Gran Paradiso! Coincidentally or not, when we were searching where to travel for our honeymoon six years ago, somehow this location caught our eye and the decision was made after looking at just a few pictures 😁. Ok, someone will say: “Who travels on a honeymoon to the central Alps, instead of to the tropical islands and some distant destinations?!” Obviously, us 😂. From our hot summer to the heights in the Alps: glaciers and cold winds, endless peaks, Mont Blanc, Chamonix, Matterhorn, Gran Paradiso…can’t get any better!
I remember those days, we came completely unprepared for something big – and not because we had a big wedding and hard preparations (quite the opposite), but because we started with these life obligations that await each of us sooner or later. It would be correct to say that we should not have gone to the mountains at all, what our physical form was. But this was not a matter of rational choice anyway, it was not chosen by the common sense, it was a true passion 😍. And so, after a 9-hour drive (with a couple of short stops), we checked into the nice Gran Paradiso hotel in the Valsavarenche valley, or better to say, at the very top of the valley in small village called Pont, at 2000 meters above the sea level. We spent 7 wonderful days there, mostly walking and hiking around.
But this is not a story about those times, it is something of a more recent date. For our fifth wedding anniversary we decided to repeat the trip, but in a slightly different style. We booked the Pont Breuil campsite next to “our” hotel and started preparing for Gran Paradiso!
The plan was to make regular alpine trips in Slovenia or Italy at least twice a month and keep that pace through a couple of months all the way to our summer vacation and Gran Paradiso. But, as it usually happens – the plan is one thing, and the circumstances are another. By June, we managed to keep up with the set pace, so we set the form perfectly for the unplanned 5 days in the Sexten Dolomites (you can read the story HERE). Upon returning home, we were greeted by the already hot July, but also by the long rainy season in the Alps. It also meant that we spent a little over a month and a half chilling by the sea, cruising the beaches, thinking “we can do it” and “the form will not be lost in a month”.
As the departure day for Gran Paradiso approached, the forecast for the entire week we planned to spend up there was getting worse and worse. Since we decided to camp this time, the first thing we had to do was reduce the number of days we planned to stay (because if it rains for days and we can’t move from the tent, we’d rather use a few more days for the sea and beach activities at home). Another thing that created a problem for us was that even in those 3-4 days without the announced rain, the forecast for the summit of Gran Paradiso was still not good enough.
The plan was to climb it in one day (and drink beer at camp in the evening 😊), but… there is always that but. We woke up in a tent around 3 in the morning and just looked at each other – nothing from today’s summit. It wasn’t our day. Whether it was fatigue from yesterday’s long drive, the fact that it was only our second day of our summer holiday (but the day when the forecast for the summit was the least bad), that we were not mentally ready for that climb or something third, I don’t know. What I do know is that you must recognize when it’s not your day and there is no sense to forcing anything.
This, of course, did not mean that we gave up on everything and that we would hang around the camp all day. Far from it. Around 6pm (with the first sun) we opened the map, cooked breakfast and looked for an alternative for today. We located the way to the summit of Mont Taou Blanc (3438 m), put some food into ourselves, quickly packed our backpacks and set off.
Part of the way was familiar to us because we have walked on this wonderful plateau before. We started from the direction of Aosta, from Pont (2000 m) towards the Colle del Nivolet pass (2612 m), through the beautiful and spacious Piano del Nivolet plateau (looks like the valley from the Lion King movie 😁). This plateau, in addition to being surrounded by spectacular views of Grivola (3969 m), Herbetet (3778 m), Gran Paradiso (4061 m), Ciarforon (3640 m), Becca di Monciair (3544 m) and many other beautiful mountains, also has a small river which flows through it. This small river is full of trouts and lake goldfinches, all at about 2,500 meters above sea level. The view on one of the last big alpine glaciers at the foot of Gran Paradiso is just icing on the cake or rather ice on the rock 😁.
From direction of our arrival, this plateau ends at the Colle del Nivolet pass and the Laghi del Nivolet lakes. Due to the road access from the direction of Piedmont, an increased number of people comes here compared to the almost complete loneliness and silence that accompanied us at the beginning of our day. There are also two mountain lodges which seemed extremely visited, although we can’t say too much about them – you have already noticed that we are not too interested spending our time in or near the lodges 😅.
Just give us more wilderness and as little influence and presence of humans and we are two happy people – what can we say, we love that peace in the mountains, the feeling of wildness and the absence of people – at least in our heads it is that real mountain feeling. And it is a special pleasure for us to sit on some grass or stone, soak up the rays of the sun and eat with our bare hands, without a table, chairs and other comforts to which we are accustomed every day. I don’t believe this will ever change for us – what is nature-made simply delights us, and we are at least indifferent to everything that is man-made 😅. We simply avoid mountain lodges and the presence of people in the mountains whenever we can. Of course, when it comes to multi-day trips this is not always possible, but we try to keep it to a minimum 😊.
We continued further through a landscape dug by snow and ice and full of lakes (Lago Rosset, Lago Leita, Lago Leynir and several other smaller lakes whose names we do not know), surrounded by peaks under thick snow. And the views…the views all around were amazing! Lakes and mountains, it can’t get any better than that. You can lose track of time, kilometres and altitude difference, but to the very summit we will feel those 15 km of distance and about 1600 meters of altitude as a small fatigue.
The view from Mont Taou Blanc peak was amazing, perhaps mostly to Mont Blanc because other great mountains were hidden from us behind clouds. But the Gran Paradiso was bathing in the sun – we wondered, maybe we should have pushed at 3AM after all. But it was over now, never mind, we enjoyed the day like we were in the mountains for the first time anyway.
Upon return there is nothing special to notion, we returned practically the same way, constantly taking photos. It is one of those natural landscapes that I always say – if your cell phone fell out of your pocket you would take a good photo. After 30 km hike we arrived back at the camp, well sunlit and windswept. We couldn’t take the smiles off our faces; I had the impression that we glow in the dark with happiness. It is amazing how mountains work for some people; they can give and take everything in a moment. We closed our tent in the evening with a last view of Ciarforon and Becca di Monciair and we still couldn’t believe we were here again 😊.
I haven’t mention earlier but for some reason I decided to hike in my affordable Alpina approach shoes, which are fantastic but only up to 20km. After 20 km they become stiff, which meant that I had blisters ready for the next day – the ones you must pierce in order to walk at all. And so, in the morning, examining my feet, I wondered if I could walk at all. But the excitement was too great, and we were not going to embark on a big venture anyway – it was a day for rest.
For that second day we decided to make a circular tour from Pont to Monte Chandelly peak (2812 m) along an easy trail with some ascent, whose main feature is the view of the Gran Paradiso massif with a glacier underneath. We were also lucky enough to see one of the rarest birds in Europe, the Bearded vulture, high in the air. We don’t have a photograph, but we’ve saw photographer or biologist pulling his gigantic photo lens with himself on the ascent – I believe he took the photo of the feather on that bird’s neck, or at least I hope he did. The effort he put into carrying it all must be rewarded 😁.
Aside from my occasional whining because of my blisters (she says it wasn’t so occasional 😂), we enjoyed the views, looked at the map, learned the names of the peaks, observed the trails… it was just a day of fun. Every now and then she was throwing ideas to extend the route – so we could go left then to the top, maybe we could go right up and up the pass, see that peak there how close it is there is no point in not climbing, see there was a small lake in the map that we have to find because we are too close not to see it, etc.
Even though my blisters were protesting loudly, I was meeting the demands because it was so damn beautiful, and I didn’t want it to end. And so, on that rest day, we toured the lakes Lago Nero and Lago Djouan and climbed Monte Chandelly. It took about 20 km of my bruised feet, which already told me that tomorrow is literally a day for rest 😁. We were already planning to spend it in the town of Aosta, walking and sightseeing a bit, but also sunbathing a bit and relaxing in the camp.
Heavy rain the night before we went home tested our tent and it passed. With the still light morning rain and the almost impossible scenes of marmots walking along the road at dawn, we organized things back in the car, put down a tent and headed back to civilization. Not that there weren’t people here, Gran Paradiso is, conditionally speaking, one of the easiest 4000s so it’s well visited. Yet there is so much space here and peaks that you can easily get lost in and find what you came for – solitude, the sounds of nature and indescribable alpine landscapes.
We will be back here for sure, and I’m looking forward to going to Chamonix again – we still have the climb to Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn and who knows what else. It’s nice to dream. Just to normalize everything first so that these dreams start to get real contours and get closer to reality…