I take a day off in Sambuco. Constanza’s GTA hike is done and she heads off towards Milan.
I wake up, feeling like I did not sleep enough-and feeling mildly depressed and just generally low-energy. I have noticed that this happens sometimes after I have a particular amazing experience or day, kind of a mini “post-trail blues”.
I have the amazing hotel breakfast and head out. The trail follows some dirt roads and single track out of Sambuco past a couple more villages, mildly gaining elevation but not too dramatically. It is very hot, and humid. Around noon I stop to look at an interesting piped fountain-there is a board under the stream of water, and on the board is written in Italian, “please don’t move the board, it’s for the bees.” I look around and realize there are literally hundreds of honey bees buzzing around, and I turn around and see a long row of brightly colored hive boxes-it is an apiary. There are in fact maybe 10-12 bees on the board, apparently drinking water.
I walk on and the weather changes-big clouds move in and thunder rolls. I walk down into Pontebernardo as the sky gets darker and darker. It is a small village and barely anyone seems to be around. I am almost out of food, because there was no grocery in Sambuco, and I am hungry. Apparently there is one restaurant in this village according to Gaia.
I am passing the nondescript building that Gaia says contains the restaurant-and the door opens, and incredibly a woman my age wearing a chef’s hat steps out.
“Hello! Uh….can I get some food here?” I ask, kind of stupidly, in English.
“Uh, yes! Sure. Come in. I can make you some food.”
This seems a little more casual than I was expecting, but I obediently follow the woman through the back stairwell up two flights of stairs to an empty dining room.
The dining room is full of pictures, information, interpretive signs, and brochures on the Stera Valley’s “slow food movement.” I seem to have stumbled into a kind of eco-conscious restaurant that partners with local farmers and shepherds, but it isn’t clear if they are officially open.
As we walk upstairs, the heavens open and rain downpours, making a loud commotion on the building’s roof.
The chef says, “so, I could make you a cheese plate with local cheeses? How about some pasta?”
I say emphatically yes to everything she is describing. 5 minutes later, an artisanal cheese plate arrives with goat and sheepsmilk cheeses from local farmers, and even a little dish of honey from the apiary I walked by.
I cannot believe this is happening. I feel a little simple, but my eyes are basically popping out of my head with each new dish she puts in front of me-a little empanada made of local duck, then homemade pasta, with pesto made from herbs that were found growing in these mountains.
I eat everything. I thank her over and over-she gives me a “to-go” bag for tonight with more pasta and special dessert. She charges me 25 euros for everything. I tell her about the GTA, and how I am hoping to encourage more Americans to hike this route. Her name is Valeria, and the restaurant is Pecora Nera-hopefully I can encourage at least one new thruhiker to stop in there for absolutely unmatched hospitality and incredible food.
I walk out, feeling like I have a cartoon tummy full of Italian food-but in front of me is a climb of 4200 feet, all the way up to Passo della Gardetta. I start picking my way up the trail. It rains in and off for a few hours and the weather becomes much cooler. I finally reach the pass as the sun is setting , with an incredible view of the Monte Cassorso and tiny Rifugio Gardetta below. I set up camp in a little ravine. I hiked 14.1 miles today, with about 5000 feet gain.
Passo della Gardetta.
It rains in the night. Showers, then a steady rain, coming in sheets. I did not pick the best place to camp- 100 or so feet below the Pass, and the wind is just picking up velocity and whipping at my tent. It is not a motivational start to the day.
I pack everything up and put on my rain gear and gaiters and break down my wet wind-beaten tent. It is a cold, pouring rain-the kind that it doesn’t do to stop for any length of time in, because you feel your body starting to flirt with hypothermia. I re-crest the pass, so different last night-windy still but with a cold alpine sunset-and start down the muddy wet trail. I pass a military bunker and stick my head in-all concrete and dark, it is silent, dank, and creepy. Ugh.
My mood dips low. I am basically out of food again, and probably won’t cross a grocery store, again today-there has been no open grocery store on the route since Entracque. There isn’t a person to be seen, and why would there be? Who goes up here in weather like this?
I decide to just stay in a rifugio tonight, for the dry bed, warm dinner, and company. It’s only been one night since Sambuco, but this kind of sucks.
A couple hours later I am a good bit lower in elevation, and the clouds part and the sun comes out. My raincoat and rain pants slowly dry (the backpack stays dripping wet.). I pass a couple going the opposite direction and say “hi”- they are from Germany. Another couple comes along a few minutes later, also from Germany-they are hiking the Maira Trail (P Occidentale,) which is a few days’ loop trail around this valley. When I tell them what I am doing, the man says, “wait! I met someone yesterday who is doing your route, the same direction. He stayed at the posto tappa we were in last night. Maybe you’ll catch him if he takes a day off!”
I think to myself that if he is hiking the Rother guide pace, about 3-6 hours of hiking a day, then it shouldn’t be long before I catch him. But I keep this thought to myself.
The rain starts again. Everything and all of me is wet, as I slog on in my rain clothes, the sticky heavy wet backpack pulling on my neck. The rain makes a rat-a-tat-tat on my hood and my view, wet greenery and forest, is limited to the window out of my cinched-up raincoat. This reminds me, I think, of the midway point on the Appalachian Trail, almost exactly 13 years ago today. I had gotten into a dramatic argument with my hiking partner on that trail, wrapping up the argument with great gravitas (at least in my 24 year old opinion) by saying, “….I’m gonna hike on.” I spent one night at the Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania hostel and walked one full day by myself in the pouring rain before I came to my senses and went and dug him out of a crowded AT shelter-miserable in the corner on his sleeping pad in his long underwear, skinny with his huge beard, eating Ramen by light of his headlamp-and apologized for being an idiot. We finished at Katahdin together and dated for a year after this.
I smile to myself and my heart warms as I think of all that rain that year on the AT-the rainy South, the rainy midAtlantic, the rainy North. I continue to walk down the trail, and it joins with a road, and I walk in the pouring rain up to the Campo Base rifugio.
I check in, change into dry clothes, and get a beer in the common area. An older woman also sitting alone notices me and hails me in French.
“Sorry?’ I say.
“Oh, sorry, I thought you spoke French,”
she says.
We exchange some kind words. She is from a rural area of France about three hours from here.
I go and take a shower and lay down for about 20 minutes before dinner. When I re-enter the dinner hall, they have laid out a single place setting for me at a solo table-but the woman, now sitting with four other French hikers, motions me over.
“You shouldn’t sit alone. Come sit with us”, she says. I gladly accept.
The other four are from Paris. They are all middle aged, traveling together for a week on a road trip. I tell them about the Hexatrek in France-the brand-new 3000 kilometer thruhike- and their mouths drop open in amazement. We talk about hiking, and wildlife, and California. Half of the conversation is in English, half is in French, and everyone is drinking red wine.
Maybe I’ll spend a few months in France to learn French.
My friend, it turns out, is a family doctor in a village in western France. She is animated, extroverted, seamlessly switching between English and French. I tell her she should hike the PCT.
“Hm well. Maybe I would meet someone!”
“Seriously! You really might!” I say enthusiastically.
“So, you are just hiking in Italy? You do not cross over to France….at all?” A man asks.
“No, this the GTA, the Italian National
Scenic Trail. It is all in Italy.”
“But…..NO hiking in France?”
I laugh. It is hard to capture this particularly French sentiment in writing-it is so earnest and heartfelt. The French truly believe that their mountains are the best-and they are not without reason-France has some truly incredible wild areas. But it cracks me up.
It is a wonderful dinner, and it refills my cup. It is moments like these that I carry in my heart, for many months afterward.
I wake up and have breakfast with my French friend. She takes off on her day hike early, before the sun crests the mountains. She tells me she is 67 years old. With a sting I realize she reminds me heavily of Martijn’s mother-warm, and intuitive, and smart, and quirky.
I start hiking up a long ascent towards Colle di Bellini, my first 9000 foot pass. The weather shifts and rain clouds move in. There are a few other hikers around in this popular area, and as I near the pass, with delight I meet another GTA hiker, Johannes from Germany, going the other direction on a long section. We talk gear, and thruhiking, and Italy. I sadly leave him and Crest the Pass.
Bellini Pass.
The other side of the pass looks like pictures of Ireland. Big puffy clouds move in and out of peaks, and everything is green, green, green. I descend all the way down to the road and walk a few miles on this.
Magical, moody, dreamy clouds.
I reach the base of the second pass of the day in the evening, another 2200 feet of gain. I slowly start the climb and really lose all of the wind in my sails about halfway up- everything feels so, so hard. I finally struggle the rest of the way up and exhausted, drop my pack. I get very cold all of a sudden and remember that they give runners those silver blankets at the end of races. I put on my puffy down coat and get in my sleeping bag and make a cup of hot tea- then, slowly, I set up my tent. I hiked 16 miles today, gaining 6500 feet.
I wake up and the sun is already high. It is 7:30. I slept deeply and long-it is hard to wake up quickly after a day like yesterday.
I make my way down the mountain, towards the town of Pontechianale-cowbell tinkles and the shouts of herders drift up from the valley below. It is sunny and warm. I walk into Pontechianale and find the little market-the first open grocery store of any kind that I have encountered since Entracque. I buy cheese, and meat, and pasta, and pesto, and next door at the bakery I buy a long skinny loaf of bread and a few croissants. There are none of the foods available that American thruhikers are accustomed to-there just aren’t Clif bars and Gu packets and ramen available; people here don’t eat those things. So I have learned to shift how I eat on trail.
Protein bomb.
I start to make my way around the large artificial lake. I begin to hike uphill towards the alpine zone-and the weather shifts, a cold wind blows, and thunder rumbles.
Great.
I just can’t seem to get out of this crappy weather system. I soldier on as a few raindrops fall, then a few more, until it is a steady rain. In bewilderment i see in front of me, coming towards me in the narrow trail with a steep drop off, a small herd of cattle being herded down out of the mountains. My first thought is-“hmm, I wonder if this means this storm will be serious if they are bringing the cattle down…” and my second thought is, “wait where do I go to get out of the way?“. I kind of scramble up the side of the trail in the underbrush. The cattle shove by and somehow don’t step on me-and the two young people herding them give me a half smile as they pass. I feel like a little bit of an idiot.
It rains, and stops, and rains, and it gets colder. The clouds clear. I am in the alpine zone, and as I round a rocky corner, the mighty bulk of the Monviso is suddenly directly in front of me, its lofty head obscured in a cloud.
The Monviso.
It is a breathtaking site. I continue hiking and realize it is already 7 pm-and I am nearing Rifugio Quintino Sella, which seems quiet and serene in the evening light. It is a modern building, perched above a massive lake directly below Monviso. I decide to try and sleep in the rifugio because it is so cold. At least I’ll check and see if they have a bed available.
I open the door of the rifugio-and am immediately assaulted with the clamor of about 100 Italians, sitting at long wooden tables, crammed in together in their mountaineering clothes, drinking wine and waiting for dinner to be served. The ruckus is absolutely unbelievable and totally unapparent from outside. A wood stove stands in the center of the dining room and people are jostling elbows to warm themselves by it, while busy waiters dodge around each other with trays full of beers and wine. My eyes grow wide and I wander in like a dream. I have been in utter silence the entire day, except for my audiobook-in the cold and harsh rock. A hundred happy Italians chatter and visit, some people are singing, voices rise and fall.
Quintino Sella’s insane gear-drying room, complete with heaters.
I stand in line and am assured yes, they do have a bunk for me, and would I like soup or pasta and meat or vegetarian, and would I like a picnic for tomorrow?
“Are all of these people climbing the Monviso tomorrow?” I ask in disbelief.
“No, only maybe 25 or 30. The rest are just out trekking in the area”, the proprietor tells me.
She tells me to wait a little bit, that “the second dinner service is at 8:15.” I blink. There are 2 dinner services. This is only the first half of the diners. I cannot understand how they cram this many hikers and climbers into this mountain hut, but as the polite signs around the rifugio indicate, they do prefer that people stay here and not camp on the mountain, for ecological reasons, and I can see why-it is a Friday night in June with crappy weather, and this many people are here. Almost every other establishment I have visited so far has been almost empty-the Italian “outdoors” season is not in full swing yet. I can only imagine how many people are up here in August.
The woman who checked me in brings me hot vegetable soup and a glass of wine.
“Why you know about the Monviso? You are American,” she asks me in English.
She seems impressed. This cracks me up mildly. I explain about the GTA and that actually, I am not so prolific of a mountaineer to know about this beloved Italian fixture before coming here.
I eat soup, and hot potatoes and meat and vegetables, and custard. The food is spectacular. Rifugio Quintino Sella runs like a well-oiled machine-like the ticket counter at Grand Central Station, I think to myself. I lay down early in my little bunk. I hiked 12.1 miles today, gaining about 4000 feet.
I do not sleep particularly well in Quintino Sella, for predictable reasons- at 10:30 pm two hikers come into the bunk room, talking in normal voices, headlamps flashing around, to go to bed-and at 5 am people start to get up and move in preparation for the day. But, at least I didn’t have to sleep outside in the cold wind. I head out down the trail and notice the lake in two or so miles where Doing Miles camped-it is positively surrounded by day hikers-it is Saturday. That would have been not a fun place to camp around, even if technically legal.
The trail continues and I circumnavigate a large tarn-an alpine lake-which is pure aquamarine. I work my way around-now the clouds move over the sky-and the lake changes color-a flat piece of blue-green agate under the sky amongst the stone.
I pick my way down to Pian del Re, which I believe is the confluence of the waterways coming from the lakes that feed the Po River, Italy’s largest river. This is a massively popular area for day hikes, and all I hear is Italian. The apparent stereotype noted in Rother that “Italians aren’t exactly known for having a walking culture” is laughable on days like today-perhaps the meaning was thruhiking or multi-day walks. I still haven’t met a single American on this trail, or actually, in Italy, period.
I start up my first climb of the day towards Colletta della Geanna, now completely absorbed in the audiobook “Where the Crawdads Sing.” One magical thing about long hikes is that the decrease in external stimulation that we are all so used to in our modern lives results in music, audiobooks, and podcasts seeming really, really, REALLY interesting. Actually, this is true of books in any form-I remember 10 years ago, on the PCT, finding a tattered copy of the play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in a free box outside a library in a trail town in California and sitting spellbound alongside the trail a few days later, reading the entire thing twice. It’s kind of comforting that my brain can revert to this state if given a more healthy, natural environment.
I drop down again to Rifugio Barbara Lowrie and my then make my second climb of the day, now in the clouds and mist, up to the Colle Barant. It is silent, chilly, and creepy-although an optimistic sign on the door of the Rifugio Barant says “Aberto!”
As the sun moves towards setting, the clouds relent a little- waning sunlight slants in and out of the clouds, and I filter water from a little spring. I have talked to no one today, but I feel at peace-this is truly a beautiful trip.
Once again I walk almost into the night, my legs not feeling a natural “stopping time”-I descend through forest, and two deer bound gracefully away. I stop just before a large clearing and Rifugio Jervis-many voices outside indicate that it is well-populated on this Saturday night, and I do not particularly want a repeat of last night.
I set up my tent and make some delicious pasta with pesto from the little store in Pontechianale. I lay down and sleep deeply and dreamlessly. I hiked 17 miles today, with about 4500 feet gain.
I wake up, late, at 7:45. I pack up and make my way down towards Rifugio Jervis and then the descent along the beautiful Pellice River. Once again, it is Sunday-and Italians are out by the hundreds to day-hike; families, children; old people, teenagers.
The weather shifts around noon, which I am now accustomed to-all that perfect weather at the beginning must have been the Mediterranean climate-and I start to climb from Villanova up towards the Col Guilian, 4000 feet straight up. Suddenly absolutely all of the people are gone. There are cattle all around, and the area is pretty contaminated-I’m not in a great mood, sweating and breathing hard ascending through cow crap, back into the clouds. But around noon I receive a message from another hiker on my blog, telling me he is less than a day behind me. This is hopeful. I think to myself that Johannes, the German hiker going south, must have met him and told him I was just ahead-there are so few GTA hikers that this is noteworthy news. I have met maybe six people total, mostly older people from Germany or Austria, hiking the other direction doing weeklong sections. The GTA is hands-down one of the best signed and maintained trails I have EVER hiked-the GTA moniker is absolutely everywhere, and everyone I mention it to nods in understanding-but I have yet to meet an Italian hiking this trail. It’s possible that I am still early in the season and the more typical season is later in the summer.
I continue to muscle my way up towards the Pass, willing my calves and hamstrings to just forget about yesterday’s 17 miles-they aren’t convinced. They want rest. I sit and eat a little end of a sausage and two small packets of Nutella-the only snack food I have left-and they give me somewhat less of a hard time.
Breathing hard, I finally crest the pass-it is completely socked in, zero visibility. Rother suggests you run the ridge around some pretty alpine lakes and then take the ski chairlift down-but I doubt that is running today, considering the weather-and instead I just take the trail that immediately drops straight down.
After awhile the trail turns into a dirt road, and I pass a family clearly from a more populated area of Italy visiting their very old parents/grandparents, who have a tiny house right on this road and a farm. I feel a bit unsure-did I accidentally turn onto a private road? It feels as if I am walking right into their driveway. But in a moment I see that the road continues on past the house, and they are friendly, chatting with me in Italian, correctly guessing that I am American, and commenting in wonder on that fact that I am doing this alone.
It feels different here from the US when people comment on my being alone. Somehow, on my hikes in the USA and Canada, the “are you…alone?” question always seems to be accompanied by incredulity, doubt, even judgment-the tone and message feels like, “you shouldn’t be doing this. It’s dangerous. You’re a woman. There are BEARS out here, don’t you know that? Maybe you don’t? Maybe I should educate you?” I have sworn silently dozens of times after interactions like this, coming up with pithy retorts in my head for 30 minutes after the slighting comments as I hike on. But here in Italy, these comments always seem to be paired with being impressed-big smiles, eyes shining with admiration, compliments like “wow!! You’re brave!! Very strong.” I can’t account for why the difference exists. There are not more objective hazards in North America (except, I guess, grizzly bears), and these are definitely serious mountains. But I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.
I make my way down finally into Ghigo di Prali, a little ski town. I head in at the first hotel I see and the kind owner sets me up with a room. I head over to the bar/pizzeria next to the hotel, which is a really lovely little pub-and soon, the entire hotel staff that I have just met shows up. They sit at the bar opposite me. Small town. I head back to my room and go to bed, sleeping deeply in a bed instead of my pad. I hiked 13 miles today with about 4000 feet gain.
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