For the weekend, my friends Margo and Denisz decided to go with me to hike in the mountains close to Vicenza. Along the way, we drove through the nice Brenta Valley and then deeper in the mountains stopping for a view of the Ponte Serra waterfalls. Built artificially in 1909 it features two separate waterfalls, a constant smaller one to the right which receives water from a tunnel and powers the Pedesalto plant while the central one is formed from the waters of the Cismon stream. At that time due to the rains of the past days, the Cismon had received a lot of water and thus the waterfalls were at full capacity and quite impressive to look at. After the stop, we continued on our drive and eventually reached the town of Fiera di Primiero right below the first Dolomites. After town, a short drive took us to the Val Canali, the valley where we would be doing our hike. First though we decided to stop at a tiny lake called Welsperg where we had an amazing view of the mountains. The peaks of the Pale di San Martino in fact, still partly snowcapped reflected on the calm waters of the lake providing an amazing sight. The stop turned out to be a great idea too as we later found out for the rest of the day the peaks would be mostly covered in clouds. After admiring the view we got back in the car and completed the drive to reach a parking lot next to the Cant del Gal hotel. From here we started our hike heading uphill up the smaller Pradidali valley. There were barely any tourists/hikers around probably due to the colder and rainier than average days past. In fact, we also shortened our hike up as at one point we saw there was snow at lower altitudes and that meant it would've been much harder and slipper to reached the Pradidali mountain hut at the top. Instead, we reached a reasonable point where we had a great view. From there we headed along the foothill and passed back over to the Canali Valley, we hiked up its length passing by some cows happily grazing on the fresh green grass. Ahead of us despite mostly covered by clouds the snow-capped peaks in all their beauty. After a bit, we came upon a stream which due to the past rains was quite big. There was no way across unless we hiked quite a bit backward so we headed upstream to find a place to ford it. We ended up finding a tighter spot and eventually jumped to the other side. We continued upwards and then got to a forested part. The hike there was much steeper and at the end of it we had reached the Rifugio Treviso. There were further paths starting from there and heading up the mountains but supposedly there was still lots of snow and we didn't wanna risk it so instead turned back and walked down the way we came. Once back at the car, we drove down the valley and eventually reached Corlo Lake. We parked in the little village of Rocca and walked over to the Ponte della Vittoria to have a view of the lake. It is actually a man-made reservoir from the Cismon stream but its setting is really nice surrounded by green lush hills and in the distance the mountains, this time covered in clouds. After the brief stop, we eventually reached the city of Bassano del Grappa. Here I showed my friends the old town, with the main square Piazza della Libertà, and its picturesque setting. At that moment there was an exhibition of historic cars mainly from the early 20th century. We walked over to the famous Ponte Vecchio which crosses over the Brenta River and then walked around the rest of town before finding a place for dinner. We ended up choosing a place called La Bottegara where we had local food, bigoli with duck sauce in my case. Eventually, back to the car, we drove on to Vicenza.
 |
| The Canali valley |
 |
| A cow and the snow-capped peaks of the Pale di San Martino |
 |
| The bridge over the Corlo Lake |
No comments:
Post a Comment