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Journal: |
As I was walking up the road from the hotel after checking out,
the proprietress came running after me with my passport! The
Italians insist on you giving them your passport when you check in
at a hotel and, in this case, I had forgotten to ask for it back and
they had forgotten to give it back. Catastrophe averted!
At the previous hotel, when I had gone down to ask for it back they
had said it was in my pigeon hole. And there it was for
anybody to take as they walked past! Not a great system.
Anyway, in other respects my stay at the hotel had been fine
and, after a restful day yesterday, I was keen to begin hiking
again. There had been heavy thunderstorms and rain overnight
and the clouds looked a bit ominous, but it wasn't raining as I
began my 5km and 1200m ascent out of the valley. The path was
good and the ever-changing cloud formations in the valley and on the
surrounding mountains made for some spectacular scenery to keep my
interest as I plodded upwards. As usual, it started through
farmland, then through pine forest and then above the treeline.
Along the way, I passed some old fortifications and some poignant
descriptions of local soldiers who had died in battles there since
Napoleonic times. At the top of the climb I joined a busy
trail that more or less followed the bare and occasionally rocky
ridge-line eastwards. I think most of the people on the trail,
which was still climbing gently, had caught the cable car up to the
ridge and then were making the high alpine walk to Silianer Hutte
for lunch because, once I was past the Hutte, I pretty much had the
place to myself for the rest of the day, with the exception of a
group of four I passed sheltering under a rock overhang during the
thunderstorm that arrived along with some heavy rain and a biting
wind around noon. I got sufficiently cold in the rain to don
my long Goretex pants and thought about gloves but, after an hour,
it slowly cleared and the sun even made an appearance.
The
trail was sometimes easy and sometimes a steep rocky scramble as I
followed the ridge, which marked the Italian-Austrian border,
eastwards. There were old fortifications everywhere, mostly
built out of the local stone, indicating its troublesome history.
It can't have been much fun defending this ridge most times of the
year. Even in summer, at 2500m, it was icy in the wind.
I passed by Obstansersee Hutte at around 3pm and decided to keep
going to the next hut, Filmoor Standschutzen Hutte, which was
supposed to be 3 hours away. The wind had died down and,
despite having to climb some steep and rocky trail up to nearly
2800m, the late afternoon was pleasant hiking weather with excellent
views in all directions. I arrived at the Hutte (2350m) at
5:30pm and found it was the smallest place yet, manned by a group of
what seemed like university students from different countries.
It's all pretty basic, but is OK and there's only two other hikers
staying. I had a good dinner and then more thunderstorms
arrived. Hopefully, they'll be gone by tomorrow as I will be
high on the ridge again all day.
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