Month: July 2013

We tried to walk from Susa to the Bivaccio Orsiera on 2000m. But the weather seemed to be quite unstable…and so we finally decided to give up the ascent…and walk down all way back – almost. This is how we finally came to Bussoleno. This day was a pain! It was really hard to decide what to do. We made a safety decision here…but in the end the weather was still fine. You never know in this case. Still I think we would make a similar decision in this situation. The night we spend in a very “Italian” one star “hotel” – actually a restaurant but they had a room for us. We were the only guests… At least we found some interesting things in Bussoleno.

This morning we climbed down to Susa – a “bigger” city. Here are hotels, super markets, restaurants, pharmacies, traffic lights, cash machines…even a train station. God I never thought I will like a city that much  Today it is hot in Susa – 34°C. Actually I think this is quite normal here but in the mountains we often do not realize that it is that hot in summer. The temperature drops about 1°C per 100m upwards. Now I think I know again how people in Germany currently must feel with temperatures around 32°C…and I heard some companies do not even spend the money for an air conditioning… When we arrived in Susa we went along the train station. When we passed a group of people a girl held her nose and waived her hand in front of her face…and laughed…and watched after us  I guess there is not much room for misinterpretations… Tonight we have a room in a 3 star hotel – with shower and bed and balcony and air conditioning and TV  This is great  The next action: shower! Luckily the hotel also had a public washing machine. We used it two times! In the afternoon we walked through the old city of Susa – once built by the Romans. And there are really some concepts, buildings and roads which remind me of Rome. Susa has about 6600 citizens. My personal impression is that international tourism is no big topic here. This evening we decided to go to a pizzeria – and we enjoyed it to determine ourselves what we want to eat and when, even ordering in Italian was no problem. On mountain huts there is often one fixed time and only one meal to “choose” from. We had two pizzas and a big salad and 1 litre of water and half a litre of white wine – all together for about 23 euros. I think this is a quite good price  Tomorrow we plan to walk further to the south…

Oii…the last night we both did not sleep very good. The bed was wobbling around whenever we were moving…and made strange noises. The plan for today was actually to just climb down to Bussoleno. We just had to go up about 600m and then 2000m down. We planned to be there at about 2pm since another thunderstorm was in the forecast for today. But everything we planned didn’t work out. We followed a marked path upwards to the pass. After about an hour the path disappeared in a huge green bush. There was no chance to get around it. It was quite steep so that we finally had to give up this way. It was quite stupid that a path in the map which was even marked and where still were signs to its destination just ended in nowhere. There was another but longer path drawn in the map – even thicker – which lead to the same pass. So we decided to walk back and take that one. We climbed up to about 2500m. There was a small hut. We tried to find our way and walked upwards another 100m. We could not see a single marking – even if the GPS said we are on the right track. We decided to go back to the small hut and ask for the right path. The guy send us back upwards – right the way we just came from. We were angry with ourselves since we did not just continue to walk upwards before. After another 150m upwards this path ended as well. The path became quite narrow and very steep to the left and to the right. We went down to the hut again – very angry…especially because the weather forecast said thunderstorm for 2pm…and we “lost” about 3 hours just because of non-exiting tracks. Probably the guy at the hut just thought we are stupid German tourists who cannot read a map… We had to replan and decided to go to Rif. Truc instead. This was another 3 hour march. We arrived at 2pm – but…no thunderstorm today…  Tonight we sleep on the attic  – hopefully better than last night 

We only walked about 3 hours to Rif. Vulpot on a mountain road. We arrived at 11:30 when the weather still looked very nice. We decided to stay here since the last days were quite long. Within 2 hours the blue sky was gone and it started to rain. So it turned out to be a good decision to stay.

The path upwards was very nice today. We climbed ~1000m up and then used a road down again to Usseglio. This is the short description of today. However today was a quite scary day. On our way upwards we passed a small bivaccio on about 2200m. We wanted to find out if it is open but it seemed to be locked from inside. Suddenly a man opened from inside – it was already about 9:30 in the morning – and said good morning  And then a woman came out of the bivaccio…I think they had an amazing night  The forecast for today said heavy rain and probably thunderstorm. At the bivaccio the weather still looked ok. We continued to the highest point. A thick cloud was blown above the pass and it suddenly became foggy and cold. This was a very strange feeling since the sun was warm and comfortable minutes ago. Up there we saw some ibexes in the fog…little scary. Since we were not able to see the clouds anymore, because we were in the middle of a big one, it was really hard to tell if there was a thunderstorm coming or not – especially since it was the forecast for the afternoon. So we hurried downwards to the next Alp. It was astonishing to see what the human body can do under stress. When we arrived at the Alp we asked for the weather. We only understood some words but the message was: no storm for the next hours. So we continued downwards. We decided to take the road since the original descent of the Via Alpina was quite steep – and the weather was still unstable. We arrived in the valley and further followed the road towards Usseglio. It was very hot and the cumulus clouds were already very high. It was again just a question of time until the storm was going to start. So we hurried…again. In a small village approx. 5 km before our destination the thunderstorm began. Naively we thought that we will find a place to stay in such a case – but in fact it was hard to find something. There was no bar, no restaurant and no single hotel or pension. The village was like dead. The only bus stop didn’t have any time table – and the church was closed. We thought about stopping a car …but there was no car. The thunders became quite loud and the whole situation seemed too bad to be true. Then – suddenly – a small bus came around the corner. It was the regular bus to Usseglio which drives just a few times per day. We ran after the bus and waved like idiots. It stopped and we were allowed to enter. The busdriver opened the window – I think after this day we were stinking like beevers  – and he didn’t event want us to buy a ticket. So we finally arrived safely in Usseglio – the last 5km by bus.