Another abnormal winter adventure in the alps for Trekking Alps and for Worldpaths. In exploring new areas we went in Aosta valley in the magnificent Saint-Barthélemy valley. The Reboulaz hut is set in a really beautiful place, just below the great mountain of Becca di Luseney with its 3504 meters, it rise up in the valley. The hut is very cozy and with its small wooden stove it is quite comfortable also in winter. Said so, the slope up to the highland where it lie the hut it is really steep and quite dangerous indeed.
This alps trekking is developed for around 11Km which is pretty much, especially in winter. Fortunately most of this winter adventure in the alps are tracked by the cross country sky tracks which develop in a nice ring full of skiers. On Saturday we went up relatively easily. Most of the snow was pretty iced and the slope up was comfortable. The problem is a the last 50 meters of positive gain in reaching the highland where the Bivacco Reboulaz is. The terrain is really steep(around 40%) and a possible fall would end up in a 200 meters fast slide down the valley. This is why it would be recommendable to bring crampons and ax as well.
The night was very joyful, full of laughs, good food and wine. Just before going to sleep we realize it started to snow outside. The following day we found our self in an enchanted white paradise. Still it was snowy pretty heavily as we started our slope down. This time the dangerous spot was even worst, with around 30 cm of fresh powder over an iced slope down. We proceeded very carefully and we finally managed to safely go down.
It was a real winter adventure in the Alps indeed! I definitely will not bring customers here unless the snow conditions will be ideal. Probably a better season is from April to November. By the way, another wonderful weekend in the Italian Alps!
Super!!