Finally, after close to a year since the early summer hikes of June 2014, I went hiking again. And it was glorious. It was also incredibly difficult, especially the hour spent zigzagging straight up the side of a mountain, but that was only an hour so what harm?
I climbed Monte Stivo with a friend and her dog. Dogs make the best hiking companions, obviously, mostly because they show how unfit you are by constantly bounding forward and doubling back again. At the top the view is spectacular, looking down over Rovereto and across to Lago di Garda. It prompts many pronouncements of ‘oh, I must go to the lake more often’ .. we’ll see how that works out.
The worst luck for us was that the rifugio was as yet unopened. Despite this sign that we were too early in the hiking season, we still shared the peak with a large group of hikers who, inexplicably, started singing after they finished their lunch. I can only assume they were singing mountain songs, because what else do you sing from the top of a mountain.
Last summer when we did those few hikes we had many great plans of all the other hikes we would do throughout the rest of summer. None of them came to pass, so better luck this year!
Molto Molto 