters of elevation.

I’m quite hungry by now, so it’s tough going and I stop often. Before 6pm we reach Bivacco Giorno Casalegno. We’re pretty cold, since a chilly wind’s blowing, but also sunburned, since I forgot to put on sunscreen. Jozef reaches the shelter first and gets startled by an ibex that jumps out at him from inside the building. It’s a spooky building, with one end converted into a shelter. There’s a bit of a mold smell, but otherwise it looks great. A bunk bed from Ikea, a stove, a table and chairs. First we go shower while the sun’s still out. Neither of us really feels like it today. The water’s icy and the wind’s blowing on top of it. It takes real willpower. We manage it and go straight to make tea to warm up a bit. I pick some wild thyme in front of the hut. Since we didn’t buy a gas canister, we use the gas they have here. We cook a minestrone soup, then mashed potato with bacon, garlic and mozzarella. I go throw out the leftover tea outside and startle a marmot, which lets out a loud whistle from the fright I gave it. Then around 8pm two Italians startle us too, who’d just come to check out what the shelter looks like, thinking of sleeping here next time. Quite the startling day we’re having. No signal here, so I try to catch up on the days I’m behind on. The sun’s still out, but we’re already lying in bed, resting.

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21.7.2024 Sunday

On our last day we get up around 8:30am. We go for “breakfast,” which was included in the price — we get coffee and a croissant, better than nothing. Check-out is at noon, so we lounge in bed while I update the blog. We head for the train at 11am, since the next one after that wouldn’t be for another 2 hours. In the background we can see ominous storm clouds and hear thunder. I’m glad we’re not up in the mountains anymore. We continue on to Turin, just 30 minutes away by train. Since breakfast wasn’t too much, we go find something to eat. It’s Sunday, so options are limited. Near Porta Susa station we find a pasta restaurant. It looks really nice, and even though we’re wearing our best clothes, we feel like we don’t quite belong — we’ve completely lost the habit of civilization. They have a great ordering system: just scan the QR code, pick from the menu, and send the order. A waiter then comes by only to check on things. To celebrate finishing this trip, and being in Italy, we order Aperol Spritzes. Within 5 minutes our food is on the table — carbonara and ragù.

Oh, this fresh pasta — a completely different league, and you can buy it everywhere in shops here. We eat, then go for coffee and a pastry too. In the end we spend 2 hours in Turin, with a 2-hour trip to Milan still ahead of us. Luckily we grab a pair of seats, since there are some odd people wandering around. Milan’s central station has about a million people in it. I can’t imagine how we made that train connection last time — there’s no way we’d manage it now. We find a slightly quieter spot and wait for the train to Bergamo to pull in. That one’s emptier. We get off in Bergamo at 5pm and go pick up some food for dinner. I’d wanted to buy our airport bus tickets straight away, but after paying for the first one we discover validity starts from purchase, not from when it’s scanned — oh well. The Tour de France finishes today, so Jozef found a sports bar at the edge of town. We arrive just as some Formula race is wrapping up, so Jozef goes to ask if they can switch it over to the TdF. We order Aperol Spritzes and they are making great ones.

Jozef really likes it here — it reminds him of his favorite bar back in Partizánske, Bistro Fekete. You can tell it’s a genuine local spot, regulars and all. We sit there for almost three hours, going through three Aperol Spritzes each while I edit photos on the side. We’d thought we might eat here too, but we don’t see anyone eating, so we go get a kebab and falafel instead — something we hadn’t had yet on this trip. Even though the sun set ages ago, the city’s still baking hot. I really need to pee, but every restroom in town is already closed, so we make a run for the airport bus, which is just pulling up at the stop. I try to buy a ticket on board, but the machine’s broken, so we end up traveling on one invalid ticket. No matter, the ride only takes 15 minutes. At the airport we pull ourselves together and go find somewhere to settle down for the night. Turns out there really isn’t much space — the best spot is already claimed by a group of scouts. We set up a bit further. Jozef inflates his sleeping pad and tries to get at least a little sleep. I don’t really feel like it, so I write the blog instead. The place gradually fills up until there’s not even a scrap of wall space left. We both put in earplugs — there’s an Italian family here with absolutely no concept of how to behave in a shared public space.

Around half past 2 in the morning airport security arrives and wakes everyone sleeping on the floor — the cleaning crew’s coming through. At least I manage to hand off the gas canister we hadn’t used up. It’s a strange setup here — one whole section is completely closed off, so we go sit on some chairs instead. I search in vain for an outlet, absolutely nothing anywhere, not even in the bathrooms. My phone’s completely dead, the power bank’s dead too, and the boarding passes are only in my app — they never synced to Jozef’s, probably because the system still hadn’t recovered from an outage a few days earlier. I start to feel a flicker of panic, but Jozef, ever resourceful, connects my phone to his so I can charge up at least a few percent, enough to get through security, and I send him screenshots of the boarding passes too. After 4am we go check-in our bag. Most of our stuff fits into check-in bag, so I go through security with a half-empty backpack. We don’t catch a great queue at the security check. I get that it can be stressful for some people, but you can prepare for it really well — most airports run on the same rules. I lay out beforehand whatever needs to go separately, toss my phone, wallet, keys and watch into one tray and the whole backpack into another. That way we’re both sorted in under a minute, instead of digging through pockets wondering what we forgot where. I’m getting a bit irritable after a sleepless night at this point. We find free seats by a window and I finally get a nap. Jozef wakes me at 6am — boarding’s starting. As we gather our things from the seats we realize our USB charger had been sitting right between us the whole time, so we squeeze in a bit more charging by the gate. Jozef and I swap seats since I got row 17, right by the emergency exit with more legroom. We take off and I’m out cold instantly. I wake up to blocked ears as we descend. It’s 8:11am when the plane comes to a stop. There’s a 9:02am train from Bratislava Nové Mesto station to Partizánske — I don’t hold out much hope for that one. Luckily it’s a genuinely tiny airport and we’re waiting for our luggage for maybe 5 minutes. We catch the 8:24am bus and still have 10 minutes to spare at the station before the train leaves. I honestly hadn’t dared to dream we’d make it work this well. I sleep on the train, of course, and we’re home before noon. That’s the upside of an early flight. Jozef dives straight into work, I dive straight into laundry. Leuško, our resident doorstep cat, is thoroughly offended that we were gone so long — hopefully he gets over it quickly.

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