Middle-aged flash packers

We arrived in Lake Como after a gruelling 5.5hour trip. It poured with rain every inch of the way – horrible.

We are staying in Colico. A quick wander round it and first impressions were of quite a tired little town, and not like the chi-chi places I expected in an Italian beauty spot. Having said that, nowhere would have looked good after the amount of rain that fell. It was strangely depressing to see snow on the mountains. It doesn’t usually happen until November/December.

We chose Colico because it appeared to have very good hiking on the doorstep and this was confirmed after a visit to the information centre. Monte Legnone caught my eye as a hike worth doing – 2600m high and 1200 m of ascent from the start point.

Jan and Nik sensibly decided to have a rest day so it was Steve and I who set off to drive to the start point.

Annoyingly the beautiful day we had been promised started with mist and fog. This did not make driving easy up the sinuously windy road to Refugio Roccoli Lorla. As usual Italian driving was not at its best and we had a few hairy reversing down hairpin bends without any thanks moments.

On arrival the Refugio was closed but the trail signs were good and we were soon on our way after passing some docile cows with their owner.

I’ve got so much better with cows – it’s really only big herds of them and bullocks that I’m nervous of now.

In some ways it felt like a harder walk than Triglav and I really don’t know why. Maybe I hadn’t fully recovered or perhaps it was the constant ascent with few flat bits. Also the mist didn’t help.

We got to about 700m from the Refugio and sat down to have a bite to eat. It was amazing to watch the mist come and go, revealing scenery we had no idea was there. It actually made me feel quite vertiginous, one minute all I could see was a path, the next steep drops and plunging waterfalls.

We carried on, hopeful that the mist would permanently clear but it didn’t. We made it to the hut where the girl in the information office recommended us to stop as she felt the rest of the hike was too dangerous.
Of course we tried to carry on, but the next section was a up a steep vertical pinnacle with cables. It didn’t feel safe so we decided to retrace our steps. 
It’s never nice having to quit, but we both felt that we shouldn’t push our luck. The gods had smiled on us on our ascent of Triglav, that was good enough!
About half way down, the fog lifted and we were treated to spectacular views of the lake. We were even above a rainbow – I don’t think I’ve ever looked down on one before. Quite magical. 
The drive back wasn’t quite as bad as the drive up, but we were both pretty knackered by the time we got back. 
A snooze in the sun, shower, a beer then dinner cooked by Nik and Jan – life is good!