Civetta Circumnavigated

So Alleghe sits at the base of the Civetta Group, one of the monstrous sections of the Dolomites.  Of course, there are hiking trails, and beyond that, there's a network of rifugios, mountain hostels that allow one to link up huge hikes with no overnight gear save a bedsheet.  They have beds, food, and beer, also known as the holy trinity of surviving in the mountains.

We figured we'd spend some time in the rifs (short form), but also realized that we wouldn't have many days to while away hopping from rif to rif.  Furthermore, Civetta seemed manageable to blast around in a day, even though the books showed it as a 3-day hike.  Hahahahaha.  So we decided to do it as a day trip, assess the various rifs, and decide where we'd spend a night later on in the trip.

We are aided by a gondola ride from Alleghe up to the main network of trails higher up.  Waiting for the gondola to fire up also gives us a later start than we'd be accustomed to, and we are somewhat justified in feeling nervous for letting the sun get so high before setting off [foreshadowing!].  Fortunately, it is a banner day.  Party on!


Looking E from Civetta across what seemed like all of Italy

Trail distances are a little spotty 'round these parts; as best as I can put it together, this is a ~12-mile hike.  Our first waypoint is Rif Coldai, a scant hour or so into the hike.  We blow right through it and continue along the east side of Civetta.


Rifugio Coldai, perched cliffside

The trail along the east side has some exposed bits, but nothing too awful.  However, the going is a little slow nonetheless and when we finally make a right turn up Forcella delle Sasse, the sun is precariously far along its path.


Murphy surveys the E side of Civetta


Long slog (lookit Ethel!)

We top out the pass and get a view down into the basin of the same name: Van delle Sasse.  This is a throwback to a different era, geologic processes exposed for the inquisitive to marvel at.  The character and composition of the rock changes; water has washed chasms away, and visible in other areas are massive uplifts and folds.


Van delle Sasse...ridiculous

If not for the fact that we're the furthest away from home at this point, I'd be tempted to call it a day and while away the light exploring this basin.  It now ranks high on my list of special places.

Continuing on through the hot part of the day, we saddle up to a huge descent to the next rif right about the time we both run out of water.  It's been something like 6 hours since we've seen any, so we go into ultra-conservo mode and slowly start to overheat.  Thankfully, we cross a pristine stream about 10 minutes before we reach Rif Vazzoler, and I chug mountain water as though giardia is nothing more than a TV chef.


Mountain shrine at Vazzoler

Vazzoler is something of an oasis for us.  We load up on pastries, beer, and chocolate (and water) and move on with renewed spring in our step; we've got some ground left to cover!


Murphy makes friends

Continuing on towards Rif Tissi, we finally come around the west side of Civetta and are greeted by an in-your-face view of the rock walls that are barely visible from Alleghe.  This mountain is a monster, and the boulder battlefields we hurry through are an indication that the monster throws hissyfits every now and then.


Not your average trail view

It's apparent to me that Rif Tissi is where we should return to; it's perched at the top of a sharp knob with a commanding view of both the valley far below, but also the entire west wall of Civetta.  Noted and on we go; the sun ain't stoppin' for us.


Rad trail signs


Gimme my camera back!

It's now late enough in the day that we don't stand a chance of making it back to the gondola before its unfairly early closing time; this also presents us with a choice of return routes.  Instead of looping all the way back around to Rif Coldai and descending to the stopped gondola, we can exclude the ~500m section of trail between Lago di Coldai and the Rif and descend directly towards Alleghe on a trail marked "dificil."  Having the goal of making the gondola erased also gives us the opportunity for a dip in Coldai.


Lago di Coldai


Coldai reflecto

It turns out that the Italian version of "dificil" is to be taken a little more seriously than the American version; the piles of mountain goat carcasses should have been a clue.  Within about 100m of turning down this alternate trail, it becomes apparent that we're in for a wild ride.  We're actually descending a dry waterfall, lowering ourselves bodily down loose cliff faces.  My overwhelming sensation is "thank Faust it's not raining," and perhaps one of those words was different.


Peering down to Alleghe from the death trail

The bonus is that we get treated to a rather special view of the valley, and the light is RIDICULOUS.  I balance precariously to fire off a few photos, wondering if the rescue/recovery crews will know how to properly process RAW files.


Ka-blast!

On a later day, we get to observe this atrocious trail from a nearby peak; you know you're in for a treat when it looks scary from miles away...


The thin red line

We just barely avoid the official definition of an epic day by finishing minutes before we'd need headlamps.  The crew picks us up at a lower gondola station and delivers us graciously to the pizzeria.  Turns out our little 12-mile hike was more like 20, and the 11 hours we spent on the trail ensured that we'd be licking our wounds the next day.

Reeeeediculous hike, though!

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Marmolada

On one little day trip, we went a couple towns over to visit the top of Marmolada, the highest peak in the Dolomites.  Gloriously, there's a tram to the top.


Grab here

The tram has 3 sections; this is a big mountain at 3343m, just shy of 11,000ft.  This was also, I believe, the first time I've ridden a tram during the summertime.  Removing the anticipation of ripping turns on my snowboard gave me extra time to reflect on just what an engineering marvel it is to install a people-carrier in the side of a mountain...


Off it goes


Wheelhouse


View north to Piz Boe (3152m)

More impressive than the view from the top (stunning) is the character of the rock itself.  Billowing up in soft-looking marshmallow blocks from thousands of feet below, it adds to the grandeur in a way that's quite compelling.


Snowcat for scale


Snowcat detail

Late in August, the giant's glaciers still had snow that would be skiable in a pinch, but also turned the peak into a big icebox.  Pretty amazing the effect a big chunk of ice can have on the temperature up there during the summer.


Dirty snow

The structure at the top was also home to a shrine to Madonna, replete with photos of the Pope's visit etc.  Carved out of solid rock and insulated by ice, calling it chilly doesn't do it justice.


Grotta della Madonna


Murphy ignores the view for a reading break

Unfortunately, we had arrived a little late in the day and were in danger of missing the last tram down if we screwed around too much.  Woulda taken a while to walk down...


Long zipline down!

This post was actually a little bit out of order.  I've been avoiding writing the first hiking one from the Dolomites as it's a stitch more involved, and, frankly, I've been freakin' busy.  It's next though...

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Pirotecnico

Not too long after we got to Alleghe, Phil saw a sign announcing a fireworks display that night.  Motivated by wine, we dutifully hiked to the other side of the lake to get a nice view.


Alleghe

Posting up on a fence to hang out and chat while I camera geeked away, the assembled troops were just fine until one of them shined a headlamp under the fence and found it to be liberally populated with rather large spiders.  This rapidly changed their view of their seating choice, until they got tired of standing around.


Local color

Due to a misunderstanding of the sign announcing this annual celebration, we spent quite a bit of time waiting through a regatta of handmade boat-float-things made by nearby villages that were part of a big processional before the actual fireworks.  Oh well, such is life.











When it was done, we scurried back to town against a never-ending stream of revelers; we had picked the unpopular viewing spot and thus earned the ol' reverse commute.  Saw a fox trundling around, too, and that was cool.

Stay tuned for some mountain goodness!

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Alleghe

The time finally came to wrap up our stay in Chateauroux and move to the Dolomites.  Our group would be growing in Italy with the additions of Nenad and Phil, friends and cyclists from Reno, so we had secured a roomy apartment in the mountain village of Alleghe.

We gleefully ignored the length of the drive until the morning of, then had a minor panic when we realized it was a 7+ hour affair.  Oh well; time to get going!

We were already near the Italian border, so after navigating a good bit of tourist traffic near Briancon, we were cleared for takeoff on the autostrada.  Or so we thought.  Thanks to our access to stunning technology in this golden age of electronics, I'm able to bring you a transcript of the in-car dialogue during the first few kilometers of our autostrada journey:

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Oh look; what's that?  Oh, a toll booth?  That's cute.  It's 9 euro?!  Hmm.  Ok, well at least that's over.

[silence for a few minutes]

Um, what's that up ahead?  Is that another toll booth?  That's odd.  This one wants 12 euro???

[grumbling, followed by more silence]

That had BETTER not be another toll booth!

[frenzied screaming, unintelligible profanities]
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So, something like 70 euro later,  we crossed Italy, left the autostrada, and entered heavy traffic in the mountains.  We had the misfortune of traveling during the end of Italy's big summer holiday period, and the landscape was overrun with tourists (of which we were included), so it was slow going through tiny villages with 1.5-lane wide roads.

All was well, though, and we made Alleghe that evening.  Alleghe is located along a lake at the base of the Civetta Group of the Dolomites, a visually stunning sub-range (the Dolomites are spread across a fairly large region).  It's predominantly a winter resort town; our apartment was across the street from the ski resort's gondola.  However, it's busy during the summer, too - mountain biking and hiking abound.

Our location was about as central as it could possibly be.  A ~200m loop would take us on our daily path of bread, fruit, vegetable, and meat shopping, and we were steps away from an enoteca, a pizzeria, a gelateria, and several other -erias.  In other words...life is good.

Serving as our home base for the next 10 days, we rapidly got down to settling in to the easy life in Alleghe.  Brace thyselves, Faithful 7, as there will be a whole spate of posts from here, broken out logically by what we were getting up to.

Let's start with a quick wander around Alleghe as night sets in.  Sorry; it's not a comprehensive tour.  I did not have that in mind and just did the ADD thing for spots that caught my eye.  Besides, you'll be more interested to see the mountains etc.


Old firewood shack as day fades


Shack detail


Stone and wood


Town church, with ridiculously loud (and frequent) bells

One interesting quirk about Italy's mountain towns is that they take the concept of the siesta to staggering new heights.  With the exception of a couple cafes, the town pretty much entirely shut down from noon until 4 or 4:30.  Naptime!

Lots to come; stay tuned.

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Lac du Distroit

Well, sadly, this is the last post from France.  Not sadly, we've still got lots of ground to cover.

So on the day of the race, I decided that I didn't quite have the stomach to go spectate/cheer/cryintomybeer, so instead we did the out of sight out of mind thing and headed for the mountains in the Ecrins National Park above Chateauroux.  We picked a hike to an infrequently traveled lake called Lac du Distroit, and it ended up being a nearly empty trail, as well.  More room for us!

We had also dragged Ethel's mom along with us, who is not a regular hiker.  She did, however, keep plugging along, did the entire hike, and (I hope) enjoyed herself, even if she totally worn out the next day. This was certainly the longest and hardest day outside she's ever had, and she was a trooper.

Also, Ed and Beth had just arrived from New York, so it was an easy sell to get them up in the mountains to beat their jetlag.

 
Ed and Beth shiver together

We made a steep climb up a big cliff face before we topped out into a big lush meadow that also housed this little waterfall.  We wound our way through this meadow as the trail meandered from rockpile to creek and vice versa.  The trail finally started another big climb, and the horizon line began to suggest that we were nearly to the top.

Lone survivors above treeline

 
Midstream growth

As we neared the top of the last climb, it became apparent that this was cow country; we had passed some structures down below that didn't look too dilapidated, and then we happened upon the herd.  These high alpine cows were proof that California's "Happy Cows" campaign is a bunch of crap.

Surveying her kingdom (queendom?)

Contentment

Murphy gets all Zen

After playing with the cows for a bit, who were totally unbothered by our presence, we hiked the last few minutes to the lake.

Holy epic reflection

Thistle

Little blue guys

While still inviting and in a blissful setting, Lac du Distroit lacked some of the raw appeal of the High Sierra lakes.  We all swam, and life was good.


Lac du Distroit (click for -much- larger) [bonus points for whoever can find Beth...]

The hike back down was a little more relaxed as we were no longer worried about running out of daylight; we'd gotten kind of a late start after settling in to our habit of lazy mornings punctuated by baguettes and coffee.

Opportunity

Love the sharp ridgeline as it wraps around

Windswept grass

Beth made a new friend; a butterfly took up residence on the bill of her hat and stayed there for about 3 miles of the trip down.  Persistent little bugger!  Maybe he just wanted a free ride.

 
Stowaway

Stowaway, closer

As we approached the bottom, the day was starting to fade, and that presented a couple photo opportunities that weren't prime when we were on the way up, not to mention that I didn't want to be responsible for an early turnaround up top just to ensure that we'd make it back down before dark.

I name thee Vector Falls

Sunspout

Safely back to the trailhead with some day to spare, we lazily retreated back to the house and...big surprise...drank some wine and told stories.  We only had another day in France before a huge travel day to Italy, so this was our last big mission and one worth savoring.

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