Walking in the Alps. Kev ReynoldsЧитать онлайн книгу.
the Nivolet plateau at the extreme south-west end of the valley, and Rifugio Chabod and the ever busy Vittorio Emanuel rifugio on the east flank below the glaciers of the Gran Paradiso.
Not surprisingly this is one of the busiest of all valleys in the national park, but since there are no cableways or other forms of mechanical aid, the only way to see the best on offer is to leave the road and take to the footpaths, a number of which date back to the days of King Vittorio Emanuel II who kept a good part of the valley as a hunting reserve, and many of whose mule-trails remain to this day.
The Chabod & Vittorio Emanuel huts
Once again walkers’ passes on both flanks of the valley provide opportunities to move from one side of the walling ridges to the next, but there are also some fine walks to be achieved at mid-height along the steep hillsides. Probably the very best is that which links the Chabod and Vittorio Emanuel huts. It leads through some rough country, with rocks and boulders and glacial slabs, and with the tongues of glaciers hanging just above, their streams dashing down in long ribbons. Ibex can often be spied from this trail, and in early summer alpine flowers add much to the walk. The Chabod hut is reached in two and a half hours from the road by a fine walk through larchwoods and a green upper corrie backed by the Herbetet–Gran Paradiso ridge, followed by a more stony landscape with a final pull up a spur that provides a magnificent viewpoint. Above the hut a path climbs to the Col Gran Neyron below the Herbetet – this has a via ferrata descent before linking with another trail to cross Col Lauson into the Valnontey. The route to Rifugio Vittorio Emanuel, however, breaks away from the Chabod path below the hut and makes a roughly south-bound traverse, remaining about 800 metres or more above the valley.
The most popular route for climbers on the Gran Paradiso begins at the Vittorio Emanuel hut, and this voie normale follows more or less the route taken by the team that made the first ascent in 1860 (J. J. Cowell and W. Dundas, with the Chamonix guides, Michel Payot and Jean Tairraz). The hut itself is an incongruous building once described as ‘reminiscent of an aircraft hangar with its ugly aluminium roof’. Janet Adam Smith called it ‘a gigantic aluminium dog-kennel stridently out of keeping with the setting of pasture, rock and snow.’ With a guardian in residence between late April and the end of September, it can sleep almost 150, while the old hut nearby can take another 40. In 1924 Dorothy Pilley and her husband, I. A. Richards, spent a night there prior to making an ascent of Gran Paradiso, but they were not happy with what they found on arrival: ‘The hut ... was a disgrace to humanity’, she wrote. ‘Only the most confirmed of Alpine Romanticism could overlook the polluted state of the environs. A slope of garbage tippings fell from the doorstep into a rancid little lake ... With all nature in their favour, with sun and wind and water to keep the site clean, it is sad that people should mark their presence with filth and stench.’ (Climbing Days) A decade later and Janet Adam Smith also complained of a dump of tins and rubbish, but happily the hut and its surroundings were soon improved, for in 1939 R. L. G. Irving was able to describe it as ‘a delectable place’. Irving of course was an Alpine romantic, but he was not blind to the squalor created by men in the mountains. Yet the Vittorio Emanuel clearly charmed him. This is what he says about it in The Alps.
Rifugio Vittorio Emanuel is backed by the highest peaks of the Gran Paradiso region
This hut is perfectly situated at the upper end of the pastures, above the Moncorvé Glacier. [The glacier has since shrunk considerably, and now lies some way above the hut.] Here the chuckling of hens and the tinkling of cow-bells remind one pleasantly of food which has never been inside a rucksack; across the glacier are four peaks, of which the two furthest to the right are irresistably attractive, one, the Becca di Monciair from the loveliness of its form, the other, the Punta di Broglio because it makes one long to find out if its highest point is accessible at all.
Both these huts are busily occupied in summer, and the paths to them will invariably be heavily trodden when the weather is fine. But despite this popularity they must be recommended on account of the full glory of the mountains in view. To spend time in the Gran Paradiso National Park and to see some of the finest scenery it has to offer, one must put solitude aside for a while and absorb the delights of nature so generously displayed.
Valle di Cogne
‘There is no place which more persuasively calls back the visitor who wants what the Alps themselves have to offer, rather than what has been imported into them by modern life,’ wrote Irving about Cogne before the Second World War. Lately Cogne has absorbed some of what he called ‘modern life’, yet it remains a very modest and attractive resort by comparison with many in the Western Alps; a true mountain village, not a mongrel or hybrid.
The Valle di Cogne is a long valley at the very eastern end of the national park, curving in an exaggerated sweep to the south-east and carrying the park’s boundary with it. Cogne is the only place of any size, and located at the widest part of the valley, ‘in a fair open basin of meadows with the Paradis gleaming occasionally out of a chaos of cloud’, and with the tributary glen of Valnontey draining from the south-west. Looking along the full length of this glen from Cogne, one sees the central block of an amphitheatre of ice-bound peaks cleft by the Col de Grand Crou, ‘a real depression approached by a glacier that does not let you forget its hidden depths and confronts you at the end with a wall which you prefer to be decorated in snow white rather than ice blue.’
This amphitheatre, or cirque, is a wildly impressive piece of mountain architecture on a par with the Cirque de Gavarnie in the Pyrenees, the skyline in places some 2000 metres above the valley floor, and with a tremendous frozen cascade of an icefall held in suspension from the Gran Paradiso’s lofty ridge. Seen from the valley floor it’s an astonishing sight. But better still there’s a trail that runs along the midriff of the western mountainside, from which one gains an even better perspective. That trail begins at another of the hunter king’s former lodges, the Rifugio Vittorio Sella.
Named after the distinguished mountain photographer and founder of the Italian Alpine Club, the Sella hut is easily reached in a little over two hours from Valnontey village. Just above the hut the largest herd of ibex in all the Alps may be seen during the early morning and evening, but at almost any time of day small groups or individuals may be spied grazing on the nearby hillsides.
The path which provides the fine view of the Valnontey cirque mentioned above, strikes away from the Sella refuge and heads roughly southward along a shelf of pasture containing a small tarn or two, then over boulder slopes before narrowing as a tight and occasionally exposed ledge, high above the valley. After digging into a knuckle indent, the way then rises to a high point about 15 minutes above l’Herbetet (two hours from Rifugio Sella). It is from this high point that the classic view is enjoyed. It is, quite simply, one of the great Alpine views; an astonishing collection of hanging glaciers whose numerous torrents fall in ribbon cascades down the walls of the cirque just to the south. A similar view, but from a slightly different perspective, may be enjoyed from Alpe Money (pronounced Monay) on the opposite side of the valley. This pasture shelf, it has been said, provides a most satisfying point from which to contemplate the whole ridge from the Grivola to Gran Paradiso, while at the same time giving a climber sufficient excuse to spend a week’s holiday based there without exhausting the range of routes available.
The village of Valnontey makes a good valley base for explorations in this glen. There’s a huge car park that is almost empty overnight, a foodstore, small hotels and a couple of campsites, and at the foot of the trail to Rifugio Sella, an alpine garden with some 1500 plant species, worth an hour of anyone’s time to visit.
Above the barrack-like Sella hut a one-time mule-trail heads up to Col Lauson (3296m) for a connection with Val Savarenche. Another climbs behind the hut to Col di Vermia, while a third leads to Col della Rossa (3195m) for yet more incredible views, this time including some of the giants of the Pennine Alps beyond the deep and sunny Valle d’Aosta.
Flowing parallel to, and east of, Valnontey is another tributary of the Valle di Cogne. With Lillaz at its entrance, Valle di Valeille is wild and uninhabited, as is the glen to the east of that, Vallone di Bardoney; the two connected by a walker’s route over Col dell’Arolla, and by another