LA DORSALE DEL TRIANGOLO LARIANO

 

LA DORSALE DEL TRIANGOLO LARIANO

A 3-Day Walk from Como to Bellagio

Ralph Hoyte 2018

 

The purpose of this 10-day Italian adventure has been to make re-acquaint with my friends Tania and Fabrizio, who live in Milano, take in some of the ‘Europa in Versi 2018’ poetry festival Tania is performing in in Como, do some poetry with her and other performers as part of ‘Poesia Presente’ in Concorezzo, and take part in Tania and Fabrizio’s multi-cultural meet-up group they organize in their neighbourhood. Now that’s all done and dusted and I’ve discovered some of Milano, I’ve decided to leave the beautiful two to their hectic lives and take off for the hills for a few days, returning for Fabrizio’s birthday, then a day in Bergamo, then home to Bristol.

DAY 1

I arrive in Como on one of the morning trains from Milan Porta Garibaldi. I’ve got a map of the whole walk in English and in German. It’s produced by Kompass; I think they’re a German company. It includes a general guide to the Dorsale walk from Como to Bellagio.

‘La Dorsale del Triangolo Lariano’ means ‘the Dorsal Fin – or Ridge – of the Triangle of Lake Como’. ‘The Triangle’ is the triangle of land nestled between the two ‘legs’ of Lake Como, the ‘Lago di Como’ to the west, and the ‘Lago di Lecco’ to the east making up the two ‘legs’. Not sure if this is a very good simile - if Lake Como has two legs, then the peak of the triangle – or the crotch, in fact – is Bellagio. ‘Bellagio, the Crotch of Lake Como’ may not go down very well with the tourist trade, what. Though would doubtless attract others… ‘Lariano’, I’m told, is the Roman name for ‘Il Lago di Como’. I’ve got another guide to La Dorsale, too, also in German, from the InfoPoint next to the cathedral in Como. They don’t have one in any other language. A German map, two German and one Italian guide, hmm. What could possibly go wrong?

I stock up on cherries and peaches bursting with juice from a stall in a street, then go to a supermarket and buy some Vollkornbrot, stinky cheese and a salami, then make my way with the fancy tourist mob along the waterfront towards the funicular. I get there at about 12 mid-day, wait a bit, then get on with a load of other tourists and reach the top at Brunate about 12.36. I consult the German guide and have an immediate Problem: he doesn’t seem to know his ‘links’ from his ‘rechts’. ‘Biegen sofort an der Kirche nach rechts ab!’ he says – but at the Kirche, the Church, the obvious mule-path goes off to the left, not, as he says, to the right.

Oh well. I know I’m initially heading for S. Maurizo which is only about 1km away up the slope, so it doesn’t matter really how I get there. I take the steep mule path to the left, watching as an old Unimog someone has turned into a taxi picks up the day-trippers and grinds up the hill for the Faro Voltlano (Windmill) and the cluster of cafes and restaurants around it. ‘Tourists’, I know, are like leeches – we stick around places labelled ‘for tourists’ and won’t venture more than 5 steps beyond the invisible boundaries whose limits are set by frequency per square cm of other tourists.

I leave the Faro and a chapel with wonderful exterior (frescos) and continue on the mule-path, which winds its way past Romantic- and somewhat rundown-looking villas, some of which are up for sale. Hmm. Maybe the Italian economy is not doing too well. A portion of the path is closed and I’m re-routed for a couple of hundred metres up the one-track road. A couple of guys are sitting on their haunches, placing each cobble-stone by hand in a concrete bed, using a piece of string as the leveller. Not much changed, then: each of these cobbles has the sweat, if not the blood of some poor labourer on them. What was this landscape like when these mule paths were the highways, the lifelines, the drovers’ lines, the supply lines of the peasants who lived in these hills before The Coming Of The Ferrari?

I stop for lunch at the first patch of open meadow past the last villa on the hill. The full-corn-bread, stinky cheese, salami, peaches and cherries bought at the street stand in Como. The peaches are like nothing on earth, certainly nothing like what are called ‘peaches’ in England, those hard, green, kept-artificially-in-stasis consumer products. They look nice on the greengrocer’s stall, but, take them home and they go from rock-hard to brown slush in a day. These here, though, oh nectar of the very gods! You bite into them, each large as a tennis-ball, larger; they are succulent, sweet, juicy, perfectly ripe. The juice dribbles down your chin. All you can do is sigh and praise fair Demeter, horny Dionysus. Two people come the opposite direction and I greet them. They’re the only walkers I see otherwise all day.

The mule path disgorges onto a small road winding along the ridge, then off onto a dirt path. Something seems slightly off – why is it taking me so long to get to the next waymark on the trail? I shrug. So what. I’ll continue till the evening draws in regardless. If it’s snoozing under a bush tonight, it’s snoozing under a bush. It’s a balmy 21 or so, so I’m not going to freeze. Ah – that’s … that’s – I consult the guide and map – that’s the Ristoro del Boletto Fabrizio. I knock up the resident staff and get a can of cold fizzy lemonade. 3 euros! That’s a bit steep! Then I climb Monte Bolettone. I’m starting to realize you can’t really get lost – just hug the ridge, La Dorsale, and every road leads to the Crotch. Sort of. The ridge splits ahead. Better take the right ridge. All these places the German guide mentions, I can’t really find them. I’ve either passed them and not realized, or not got to them yet, or Pippi Langenstrumpf has hidden them up her stockings or something. No matter – onwards!

I descend from Monte Bolettone, where, for no reason at all, someone’s deposited a desk, complete with chair, and, at the Bochetta (which seems to translate as ‘nozzle’ – could this be in the sense of a ‘col’ being a ‘nozzle’ between two mountains?), I take the left traverse. Mr Deutschland says, ‘the left way is a long traverse through beech woods of Monte Bolletone…’ ‘Huh? I’ve just come down from Monte Bolletone, haven’t I? It’s behind me now – how can I traverse it??? Verfluckter Fuehrer!’ I shrug and saunter onwards. When I check the actual map, it seems I may be confusing ‘Monte Bolettone’ with ‘Monte Boletto’. Ah well, what’s a few consonants between friends, eh?

The track dives into huge sweeping slopes of fresh-leaved beech trees cascading down on the left, Monte BolletoNE (correcto!) somewhere up to the right, This, the north-west face, doesn’t seem to get much, or any sun, so it’s cool, the slopes scattered with large mossy rocks the giants used as marbles in times past. The soft path tends slightly downwards, worryingly, always downwards, the millennia of leaf-mould deposition muffling my footsteps. I feel as if I am in a cathedral – aren’t Gothic cathedrals inspired by beechwoods, by the arching trees? Just as I start to think it’s the wrong way and I’m going to end up on the lake-shore it makes a convulsive bound upwards and crashes into a startling splash of crimson: a rhododendron writhing round the wrought-iron-railed shrine to the Virgin at the Bocchetta di Lemna (1167m).

‘Go left, and after 1 ½ hours you’ll get to a bus-stop at the village of Lemna,’ says my friendly German, but I’m not even remotely tempted. Right, so M. Palazone now lies before me, yes? Yes, and on its SE slopes lies the Rifugio I’m heading for for the night, Rifugio Riella. The inset to the German tour-guide, given to me by the InfoPoint in Como, says, “open from 15 May to 31 October, 34 beds and restaurant.” Hurray! I’m especially looking forward to the ‘restaurant’ – will they have genuine Italian Alpine food? Or just more, oh dear, polenta. Oh well, it’ll fill me up.

First I climb the incredible Pizzo d’Asino. I don’t need to – there seems to be a right-hand traverse, in fact the Germans say “traverse past the Pizzo d’Asino to the east” - but I’m drawn to it. The path wanders up a steepish slope – as it flattens out I mark a sort of tinroofed shelter sort of thing, ‘ah ha, if caught out, I can doss there…’ - but then it goes apeshit, ascending as nearly vertical as damn for only about 150m. But what a 150m! It’s one of the most beautiful – and rewarding – parts of the whole trail. It just shoots straight up as the wild narcissus and alpine orchid meadows grow ever denser, carpeting the view left to the Sentiero del Faggia (The Way of the Beeches) on the off-slope of Bolletone, framing the view of Lake Como in exquisite white. I think again, as I thought on my way up Haguro-san in Kamikochi in the Japanese Alps at 5.30 in the morning, to come round a cornice and suddenly see, framed perfectly, just for me: Fuji! Divine Fuji! I think: you have to take a risk, put in the effort. No, there is never, ever any guarantee that you will be rewarded – though the effort itself is the pure reward; I pull myself up hills, mountains and they reward me, richly: alpine orchid and wild narcissi meadows overlooking the lake of Como! You down below can keep your swanky Audi V10s, your rampant Mustangs, you’re chomping at the bit Lotus Exiges – no-one can give you what I have just been given, freely.

After a few pauses to catch my breath I achieve the top of Pizzo d’Asino (1272m): it’s a small, crescent-moon shaped cusp facing M. Palazone to the north, open to the east, cupped in the hands of the hill somehow, embraced, but not challenged by hazel and birch scrub. The scrub sweeps up to it, enfolds, and returns as if saying, ‘here! Here you are!’, as if offering something indefinably precious to the pilgrim. A string of Tibetan prayer-flags is draped over some of the bushes and there are signs of a campfire. No wonder we call some places ‘sacred’; there’s no other word for it: set-apart, sacred. To the nymphs, to the world, to the pilgrim, to the universe: set-apart, sacred.

An easy romp down the Pizzo d’Asino’s gentler north slope to Bochetta di Palanzo brings me to a well-maintained granite-blocked track wide enough for a vehicle. Slightly up from there and the Rifugio looms into view. Er, it looks suspiciously quiet. Surmount the final crest and … yup, it’s locked, barred and shuttered, there’s no-one around. Fanculo agli italiani! Sod the writers of the Guide!

I scout out the joint: woodshed off to the left, hmm, probably mice and/or rat-infested, certainly spiders; check all front doors – thoroughly bolted; on the right of the building there’s a flight of stairs leading up to a door with a ‘heart defibrillator here!’ sign on it. I ascend the steps and try the door. It is, of course, open – otherwise what would be the point of having an emergency defibrillator behind it you couldn’t get to? That’d be illogical even for the Italians, not well known for giving ‘logic’ very high priority… (apologies!) I open the door. It’s just a corridor, with another locked door at the end, but there’s also a door off to the left. I try the handle .. and it opens into a small bedroom with a double-bunkbed, the beds all made up with nice clean sheets and blankets. Double gold! Thank you, Club Alpino Italiano! You’ve turned up trumps!

I make up the lower bunkbed with both blankets, dump my rucksac and go round the front of the Rifugio again. No restaurant. Not even any bloody polenta. Luckily, I’m sort of used to this sort of thing: I have enough food – if a bit boring – for 2 more meals on me. I sit on the bench overlooking the lake some 3000 ft below me and dig into – you guessed it: full-corn-bread, stinky cheese, salami, peaches and cherries.

As I spit the cherrystones at the wooden railings, hitting them maybe 20% of the time, a thrumming ascends the track from the Bochetta. Soon a cool dude on a fancy Yamaha dirt-bike revs up the drive, pulls to a stop at the Rifugio, methodically takes his helmet and gloves off and attempts a selfie to impress his girlfriend-stroke-mates. I say hi and offer to take the shot for him. He thanks me, poses, then just as methodically puts his gear on again, revs ‘er up and thrums valleywards towards Lemna again. Silence. I discover the toilet is open as well, but I don’t need it, I just pee after the cherry-stones through the railing. So there. How dare you say you’re open and you’re not!

It starts getting dark, so I retire to my suite. Bit of an odd feeling, completely alone up a mountain in a massive building all shuttered and barred with no-one in it, so, after some, ‘oh come on, don’t be so stupid’ debate with myself I succumb to my over-active poetic imagination and drag the bunk bed over to jam the door shut. ‘There, the mountain bogies can’t get me now!’

(further days to follow...)