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Month: July 2013

Published on Leave a comment on Alpine Crossing 2013 – Day 31: Rifugio Lago Verde – Rifugio Jervis

From Rif. Lago Verde we start early. A steep mountain path (personally I wouldn’t call this a path any more) led us upwards to a pass on about 2700m. Here we were the first this morning. An ibex stood right in front of us watching us curiously. We made some photos this time :) The pass also is the border between Italy and France and so we continued the next part of today in France (actually most people on the last hut were from France). More or less we continued walking on the same altitude until we reached Bivaccio Soardi on 2620m. It lays directly behind the Col de Bouchet. Now we are back in Italy :) We could not belive what we were seeing from up here. It was a very clear morning. Our current position was more or less at the eastern boundary of the western Alps. So we were able to see very very far into Italy from up here. It is hard to describe and it was also impossible for us to take a good photo of this view – but one should have seen once in life:)

We continued downwards for a few hours. Sometimes walking down is a pain but this time it was not because there were flowers everywhere… Finally we followed a road again upwards to Rif. Jervis on 1732m.

When we arrived we received our room – this time with 7 others. We took rest of the day off :) I ordered two “Panasche” (this is beer with Sprite) in a row and lay down in the sun. After a few minutes I slept – almost until dinner :P . For dinner we had to share the food with 6 people from France. A few times we had to remember them that the food is not just for them…not quite polite… Anyway.. the dinner was good – beside other things lots of pasta…and bacon with oil and parmigiano. Tomorrow we plan to go to Rif. Giacoletti on about 2700m.

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Published on Leave a comment on Alpine Crossing 2013 – Day 30: Torino – Ghigo Prali – Rifugio Lago Verde

We slept very well in our hotel in Torino. The contrast between sharing a toilet and bedroom with others and having one for myself becomes very clear again – and again I am glad that I can effort a hotel if I want :) We got up early again – breakfast is at 7am. We want to get the bus to Ghigo which leaves at 7:38 at Torino – according to the timetable (yes, there IS a timetable! :D ). From Ghigo we want to start to the Monviso group – a quite famous and big group of mountains. The highest mountain in this group – what else can it be – is Monviso (about 3800m). Continuing our tour from Ghigo we are skipping two days of walking. We decided for this step since the weather is supposed to be very good and stable for the next three days – and for walking through the Monviso area we need very good weather.
Today, getting up at 6:30am from this great hotel bed is like a pain – at least for me…I think I could sleep another 2…3…4 hours :P …but anyway our bus is leaving 7:38…and it is the only bus for the next hours – according to the great timetable. Under this time condition the very nice breakfast was also very short…sine our bus leaves at 7:38 from Torino (what does this actually mean? Torino…where in Torino? But this time the woman from the tourist office told us the truth, didn’t she?). I think I could sit here in this great breakfast room and drink one coffee after another…but…. At 7:30 we hurried out of the hotel door to the bus stop which was described to us by the woman at the Torino tourist information. At 7:35 we are there… We are looking at the great timetable again. One strange thing we noticed this morning is that for all bus connections the bus stop where the bus leaves is marked yellow. Only for our connection there is no specific bus stop name given – just Torino…and it is not marked yellow. Could this mean something? We were just waiting…10 minutes…20 minutes…some buses were leaving…but no bus with our destination. To make it short – our bus never left. The “timetable” was just for information that there is a connection – but one has to change the bus. This was not obvious to us from the timetable. When we realized that the bus we would have to take was already gone. And so we stood there on the main road waiting for the next bus to the destination where we had to change the bus. This was very annoying…after so many days in the mountains the noise of hundreds of cars and so many people all around was kind of horrible. We were quite glad when the next right bus finally arrived.

From Torino the bus went to Perosa. There we had to change to another bus. But…sounds simple…it took us about an hour to find the correct bus stop where the next bus was going to leave. It was interesting to walk through Perosa…and we were able to buy some food and some medcine before we left…but we were finally very glad when we also left the second bus to Ghigo.

From here we walked about 4:30 hours to our destination Rif. Lago Verde. Luckily the weather was very good and stable today – there was no single cloud on the sky. The Rifugio Lago Verde is very nice. They have a warm shower which is already included in the price. Tonight we share a room with only two others – very comfortable :) Tomorrow we plan to go to Rif. Jervis. Forecast is very good…lets see :)

Published on Leave a comment on Alpine Crossing 2013 – Day 29: Torino

A loud “Kaboom!!” woke me at 6:30am. What the…??? Shouldn’t the weather be fine today. “Maybe a little rain in the afternoon…maybe not…”? But outside the hell started and I was so glad that I still lay in my warm bed. Whoever heard a thunderstorm in the mountains knows what I mean :) Luckily nobody left the hut so far. The weather report was very bad for today. Very strong thunderstorms and rain. So we decided to leave this place since the bad weather was supposed to continue the whole day. Yesterday we saw that there is a bus directly to Torino – just 2:30 hours. We both thought it is a good point in time to go back to the civilisation for one day…besides we had some organisational things to do which was much easier in a city. After breakfast the rain stopped. So we started to walk along the road to a bus stop from where we were able to go to Torino. This was about 4 km away. It turned out to be a bad idea since the rain started just 10 minutes after we left – but we did not want to go back… We continued to walk along the road for 10 minutes…until a long tunnel came up in front of us. This one was only made for cars…and again I was asking myself: “What am I doing here??” We put our thumbs out …but many cars passed. We were standing right in front of this tunnel and it was raining… But then one car stopped and we were able to get in. God we were so glad! The driver was from Romania but lived in Italy. It turned out that he had to go to Turino as well…and he just said if we want we can stay…he even invited us to a coffee! So we got to Turino for free…in just half of the time :) In Turino we had a nice hotel – located closely to the station. There is also a tourist information. We were looking for a sports shop to buy two new hiking sticks (because I left mine…somewhere.. ). So we asked if there is any outdoor shop around. The answer was funny…”Oh yes, there is an auto museum right here…” :D (we did not find a shop…). Later we walked into a farmacia to buy new sun milk – we didn’t find it in the super market. We realized that sun milk is very expensive compared to the prices we have in Germany. A special offer – 30% off – cost about 12 euros! Off course a farmacia is more expensive…but this was a bit too much. Anyway we needed the sun milk…and so we decided to buy it. What we learnt today is patience :D There was a line of maybe 8 customers in front of us…and we thought it will take about 10 minutes…no problem. But after waiting about 20 minutes there were still 4 people in front of us. We just wanted to buy this little much too expensive sun milk. It was really amazing to see how much patience all the other customers had – they had time…and nobody seemed to care. One customer wanted to buy a body lotion… but there were three different ones and she could not decide. The staff explained all the advantages of each of the body lotions. Another one wanted to buy food for his dog…interesting that this is sold by a farmacia :P And so it took almost 35 minutes until we left the farmacia again – just to buy sun milk… The rest of the day we walked through the streets of Torino. There is not so much to say…just that the contrast between hiking in the mountains and walking through a big city can’t be bigger. Tomorrow we wilk take the bus back to the mountains and continue our path – the weather looks very good!

Published on Leave a comment on Alpine Crossing 2013 – Day 28: Biv. Orsiera – Usseaux

We got up at 6:00am. After so many hours of sleep I should be awake…but I was not. All the others were still sleeping. We just packed our bags and left the “bedroom”. I just had to go back once to put the blanket back into the cupboard…oh my god… I think it is always like that…better don’t go back if you left once! The air inside could have been cut into half… We left the Bivaccio – without breakfast – again. And I realized how much I need a coffee in the morning! Again, the weather was very strange this morning. There were huge cumulus clouds already at 6am…and parts of the sky were in red. This usually is not a good sign. But what to do? Resign again? Drawback again? This kind of weather really sucks…it takes away all the fun and creates very unpleasant situations. In fact all we do always and absolutely depends on the weather. At home the weather maybe is not nice…but I can ignore it or not. It does not make a difference. Here it is essential…and nobody can control it and in the mountains it is often even hard to predict it. Many words…anyway…we decided to climb up this time – about 700m. When we arrived at the pass the other side was completely in clouds. We climbed down a few meters and were right inside the fog…and so we were not able to observe the weather any more. God how I hate this situation. You don’t know if you should hurry or not – you are just like blind. Usually we check the weather reports every morning using the smartphone but since we arrived at the Bivaccio we did not have any signal…and asking others for the weather didn’t work for us – at least not in Italy. In fact many people just don’t know because they don’t care and often we heard the same thing: “It’s okay…it’s good like today…maybe. Some rain maybe in the afternoon…maybe not…”. In other words “I don’t know and I don’t care.”. We climbed down through the fog. Actually we both needed a break but we did not want to stop. Luckily no rain and no storm came today. So we made it safely to Usseaux – according to the local marketing (again) “one of the nicest Italian cities” :P . After we had a shower (it was absolutely required after our night in the Bivaccio) we went to the only cafè we found. There were quite some people around. We were just ignored for 10 minutes. Then we started to waive. We were still ignored for 10 minutes (it was no self service :) ). At home I would have already left the cafè..but here in “one of the nicest villages of Italy” I can’t just leave :P Suddenly a woman came and asked if we want to eat. I said “duo cafe latte per farvore”…and what is cake in Italian…???….”and do you have cake”? I know this is  not nice but the waitress just turned around and went to another table…and ignored us for another 10 minutes. Then we left – without coffee and without cake… Anyway.. The dinner tonight was great. We sat together with a family from Switzerland, four others from Germany and a woman from Finland who spoke 7 languages fluently… scary :) Everything was made from local products. We spent a nice evening on the hut and went to bed at 10pm. According to the hut owner the weather will be fine tomorrow…if we can believe that?

Published on Leave a comment on Alpine Crossing 2013 – Day 27: Bussoleno – Mattie – Biv. Orsiera

Today we made a second try going to Bivaccio Orsiera. The path was one of the most boring. We started at 7am – even at this time it was already very hot! Today it was very very hard to continue walking upwards. The bag seemed to be much bigger and heavier than usual and the path led through a forest almost all the time. Still it was hot – and we did not have a good view on other mountains. Arriving at the Bivaccio we were exhausted. We put ourselves on a bench and slept for almost 3 hours. We then realized that more guest arrived at the Bivaccio – now all 10 beds were in use. Then we slept another 2 hours. Probably the body takes its time for rest if necessary… Our highlight today was the cooking – we had pasta with cheese and salami and chilli powder. It was great! We went to bed at 9pm and slept another 9 hours. We not even realized when all the other guests came to the bedroom.