of the Valle d’Aosta across which glorious visions of Mont Blanc, Grand Combin and assorted giants of the Pennine Alps are revealed to the fortunate wanderer.
The Gran Paradiso National Park boasts no less than 57 glaciers and dozens of peaks in excess of 3000 metres, while the mountain after which it is named is, at 4061 metres, the highest entirely in Italy and, incidentally, generally reckoned to be the easiest to climb of all Alpine 4000ers. Created in 1922 the Gran Paradiso was the country’s first national park, a landmark in the protection of wildlife in general and the ibex in particular. Formerly a royal hunting ground for Vittorio Emanuel II, some 2000 hectares were ceded to the State in 1919 by one of the hunter king’s successors, and since the park’s inception three years later the area has expanded to include some 70,000 hectares, or more than 700 square kilometres. Within the park’s boundaries roam 5000 ibex, around 8000 chamois and 10,000 marmots, so it will be a rare summer day’s walking here that fails to conjure sightings of wildlife.
The range spreads eastward from the French border to the southern curve of Valle d’Aosta where the Dora Baltea sweeps out of the mountains toward the Po, its northern limit being defined by the Valle d’Aosta itself where French has been the official language since 1561, its southern by the Valle di Susa dominated by Turin. This is a sizeable chunk of country, but so far as this chapter is concerned we will concentrate only on the central block, and the four main valleys on the northern side. Naming from west to east these are Val Grisenche, Val di Rhêmes, Val Savarenche and the Valle di Cogne with its lovely tributary glen, Valnontey. Of these, only Val Grisenche lies outside the national park’s boundary. The southern valleys may be less popular, the scenery not quite so dramatic as on the northern side, but the landscape is somewhat wilder and with trails that one could enjoy in peaceful isolation from the crowds.
Naturally Valle d’Aosta holds the key to all vehicular approach from the northern side of the mountains, with public transport focused on the old Roman town of Aosta itself, athough it must be said that some of the bus services to more remote areas are either greatly reduced or suspended outside the high summer months of July and August. Mid-summer is exceedingly popular in the honeypot areas, and trails and huts can be uncomfortably crowded. However, in June and September it’s easy enough to find routes to wander in solitude, when the true delights of the area can be properly absorbed, although as in most regions of the high Alps snow conditions may prevent some of the loftier routes from being tackled until late June or early July.
Hotels, campsites, mountain huts and a number of bivouac shelters on the northern side of the ridge that divides the autonomous region of Valle d’Aosta from Piedmont, provide a range of accommodation to suit most tastes. With some 450 kilometres of footpaths to choose from it will be seen that countless permutations of walks exist to suit activists of every persuasion. Trails are in the main clearly defined with waymarks and occasional signposts, including a number of old mule-tracks created for Vittorio Emanuel’s hunting parties, and two multi-day routes marked on the map suggest ways of exploring the region in the best possible manner. The first of these is the Grande Traversata del Gran Paradiso (GTGP) which, after crossing dividing ridges on the northern side, then makes a high-level traverse of the southern flanks; the second is the Alta Via della Valle d’Aosta No 2, making an eastbound traverse from La Thuile below the Col du Petit St Bernard to Champorcher. (Alta Via No 1, the so-called ‘Giants’ Trail’, makes a traverse of the mountains north of Valle d’Aosta and is mentioned in the Pennine Alps chapter.)
In the following pages an outline of both long routes will be provided, following a study of walking prospects in the four north-flowing valleys, beginning first with Val Grisenche.
Val Grisenche
Flowing roughly parallel with the Franco– Italian border, this is the least-visited of the four valleys; partly because it lies outside the national park’s boundary and therefore receives less publicity than the others, partly because it is farther away from Aosta than any of its neighbours and partly, no doubt, because it has the least amount of accommodation available to the visitor. Among its scattered hamlets not one amounts to anything resembling a resort, and the road that climbs into the glen is rather tortuous and narrow, managing to veil its true nature until the traveller has made his commitment to enter. However, Val Grisenche is not without its charms, either in scenic values or walking possibilities, and prospective visitors attracted by unsung corners of the Alps will accept these reasons as being sufficient in themselves to go there, while those coming under their own steam from France will see it as the first valley to explore when travelling down Valle d’Aosta from Courmayeur and the Mont Blanc tunnel. With no obvious display of its appeal from the insignificant entrance at Leverogne, Val Grisenche nevertheless leads to much quiet beauty, and few who appreciate nature in the raw will be disappointed by what they find there.
In its lower reaches the valley is narrow and heavily wooded, but as you head south-westward so it widens to a few rough pastures and small, huddled hamlets, stone-built and little changed by the centuries. Planaval lies below a tributary glen through which a trail visits a ruined hamlet, with a side-path climbing to the blue-green Lago di Fondo, while the main trail continues alongside the Château Blanc glacier before crossing a glacier pass traversed by both Alta Via 2 and the GTGP long-distance routes. On the far side of the col, and some way below it, stands Rifugio Deffeyes with several tarns nearby, and another trail cutting back over Passo Alto into the Sopra glen by which a two-day circuit could be achieved.
Another major trail leading from Planaval strikes upvalley, rising on a long slant across the left-hand mountainside to Lago di San Grato which has a small stone chapel at its southern end. Several trails break away from this tarn; one of these leads to a crossing of the frontier ridge at Col du Mont, on the French side of which lies the privately-owned Refuge la Motte. Returning from this col to Val Grisenche a good path descends to a service road and the bed of the valley, passing on the way a memorial that recalls the death by avalanche during the last war, of German officers and their prisoners who were being forced to carry supplies up to the col.
Upvalley beyond Planaval there are more hamlets and clusters of simple buildings. Valgrisenche itself boasts a foodstore and a post office, and from it a walking route that heads up the true right bank of the valley before climbing to Rifugio de l’Épée. Above this hut Col de la Finestra (or Col Fenêtre) provides a high route into Val di Rhêmes. Continuing beyond Valgrisenche village you come to Bonne, set on a ledge overlooking the dammed Lago di Beauregard, the only unfortunate scar in the valley. This long ribbon of reservoir was unwanted and deeply resented by the local population when it was created in the 1960s, because it drowned the hamlet of Fornet. Resentment lingers on as, apparently, it has not yet been used to capacity.
After Bonne a service road climbs high above the lake through scarlet masses of rosebay willowherb, then descends to the main Dora di Valgrisenche below the buildings of Grand Alpe and the trail junction for Col du Mont. A farm building nearby has been adapted to serve as a simple bar/restaurant. Vehicles are not allowed beyond this point, and only footpaths and farm tracks score into the wild, upper region that entices from the south.
Here Val Grisenche rises under a glacial cirque topped by the Grande Sassière, where the Ghiacciaio di Gliairetta sweeps across the cirque’s header wall which carries the international frontier in an eastward kink – ghiacciaio, incidentally, being the Italian word for glacier. This upper part of the valley is an untamed delight. Laced with numerous streams and waterfalls, and with the Italian Alpine Club’s (CAI) Rifugio Mario Bezzi set at 2284 metres on the right bank of the Dora di Valgrisenche at Alp Vaudet, the lonely uplands may be explored at leisure. Apart from glacier crossings and summit routes that lie outside the scope of this book, more walking trails entice across both of the valley’s limiting walls. On the western side Col du Lac Noir and Col du Rocher Blanc, the two separated by Point du Rocher Blanc, offer ways over the frontier to the valley of Isère below Tignes, while the east wall has a crossing point at Col le Bassac Derè leading to the upper Val di
