Sunday, August 17, 2008

Bocchel del Cane

This weekend's hike started at San Giuseppe near Chiareggio in Valmalenco. The day before there were thunderstorms, leaving a dusting of snow on the mountain tops. It was also pretty chilly that morning.


The first part was up the mountain on a wooded trail until we reached this pretty lake, lago Lagazzuolo.


Above the lake was the way towards the Bocchel del Cane pass.


But first we had a river to pass, which happens pretty often on all our hikes. It really helps to have waterproof boots and the trekking poles to help keep your balance.


The view looking up as we started the ascent. The trail is pretty rocky.


The view looking down was not bad at all.


It's a great feeling to finally get to the top of the pass and look over to the other side. We took a quick breather and admired the view of the mountains and the lago di Pirola.


Then we started to make our way down on the other side. Turns out the trail passed through a bunch of huge rocks.


The 'trail' wasn't that well defined at all. It seemed like the red-white trail signs were just painted on some random rocks and it was up to you to just go at it. It took me a while to get past those rocks, using my hands and sliding on my butt quite a bit.


At one point I looked back and saw this sign. Not sure where to go? It's up! I was glad we were already on our way down.


Luckily it was time for lunch. We found a nice flat rock with a nice view.


Our panini tasted really good.


After a quick rest we continued on the trail back down to Chiareggio.


The trail we took was pretty interesting. It passed through a number of small streams and waterfalls. At one point, we had to climb down a small waterfall holding on to a metal rope attached to the rocks.

When we arrived at Chiareggio, it was still another 6 kms (3.7 miles) to the car. It was a rather boring walk along the river but along the way we found bushes and bushes of wild raspberries. It was fun eating straight from the bush.


We ended the day with a stop at a gelateria in Sondrio for some gelato. We earned it!

3 comments:

shiva said...

hehe the panini pics are becoming a staple of ur hiking posts :)

The color of the lake at the bottom looks amazing! After seeing that I'd just wanna take a dip in that instead of hiking haha. How deep do you think it is? What gives it that color?

lsheryl said...

Haha... it's pretty fun taking the panino shot. Notice it's always the same bread and proscuitto filling? It's almost like it's the same one making the rounds. ;-)

I think it's that color because it's from snow melt and the blue sky? Not sure... It's pretty chilly at that altitude though, so not sure about the swimming.

shiva said...

chilly..but it looks so pweety! It can't be THAT cold :)

Yeah noticewd that it looks the same in each shot haha.What exactly is proscuitto? I gotta google it..tomorrow...too tired haha..was about to log off when I came to see if you had any new posts.

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