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Month: August 2013

Published on Leave a comment on Alpine Crossing 2013 – Day 42: Rifugio Soria-Ellena – Refuge de Nice

Today we walked as planned from Rif. Ellena-Soria to Ref. Nice in France. After about 2 hours we reached the first pass which is the border between Italy and France. Up there is an old building – probably from the war. When we arrived there three ibexes just left the building – like guardians :) – but they let us continue our way to France… Unfortunately this also means that there won’t be any pasta as “primi plati” any more :( I have to say…it is just pasta…BUT the Italian pasta is absolutely fantastic – I don’t know what they are doing different… :)

From here we walked down to the first hut on our way – Refuge Madone de Fenestre on about 1900m. Here we met quite a lot of people because many came up to this hut by car – and since it is Sunday…

We made no break and continued to the next pass on about 2700m. This path was very nice – a little steep and some more rocks made it quite interesting. At the top it was quite cold since clouds were already hanging around. So we directly continued downwards again. The “path” down was quite steep at the beginning and our knees started to hurt. We were quite glad when we finally arrived at the Nice hut. One thing we both started to wonder about in the Alps Maritime are the times written on the way signs. Because it now happened quite often that we were much slower than the time written on the signs. I wonder how fast one must walk to make the time given…. :P – flying??

At the hut it was not so nice – it was quite cold inside and the sun also left us quite early today. The dinner was ok – just sitting so close with 4 others on a small table was little annoying (actually no problem but after so many days and nights we both are looking for some more room and privacy again).

 

Published on Leave a comment on Alpine Crossing 2013 – Day 41: Rifugio Genova – Rifugio Soria-Ellena

Again we had breakfast with coffee this morning – o m g this is great :) The path to the pass today was very nice. The Alps Maritime are again different to the groups we saw up to now. Partly they are very steep and there are less trees and less green – at least so far.

At the pass we had a long long break :) All we had to do was going down to the next hut – and the weather was great!

We walked down to the hut and spent the rest of the day off in the sun. Lisa spent about an hour in front of a marmot den – trying to make a good photo :) At the hut the staff was very nice – they helped us a lot with our next accommodation – and they spoke perfect English! Again we have a very nice place to sleep.

Published on Leave a comment on Alpine Crossing 2013 – Day 40: Terme di Valdieri – Rifugio Genova

We started after breakfast today – with coffee! :) A mountain path led us upwards to a first mountain hut – Rifugio Morelli-Buzzl. We passed this one heading right to the first pass on 2526m. Thus last part of the path didn’t seem to come to an end! Finally, from the top we were able to see lake “Bacino del Chiotas” the first time (not that anyone can remember that name…). The path downwards was also very long – actually the lake seemed to be quite close…but this was not the case. To reach our destination for today – Rifugio Genova – we had to walk up about 100m again. Even if this was just 100m it was a pain after walking downwards for several hours. We finally arrived at the hut and received a very nice room :) From the hut we had a tremendous view on the lake. For the rest of the day we stayed in the sun moving as less as possible :)

Published on Leave a comment on Alpine Crossing 2013 – Day 38: Cuneo

When the weather in the mountains changed to rain and storm we decided to take the bus to the next bigger city instead of sitting at a mountain hut. So we went to Cuneo! We found a cheap hotel and made some sightseeing. To me Cuneo seems similar to Turin – just smaller. There are piazzas, there is lots of traffic and the main shopping streets are covered by big roofs. So we could walk through half the city even if it was raining or when the sun is burning from the sky :)

Published on Leave a comment on Alpine Crossing 2013 – Day 38: Rifugio Gadetta – Agriturismo La Meja

Because of bad weather we only walked about one hour from Rifugio Gadetta to La Meja. Then we had a coffee and decided that it is too risky to continue. It looked like a thunderstorm would arrive soon. And the forecast for the next days was also not very promising. Therefore we took the bus to Cuneo to make a stop in a bigger city and continue walking when the weather has improved.