A mountain trip in Adamello Alps (Italy), 25-31 August 2018
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Day one: the approach. The Malga Niscli bothy.
We left the car in a large free car park in the Borzago valley (we drove through the Borzago village, but it is probably possible to drive through the Pelugo village, there is a bridge across the river). We repacked, had some lunch, and went out. The rain started just before we finished eating, and did not stop until the morning. We spent the night in the Niscli bothy, this is a nice little hut with a bunk bed for ca. 6 people. The chances of the bothy being occupied are low, there are not many people around. Similarly, the availability of the parking space is almost guaranteed. We could have stayed in the tents, the rain was not a problem, but a sleepover in the bothy was very nice and romantic, we played the guitar and had some songs, and even lit fire in the stove (but there was too much smoke).
The red line shows our track. The arrow shows direction of travel, the "P" icon shows the car park, and the house icon shows Malga Niscli bothy. Shift-click on the track link will open it in nakarte.me.
Lunch at the car park. It was only after the lunch when we realised that instead of the Adamello map bought in advance of the trip, we packed the map of... Dolomites! We had two Tabacco maps at home, they looked almost identical and we managed to pack a wrong one! After some consideration, we decided that this was no problem. We had three fully charged smartphones with the navigation programme and each had the scanned and calibrated Tabacco map. In addition, we had a copy of the online Kompass map on each phone. We had a GPS with the waypoints, and plenty of power banks. We also had a printed map of the region (not very detailed...) and Igor also took a black and white printed copy of the online Kompass map. We thought this was enough.
The rain was replaced by showers and then it rained again. We were climbing up on a well marked path, but the visibility was poor.
The Malga Niscli bothy suddenly appeared out of the fog. It was very nice to stay under a roof when it started pouring outside!
Yasha's birthday was just a couple of days ago, so we made him a birthday cake.
Day two. Passo Altar and Passo della Pozzoni. Vedretto di Lares.
We had a late start, because some of us had an early morning flight and had no sleep at all before the trip. The plan was to climb straight up from the Malga Niscli bothy to Passo della Pozzoni, but the climb on large boulders covered by wet plants would have been slow. We decided to take a detour on a marked path via Passo Altar. The path is very nice, well marked, with no technical difficulties. The descent onto the glacier Vedretto di Lares was not straightforward. From the low point on the ridge we traversed south-south-west on some slabs and then went down on a steep scree. We could have instead climbed north on the ridge and then descended on a scree but the initial part of the descent would have been steep and possibly rocky. Our descent was in the line of rockfall but we did not see any falling rocks except for the ones we dislodged ourselves. The Lares glacier was dry (i.e., no snow cover), fairly flat, with very few crevasses.
The red line shows our track. The arrows shows direction of travel, and the tent icon shows our camping spot. Shift-click on the track link will open it in nakarte.me.
The bothy in the morning was much more picturesque than yesterday evening. Judging by the untrampled plants, not many people visit the bothy.
The fog is rising from the valley. The grass is sparkling in the sun after yesterday's rain.
Everything's packed, we are ready to get going.
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The bothy is quite compact: a table with two benches, some shelves and a ladder for the bunk beds. Three people slept on the top level, and the rest on the floor. There was more space at the top level but the planks creaked and bended under the load so we decided not to risk it. |
The bothy is difficult to spot from the distance. It is panelled with local stone on the outside. Our route goes under the rocks which can be seen above the bothy. |
Monte Care Alto. The rain that we had yesterday and overnight, came down as snow higher up and covered the peaks. It stayed on the glaciers for a long time, so our glaciers on the second-forth days were peppered with patches of fresh snow creating amazing landscape.
We are going up towards Passo Altar chased by the clouds.
A view from Passo Altar towardfs the Siniciaga valley. The mountains in the distance are the Brenta Group, they resemble the Dolomites.
These layered peaks are also peppered with fresh snow.
Passo Altar, the first pass of the trip. Here we saw first remains of the World War One fortifications. Italian army fought Austro-Hungarian troops on these mouintains in 1915-1918. Later, we saw many artefacts left from this war, pretty much on every pass. We also saw rolls of barbed wire and shells on the glaciers.
Looking back on Passo Altar. It's a gap between two steep rocks. The path then traverses the slope under the rocks.
The path followed the rocks, climbing up and going down. The views were great but going up and down soon became tiring.
To be or not to be, that is the question...
The clouds were floating all around us, revealing a beautiful view of the valley we started from in the morning.
The last green patches, there are only rocks and boulders higher up.
The rocks are very good and solid, it is easy to scramble up.
The pass is peppered with snow patches. It is hard to say where the pass actually was, as the visibility was quite poor.
Large rock slabs.
A cairn is decorated with barbed wire. There was a lot of barbed wire and bits of metal left from World War One. The fighting between Italy and Austria in the mountains is called "The White War". It is quite hard to find information about this war on the internet in English. Here is a link to a video (in Italian) and an article in National Geographic (in English).
At the Passo della Pozzoni.
Short-lived graffiti.
The weather improved, and the clouds started dispersing. We continued our journey towards Vedretta di Lares.
This lake is called Busa del Morto, its shape resembles a heart.
This is a good viewpoint, the whole glacier is visible. We are looking at the tomorrow's pass.
We traversed the slope on rocky slabs and then descended a steep scree to the glacier.
The wet snow was slippery but we wanted to leave the area of rockfall danger before putting on crampons.
Our journey for the rest of this day is shown as a blue line on the panorama above. The unsuccessful attempt the following day to climb Passo do Cavento from the lake is shown with a red line, and the presumably correct way is shown with a red dotted line. In the end, we reached the pass by going around the rocks on the glacier as shown with a green line.
The unexploded shells were everywhere including the glacier. As the glaciers melt and flow, the shells probably migrate to the surface.
A roll of unused barbed wire. We saw lines of barbed wire and some wooden planks on the glacier. They probably slowly move down the valley with the glacier, the fortifications were probably much higher hundred years ago.
The glacier looks like it has been raked with a giant rake.
Walking on a flat glacier in crampons is a lot faster and nicer than descending a steep scree.
A "mushroom" on the glacier.
Patches of fresh snow on the glacier.
The glacier ends with a lake with floating icebergs. This resembles Icelanding ice lagoon Jökulsárlón.
The water in the like is not quite as clean as in Iceland but the icebergs are very similar. The features at the front (to the right of the glacier) are probably rocks rather than pieces of ice.
Sunset. We crossed the glacier and pitched our tents on a flat grassy patch. This spot was very nice albeit somewhat wet. We even dug some channels around one of the tents, in a bid to make it a bit drier.
