Worldwind Tour: Hiking the Italian Alps

ALL the photos from the Alps!
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/103620108216329120374/albums/5894993360441678673

My favorite part of the trip so far is the Alps!

We had the best day hiking the Parco Nazionale del Gran Paradiso in Italy. This national park isn't like those in the US in that it doesn't feel remote. It's only a couple of hours from Milan, and even within the park, there are mountain villages everywhere. We started the hike from the Valle di Cogne, which is centered around the small town of Cogne, surrounded by several smaller villages. We camped in one of those small villages, Lillaz, for the night.

We stopped by the tourist office at Cogne when we arrived mid-day, bought a map, and picked a 6-hour hike up to Lago di Loie. It was a beautiful day - warm and sunny at the base. The hike is fairly steep the entire way up to the lake, although I didn't even notice because the views were breathtaking from the start!

Within ten minutes of the start, we arrived at a beautiful waterfall. Already, there’s a view of the village, and that view just keeps getting better the further up we go. About 2 hours and several more waterfalls later, the landscape changes dramatically. We left a temperate forest for what seemed like the arctic tundra. The land was barren and partially covered in snow. We reached the lake half an hour later, and had our lunch there. The way down started with traversing through snow, followed by a gradual (but long) descent along a river to the town.

This definitely one of the best day hikes I've been on, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is near to the region. It has beautiful and varied scenery along the entire route, it’s challenging but not too strenuous, and it’s easily accessible (compared to other hikes of similar grandeur). Plus, if you go during the early summer, the mountain fields are filled with wildflowers.