And On To Courmayeur

We finished Milan and drove on late in the afternoon, stopping at a little town called Cavaglia, over-nighting in its large mercato parking lot. Alas, we noted upon leaving there was a sign on the outskirts of town that said no camping. Oh well.

Cavaglia is remarkable, totally remarkable, for having a

stone circle next to its civic center; this has got to be recent

and artificial; but no less impressive

Up the road a bit, at Pont St. Martin perhaps, a beautiful old

Roman bridge

And thus we are back at Courmayeur, a favorite Italian town,

at the very foot of Monte Bianco, at our favorite restaurant

there, Le Vieux Pommier, enjoying our favorite totally

decadent Alpine meal, the crepes Mt. Blanc (prosciutto

rolled into crepes, drowning in a soup/sauce of fontina cheese)

Followed by veal topped by prosciutto topped by melted

fontina (frites for Vicki, cheesy polenta for me); the vino

rosso really helps to cut through though all the white stuff;

all followed by a  sort of berry-ish creme brulee thing that I

always forget to shoot

So, this time in Courmayeur, we found the mercato parking

lot, a few hundred meters from the centro, and stayed there

four nights, reading, planning, researching, lazing; I did a

couple of hikes, more or less repeating hikes I have done

before in this area; first, up the Val Veny, toward France,

stopping at the Lac du Miage and its 10k moraine; above,

one of the remnants of the lake, a pot-hole at the lateral of

the giant moraine; I sat there for a while, watching the

continuing trickle of scree into the bottomless pot-hole: a

reminder that this giant thing is alive and moving; I didn't

venture further 

Above now, on the balcony overlooking, some of the Miage

Glacier moraine, Mt. Blanc proper on the right

And, a bit higher on the balcony, working my way back

toward Courmayeur, more of the moraine and the Innominata

Face of Mt. Blanc; don't be deceived: it looks like rock, but

it's all ice underneath, digging out a huge canyon of the future

The Grandes Jorasses, further on the massif; Le Geant on the

left-most

In the distance, from a refuge on the hike, one of Italy's many

great mountains, Gran Paradiso

Another day, another hike, another balcony, up the Val Ferret,

toward Switzerland: looking across at the Grandes Jorasses

glaciers

And, from my favorite Refugio Walter Bonatti,

another look at Monte Bianco