Rifugio Garelli

The other morning we woke up before sunrise to head to the Southern Alps boarding Italy and France for a hike. The drive was beautiful. The sun looked like a huge orange ball of fire rising above the foggy hills and casting a warm golden hue across the landscape. I loved the way the fog looked rolling between the hills, it was a little eerie but luckily the sun soon burned that feeling away.

When we arrived in the mountains the sun was high above us, the fog had cleared, and the sky was bright blue. We first made our way along a flat gravel trail for about 20 minutes, and then reached a narrow dirt trail that was suddenly very, very steep.

We climbed up the steep trail through beautiful fairy tale forests for another 20 minutes until we reached a large clearing in the woods. From the clearing we could see a series of rugged rocky mountains, called the Marguarais, rising above.

After taking a break in the clearing we entered the most beautiful pine forest. It reminded me of the forests in British Columbia, with the tall pines rising straight up and forming a canopy roof high above.

We kept going up and up the steep trail for another 2 hours, I was exhausted by the end! Finally we reached another clearing where we could see the hut above us, the final stretch! This part of the hike is always the hardest I think, you know how much further you have to go because you can see the end, but it just seems SO far away, and all you can think about is how much you wish you could just take an escalator there instead of using your own legs!

In the picture below there is a shepherd’s house on the right and the hut is on the left, except it’s really hard to see the hut because it blends in with the mountains so well!

The view over the valley we climbed up was amazing.

The hut was incredible. It was obvious that the surrounding mountains inspired its design. Although it was closed for the day, the people there let us eat our lunch on the patio and brought us coffee. It felt so good to relax and enjoy the sun and the landscape after the steep climb!

Soon after we finished lunch thick grey clouds starting rolling in from out of nowhere. We decided it would be best to leave right away because we didn’t want to get caught in the rain. Luckily we made it down quickly so we didn’t have to worry.

One of the men working there (who had been kinda rude to Cristiano), had brought his horse up the trail. On our way back down, he passed us leading the horse down with him on a rope. It seemed so cruel because he was going so fast and the horse could barely keep his balance coming down the steep slope. When we were walking down the gravel road back to the car he passed us again. This time he was driving his car and the horse was running along side while he held a tethered rope through the driver-side window. Poor horse!!

One more hike under the belt!