Going up on Saturday, June 30th was strenuous, but ultimately doable. The weather in the valley was around 25 degrees Celsius, and mostly cloudy with occasional sunshine. However, following weeks of rain, the soils on the mountainside were completely soaked and boggy, making the trail difficult in the more exposed parts. The final hurdle was after coming up to the end of Val Punteglias.
The main valley (Val Punteglias) ends at 1900m altitude in a bowl rimmed by vertical cliff faces. To get to the cabin, you have to ascend another 400m of altitude. You have two options: either you climb the remaining 400m of altitude difference on a via ferrata, or you hike/scramble along the Eastern face.
I scrambled.
Unfortunately, since summer is not yet in full swing, the hike is partly snow covered. To get from ~1900m to about ~2100m, I had to ascend an extremely steep slope onto the remains of an avalanche. This part turned out to be doable in the end without crampons, but I got very exhausted from continuously having to ram the metal tips of my boots into the hard snow surface in order to create footholds. By the time I got to the top of the avalanche, I was so exhausted I started getting cramps. Beyond the avalanche, you have to cross a somewhat deep ravine (maybe called Val Uffiern? the topo map I had was not great with name placement), which is partly covered in snow and ice. The "official" path would have taken me across a collapsed snow bridge, so I had do find another way. In the end, I ended up dropping down 5m into the creek and climbing back up on the opposite side. After the ravine, you still have about 200m of altitude difference to cover, some of which is on chains and metal hoops that have been hammered into the rock. Despite requiring patience and balance, this part is not dangerous because unlike the avalanche bit, it's not that exposed. The worst part about this final climbing section is that most of the trail was crisscrossed with creeks, some of which were so swollen that they had basically become waterfalls and diverted themselves to flow along the trail instead of across it. Climbing on chains through an ice-cold waterfall when you're already tired and cold feels about as amazing as it sounds. Finally, you emerge onto a somewhat flat stretch at 2200m altitude, and from then on it's a 10-minute hike to the cabin. If you wish (I did), you can also continue from the cabin into the bowl of the former Punteglias glacier; however, that valley has no exit, except for an extremely technical climb up to 2811m through terrain that is very prone to rock slides.
The night between June 30th and June 31st was extremely stormy, and it rained 75mm in the span of a few hours. I was sleeping in the cabin so it did not immediately affect me. However, by Sunday morning the entire mountainside had turned into a gigantic mud slide (even more so than on Saturday). There was water flowing everywhere, including out of rock crevices I had never suspect could spring water. I did the scramble down in reverse, except this time there was so much water that I gave up the pretense of trying to stay dry and just went for it. Indeed, I got fully soaked while climbing down through what had become effectively raging waterfalls, but surprisingly the contents of my backpack stayed mostly dry.
All in all, this was an enjoyable experience (believe it or not), but not for the faint of heart. My advice would be to wait until the end of July for the soil to dry out and for the waterfalls to disappear, especially if you want to hike instead of climbing the final 400m.
29 июн 2024
