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Rifugio Tuckett e Sella |
September 20, 2014
As usual, the weather prediction wasn't very accurate. Dave and I would much rather do this walk two days from now when the skies are projected to be clear; but the requisite ski lift closes for the season tomorrow, and it doesn't seem like a good strategy to gamble everything on tomorrow's weather.
From our hotel, it's a one-mile walk to the Groste gondola lift —
all uphill.
Our room
The main square in Madonna di Campiglio
Someone lost at Monopoly
We'll be riding together today
This is the longest lift run in my experience — more than twenty minutes altogether. When the first cable runs out, our car is shunted over onto a second cable, and off we go again.
Life at the top
The top-of-the-world feeling always is great, but the views are obscured.
It is non-stop talus-hopping up here
This is not why I came to Italy
Still no good views
Will the clouds finally rise and give us a chance? Recent experience says no.
Up close, the landscape is as fascinating as ever
This view is pretty nice
Garden Sorrel
Not an arch — just a huge boulder ready to fall
Rifugio Tuckett is a most welcome sight
After getting our usual drink in the warm confines of the building, we overhear the waiter saying something about "bean soup". That sounds too good to pass up under the circumstances; so we each have a bowl with a big dunking roll, and it is delicious.
The extra time spent on eating does not work in our favor
weather-wise, not that it would have mattered; this area
is totally socked in now. Dave and I are compelled to don
our raingear and head out with a visibility of about a hundred feet.
Abandoning any idea of completing the big loop over to Rifugio ai Brentei, we find the shortest route off the mountain. Stopping only at Rifugio Casinei along the way for another refresher, Dave and I descend fully 3,100 feet back to a parking lot, during which time I take no photographs whatever; and I don't like that at all. At the bottom we are safe and sound, yet rather grouchy. There is no bus service to this point, either.
But then ...
An almost magical transformation takes place in the nature of our day. The rain has stopped, we no longer are in the clouds, and I can get out my camera again. A signpost indicates that our hotel is about an hour away by foot; but the map shows a couple of waterfalls nearby, so we head that way instead.
Nothing special here...
...so we keep going
That's more like it
Continuing downhill, we find a spur to a rifugio that is closed for the season. From its deck is a view of something so beautiful that it literally reduces me to tears:
Cascate di Mezzo — the prettiest place in Italy? ⇔
Doubtless, some of those tears have resulted from the fact that something good has happened today; but I have plenty to spare in any case.
That rock strata almost looks man-made
The map show another cascade nearby; so we keep going, leaving the trail a couple of times to check out this exciting stream.
Another spur route leads to the mapped attraction:
Cascate Basso
At the next junction the signs don't say what we were expecting; in fact, one of them says that town is three miles back the way we came. Well, by now we have descended yet another thousand feet, and we are not about to retrace that road back to the parking lot.
We elect to compromise by backtracking about a quarter of a mile to an unsigned path that seems to head in the generally desired direction. Secure in the knowledge that there is a highway on both sides of us somewhere, we forge ahead, knowing exactly where we are not.
This should get us somewhere
Because our destination is at the elevation high-point of the walk, we are compelled to make up that extra thousand feet after all. Just before sundown, civilization appears. It starts to rain again just as we reach the hotel door.
Home, Sweet Home
§: Although the mountain portion of this adventure was disappointing,
the second half made up for it, and I have upgraded the ranking accordingly.
In retrospect, I had a good day — not the itinerary of my dreams,
but pleasantly memorable nonetheless. And we did it our way.
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