Today, after a breakfast featuring a medley of home-baked treats, we stepped out of our door and went for a hike. No cars or buses involved — we simply started walking, along the dusty road into town, down the hill towards the soccer field, then across the river and up the side of the mountain. The south side of the valley is Gran Paradiso National Park, and is crisscrossed with hiking trails that connect destinations up and down the valley. The trails are well marked, with detailed signposts at every junction.

Our route took us past a number of old, abandoned structures. Many had been there so long that the roofs were collapsed under the heavy weight of the stone slabs that they use for roofing around here. The slabs are local gneiss, not slate, and each one is nearly an inch thick. We later learned that the buildings are uneconomical to maintain: because they are inside the park boundaries, the only way to bring in new building materials is by helicopter, and that is prohibitively expensive in most cases.

Our path led through pine forests, so we were mostly in shade, yet they were open enough to afford us views across the valley and down to the villages far below. Green alpine grass grew everywhere, in the forest by especially in the meadows that we would occasionally cross. The meadows were lovely, studded with wildflowers and frequented by many species of flitting butterflies. Alpine flowers are not large or showy, yet their diversity and profusion they more than compensate. Towards the end of our trip we even spotted a few early mountain strawberries just starting to turn red.

Amazingly, we passed no other hikers during our whole time in the park. We paused for lunch just below the tree line in a sort of dell, next to a cluster of abandoned buildings overlooking a babbling stream.

The trip down again took nearly as long as the way up. We were deliberately moving slowly; even so the Italian time estimates for various legs of the journey seemed wildly optimistic. Perhaps they were set with hardened mountaineers in mind; in any case, our exchange rate was about two to one.

When we finally completed our descent to the river at the bottom of the valley, we were ready to find a bar or cafe to sit and rest in for a while. Unfortunately, the community of Cretaz where we emerged was too small for any such establishment open in the afternoon. So we reluctantly shouldered our day packs again to hike the two miles or so back to our room in Epinel. The villages in the valley are all linked by wide paths on either side of the river, used for cross country skiing in the winter.

After showers and a bit of rest, we finally hopped in the car for the first time of the day and drove up to Cogne proper, where we had our well-earned beer and then met Karen for a pizza dinner and gelato. She had taken a different hike much higher up the valley, stopping for lunch in a mountainside rest hut. We had fun trading hiking stories and photos.