Ups and downs…

The week started with an invasion of thumbtacks that drove us out of our riverbed. Luckily, the Dolomites are still as wonderful as ever and we spent two days there among spectacular mountains. Bad weather pushed us south, but to end the week on a high note, we are back above 1.700m…

It may seem exaggerated, but such a large riverbed, with such an expanse of white gravel and the different turquoise meanders of the river from place to place, is quite an impressive landscape and… quite photogenic…

Invasion… (22/09/2024)

You have to imagine a setting like in those American movies like “A River Runs Through It” or “Into the Wild”… A huge expanse of white gravel (and by huge, we mean square kilometres…) crossed by a series of meanders of clear turquoise waters and, from time to time, some bushes that have grown there and have resisted the most recent floods. It is a bit like a desert landscape where the sand would have been replaced by white pebbles. You have to imagine this huge, almost flat expanse, in the middle of gigantic mountains with vertical walls and approaching 2.000 m of altitude (when the river is only at 300 or 400 m). It was in this grandiose setting that we spent the last two days, taking the same photos over and over again, fascinated as we were by the landscape at every moment…

The only problem was that we apparently weren’t the only ones who liked the place… Slowly, as the sun began to warm things up a bit, we saw a green thumbtack appear, then another, then another. Very quickly, they figured out how to get around Marvin’s mosquito screens to get in. No matter how much we were throwing them out, they seemed to come back in ever greater numbers, so we resigned ourselves to playing exterminators until finally, as night fell, they couldn’t fly anymore and we were finally at peace.

We would have loved to stay one more day in our river, but the prospect of having to spend one more day killing bugs didn’t appeal to us too much, so we resigned ourselves to leaving… And to make up for it we decided to make a detour through the Dolomites, since it would have been a shame to pass below (as originally planned) without enjoying these equally grandiose landscapes once more. We will therefore make an additional stop not far from Cortina d’Ampezzo and tomorrow we will take the opportunity to walk to Lake Sorapis, before resuming our initial route. After all, there is no emergency forcing us to arrive faster… 😜

Turquoise blue (23/09/2024)

A short walk along the path leading to the Faloria refuge last night, before nightfall. We found a magnificent viewing point over the Cortina valley, with the Cinque Torri massif in the background and just a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds and enveloping the mountains. Obviously, without clouds, the view must be even more spectacular, but even with this stormy skies, it was as if each massif revealed itself according to the clouds more or less clinging to the peaks. And on the way down, to round it off, we came across a roe deer that, far from being frightened, continued eating calmly while watching us pass by… A perfect walk!…

In the morning, we got up a little earlier than usual to enjoy the sun (storms were expected in the afternoon) while hiking to Lake Sorapis, located just behind the mountain at the foot of which we were settled. Lake Sorapis is a small, pretty glacial lake with turquoise waters, nestled in a cirque with characteristic Dolomite needles. A picture-perfect landscape just 6 or 7 km on foot from the Paso de Tre Croci. The path is quite accessible, although two or three sections are steeper or more vertiginous and are equipped with stairs or steel cables. However, one has to believe that walking on a 2 m wide ledge with 500 m of emptiness below is not enough to limit the influx of visitors to the lake…

The media have been talking a lot about the problem of overtourism this summer, with the cases of Barcelona, ​​Venice and others, and it is enough to take a few steps along the path that leads to Lake Sorapis to see a direct effect of this overcrowding on ecosystems: the stones on the path are literally worn away by the number of people who trample them, like the steps of these ancient churches whose stone is sunken in their centre by the passage of pilgrims over the centuries. The direct consequence is that these stones become so slippery that with the humidity, in some places, one has the impression of walking on ice. And all this without mentioning, obviously, the dozens of people crowded around the lake so that everyone can take their selfie in front of the Sorapis needle (nicknamed the “Finger of God”, for the little anecdote)… Sorapis is one of those places, like many others in the Dolomites or elsewhere, where overtourism can be felt, and sometimes even smelled (without wanting to go into details, some people seem to think that if wild animals do their business in the wild, they can do it too, even if there are toilets available at the refuge located 2 minutes from the lake…).

The truth is that Lake Sorapis is a particularly beautiful place and, despite these aspects of overcrowding, the hike is definitely worth it. So we can only join the many mountain guides in the Dolomites who, on the official blog of the House of Guides, warn of the consequences of overtourism in their region and the dangers that the incivility of many will end up generating for everyone. We have been repeating it since the beginning of our journey: a fundamental principle for us is to leave no trace of our passage, anywhere. It is a good start, but environmental awareness (or more simply, civility) is not limited to that, far from it!…

First snow (24/09/2024)

The weather forecast was right once again. The sun from yesterday morning disappeared in the afternoon and we barely had time to take another (short) walk in the forest, right behind Marvin, before the first drops of rain appeared. And since everything was calm and cool before the rain, we were able to see one more roe deer in the forest, quite close, not more scared than the one from the day before (maybe it was the same one… 🤔).

And then came the rain. It rained quite heavily throughout the night, even with one or two claps of thunder at one point. The temperature dropped to 4°C and, the next morning, the spectacle of the surrounding mountains was even more dazzling under the timid sunshine that returned for an hour or two. The overnight rain was snow a little higher up and left the peaks covered in a fine white layer. Wherever we looked, everything looked even more beautiful than the day before!

But after two days in the same place, we had to continue our journey a little, so we went back down the valley, just above Belluno. We settled, once more, in the bed of a river, this time the Piave, which flows into the Adriatic just next to Venice. The place is less spectacular than Amaro, and the mountains of the Prealps are less rocky and snowy than those of the Dolomites, but… we are not going to complain. We have been in much worse places! 😜

They were also forecasting storms for that afternoon, so… it was better to be in a more wooded spot, further away from the water, like this one, than in a more exposed one, directly on the gravel. Just with the rains of the previous day, the color of the water had already changed from turquoise to brown, and the river flow had increased a lot…

The sound of cowbells (25/09/2024)

Despite the rain the night before, the Piave had more or less regained its turquoise colour that morning, when we got back on the road to climb back up towards the alpine meadows. We followed the heavily industrialised Belluno valley to arrive right at the border between the Veneto and Trento regions, and in the last 15km of that day’s journey, went from 300 to 1.500 metres in altitude!

We settled in front of Fort Leone, an imposing, largely underground, armoured military complex built between 1906 and 1912. It was the most powerful element of the Brenta-Cismon fortification line, built at that time by the Italians (allies of Napoleon III) to protect themselves from the Austrians. The fort is currently being restored (apparently for quite a few years now), and it is forbidden to enter due to the risk of collapse, but what interested us most about this place was not really the fort itself but the 360º view that the large meadow located just in front offers of the surrounding mountains (we hope that the clouds will clear up a bit so we can enjoy it).

But when we got there, we were not alone. Our meadow was occupied by a small herd of cows, some horses and… a donkey. And since we already had the experience of sheep (with horns) rubbing themselves against Marvin’s bumpers in the middle of the night during our crossing of the Pyrenees, we decided to put some order in all that. We surrounded Marvin with a ACSZ (Anti-Cow Security Zone) and… everyone in their own home! 😜

Well, the only thing we hadn’t anticipated was that the shepherd would pass by and take his herd to the other side of the mountain. After this, our safety zone seemed a bit ridiculous… 🤣

Storm alert (26/09/2024)

After Boris, we thought we would be more or less ok… Of course, at the end of September one cannot expect to get as many sunny days as in July, but between this and having to endure storm after storm, with hardly any respite in between…

Last night a new alert from the Italian weather service arrived on our phones, and this one was a bit scary… Very heavy rain was expected throughout the Alps over the next 24 to 48 hours, with accumulations that could cause damages with the ground already saturated by the previous rains. Bad luck, it is precisely through the Alps that goes our route, and when we saw the forecast for that night and the next day we thought that perhaps it would be better to go down a little to the south and let the storm pass…

So we are north of Verona, in the area of ​​the Valpolicella vineyards, which produce the wine of the same name and the largest number of denominazioni di origine controllata in all of Italy (after the Chianti region). We’re not going to lie, although the region must be nice with some sunshine, right now, with a sky so low that one could think this is Belgium (if it weren’t for the hills of the vineyards) and a totally obscured horizon that prevents us from seeing the slightest undulation of the Alps (even though they are very close), we were there more by default than by choice. It was expected that there would be some rain here too, but much less than a little further north.

So we will wait patiently for the storm to pass and will then get back to the mountains to resume our journey…

A little bit of height… (27/09/2024)

Although the place was not the prettiest or the quietest we have ever been to (despite the beautiful view of Verona at night), it seems that the idea of ​​spending a night further south was quite inspired. It must have rained a lot in the mountains, judging by the state of the roads in the Madonna di Campiglio valley and, above all, by the flow of the rivers we crossed on the way, all full to the brim. In the vineyards of Lake Garda it rained a little, but nothing exceptional, and by early morning the sun had returned, between two or three clouds a little more stubborn than the others…

So we got back on the road, crossed Verona and skirted Lake Garda through the south (we had already seen it when we came to Verona and the Dolomites, the first time), and went back up the Madonna di Campiglio valley to skirt another lake, Idro, after passing through miles and miles of tunnels (the GPS even gave up on us after the second tunnel and refused to recalculate the route! 😁). Idro is a nice little lake with a more mountainous feel than Lake Garda, a bit like Como, but without all the villas…

Our goal for the day was to reach Passo Maniva, a mountain pass at 1.730m known for its small ski resort (Maniva Ski) and its 40 km of slopes and 9 lifts, and for an old tropospheric radar that NATO had installed very close to where we are, and which is now abandoned… Here we will spend the weekend overlooking the valley, since during the night the last clouds should disappear and tomorrow we should have a slightly clearer view.

Back to Blog

On one side of the mountain, like on the other, LEAVE NO TRACE!

– Always travel on public ways and respect the signs.
– Limit noise and interfere as little as possible with wildlife.
– Respect the other users.
– Leave rocks, plants and other natural features as you found them and respect historic sites.
– Take your waste with you and throw it into the appropriate containers, in the nearest village.
– Do not camp inside protected areas and do not make any fires.