Travel Notes: Val d'Aoste and Chamonix Hiking

Now we are settled again in Chamonix after 4 days hiking in Gran Paradiso National Park in Italy. We rented a car and drove under the Alps via Mont Blanc tunnel to our quarters in a renovated fortress in Valgrisensche, a hamlet of ancient stone buildings with slate roofs.

Vieux Quartier, our quarters in Valgrisenche

Valgrisenche, Italy

We happened to be just 50 meters from the cave where Fontina cheese is made. Given permission to enter, we just opened the door, and there we were all alone amongst thousands of ripening cheeses with the Fontina special pungent mold to be seen on the walls. Such a contrast to the Roquefort (which the French call "Noble Roquefort") cave we visited years ago in France, that was like a high security biolab where we could only see the cheese behind sealed glass barriers and had to be guided around.

Fontina factory

Usually on these steep trails one descends faster than ascent, but when a woman on the way down confirms that those are indeed wild raspberries and blueberries, it is another story altogether.

Wild Rasberries

We often try to hike to a Refugio where we can have polenta with cheese, croute de Savoie, wild sausage, and cake or tart for dessert with espresso. No freeze-dried tofu or Jamaican rice, like when backpacking in the Trinities. Our fellow hikers were often tough, aged Italians who put away enormous amounts of food.

Refugio Epee

The scenery is a delight: glaciers, waterfalls, green pastures and wild flowers under the gentle Italian sun.

Refugio Bezzi in distance

The trails are well marked and range from flat to strenuously steep. One day we hiked up to a summit over 9000 ft. (Col di la Finestre) from about 5000 ft. beginning. We were disappointed in not seeing Ibex at this altitude, as we had in our Tour de Mont Blanc.

Col di Finestra

We enjoyed a glass of wine on the way down with a man who invited us in to one of his summer homes.

We sometimes encountered the special, enormous milk cows of deep brownish black color, whose milk is turned into Fontina cheese.

One evening at dinner our Italian waiter proudly pulled out his iPhone to check a translation. He made a gesture indicating "very expensive" (like shaking water from his right hand) and told us he had donated 5 liters of blood all at once to pay for it. He said he was bianco e vertige and just still getting over it. I think it was really 5 pints at most.

Upon returning to Chamonix, our 3rd trip through the Mont Blanc tunnel, we were again struck with the gaiety and sophistication of the people, compared to the Italian country folk, and the stunning jagged granite, snow, and glaciers on this side of the Alps. The paragliders here are also a wonder, soaring like giant colored birds near the peaks.

On our last hiking day here we indeed took a hike of excess of 4000 ft up: from spruce to larch then above treeline to Plan de L'Aguille, where we had a memorable lunch with blueberry tart at a refuge (no wine for us, unlike the French), then probably 3 miles across the mountain to Montenver, overlooking the amazing Mer de Glace (Sea of Ice) glacier, and a ten minute ride down via a rack and pinion train to Chamonix.