The choice of where to hike this weekend in our beloved Italian mountains was easy: we went to the biggest, oldest and nicest national park of Italy. We’ve been snowshoeing in the Gran Paradiso National Park; precisely in the Piedmont part of this fantastic Natural sanctuary in the Orco Valley. The Noaschetta shelter is between a refuge and an unguarded hut. You can enjoy there immense luxuries such as beautiful cast iron stove and electricity as well as a huge supply of firewood. There are over a dozen places and we were very lucky with the weather as there was a sunny days after the snowy Wednesday and Thursday as you can see from my trekking during the week.
The snow was untouched again Saturday when myself, Ambra , Attilio and Wael , an Egyptian dentist, we explored the northern slopes of the Orco Valley.
Here you can see the comfort of the shelter Noaschetta!
This valley is very famous among climbers for its incredible granite walls and I must say that you can really enjoy even if you are a simple hiker. Sometimes it seemed to be under the three peaks of Lavaredo in the Dolomites! From Noasca, a small village in the Gran Paradiso National Park, in Piedmont you start walking up the northern part of Orco Valley. From here there are several options. We started from the bends over and through beautiful mountain villages , a forest of birch, pine kernels and we finally arrive at the beautiful retreat.
The sunset is breathtaking as we see from these images!
We had a delicious dinner with ravioli, and a new soup created by Attilio. The next day we start towards the Noaschetta Valley: beautiful and wild. Several chamoises were next to us togheter with a fox and several crows.
For Wael was for the first time in similar places( he lives in Arabia ) and was stopping to photograph the water as it is so precious in the country where he lives. Indeed we also could enjoy even more the magnificent beauty of the river that accompanied us in our trip to this fantastic National Park in Italy: the Orco Valley is really wild and special. For Wael was not easy to walk with snowshoes and it was not easy to continue until the Goi Valley. Not bad. The tour was fantastic and the return to the city we found regenerated as always happens after a few hours in our wonderful Italian Alps: that was a fantastic snowshoeing in the Gran Paradiso National Park!