We met three Australians yesterday, two of whom are on a 6 week holiday. Apparently they’ve been doing this every other year, for years. They’ve been all over. For some reason they were quite impressed with us. They were great to talk with and we got on really well.
Our cramped dorm was completely full. Thankfully Zoë controlled a window so we didn’t overheat. We were up ahead of breakfast at 6:15 because we knew we’d have a long day, so we wanted to be out right after breakfast. Breakfast was incredibly disappointing. It was basically a drink (tea) and bread. That’s it. How the hell were we supposed to fuel for a big day with bread and jam?!
We set out, and I was a bit annoyed we paid €168 for Refugio Volpi al Mulaz with very lackluster food. The pasta course at dinner was quite good, but the main was super small. The panna cotta dessert was quite good. Breakfast was shit, as I said.
Today we had, on paper, something like 10.5 hours of hiking to do. We’d been doing every day to date at 75% of the original estimates, so in theory we should have plenty of time, but this day was still on the longer side so we prepared for a big one.
The first section was a 4 hour section to another Refugio, settled high up in the mountains. We had plenty of climbing with cables to aid our ascent before this refuge. These weren’t as fun as some of the others. The views continued to be fantastic however the trail quality really took a nosedive today. It wasn’t horrible, it just wasn’t great like we’d become accustomed to. That’s probably why it took us 3.5 hours to do the first 4 hour section. Somewhere in that first section, Zoë fell next to a cliff and her water bottle went sliding down the mountain along with one of her trekking poles. We were able to rescue her pole but the water was gone. We were down to just my water for the mean time.
At the first hut, we decided to skip snacks and press on. We passed a sign that said our hut for the day, Refugi Treviso, was only 4 hours away from here. If that were the case, we were in great shape. We descended from the hut at 11:00, which was the standard itinerary’s destination for the day. We were heading to tomorrow’s destination, combining two days into one. Some of the track we descended on was excellent, so perhaps we were back to great trail again.
We got hungry so we took a quick break in some shade to eat our packed lunches. Of course, the shade moved so I was quickly being blasted in the face by the sun. We continued after only 15 minutes.
Next, we arrived at a quite fun cable section. It was short, but more fun than what we’d had earlier in the day. The views, like every day of this hike, continued to impress. I thought there might be smoke in the distance today but I think it was a haze of low clouds. Later in the afternoon, it became obvious it was clouds as they moved in and blocked some of our views.
We reached another hut a little after 13:00 and decided to stop for a drink. Somehow, the signs here still indicated our destination was 4 hours away. We left at 13:30, thinking if we made up time, we’d still arrive with plenty of time before the mandatory 18:00 check in.
Well let me say, we didn’t make up any time. The trail wasn’t great, we had a heinous descent on shitty trail, and it just never got better. Also, we couldn’t find a water source for the life of us, so we continued fairly parched. Thankfully the weather was quite mild and the overcast sky made the crappy descent more bearable.
At the bottom of the 3,000 foot descent we came to a river. It was quite humid down here and despite the frigid water, I couldn’t resist a feral bath. It wasn’t quite deep enough to submerge myself so I sort of splashed myself and turned all over in an attempt to rinse the salty sweat from my body. After the river we had a short 30 minute climb to the Refugio, where we arrived at 17:30. Today took us like 9 hours of walking time, which was 90% of the estimate, rather than our normal 75%. Hopefully that doesn’t happen tomorrow, where we have nearly a 12 hour day. If so, we’ll surely be late for dinner.