Walking and Trekking in Gran Paradiso by Gillian Price
My favourite hiking books are by the UK publisher Cicerone. I have almost 100 of their books by various authors, some better than others. For this trip in the Gran Paradiso National Park, I used two books by Gillian Price, Walking and Trekking in Gran Paradiso and Through the Italian Alps. Both fantastic books.
I also purchased 8 maps of the area by Kompass and IGC (Italian Geographical Centre) with scales of 1:50000 or 1:25000. Then after spending umpteen hours scouring the books and maps, I created a circuit in the Gran Paradiso Park starting and finishing in Pont Saint Martin in the Aosta Valley just outside the park.
Another 2 months of plotting and planning and downloading GPX files into Google Earth and our 21 day walk is planned - a composite of the Alt Via 2 through the northern part of the park and the GTA, Gran Traverse of the Alps through the southern part, linked by the High Glacial Route. These I plotted in Google Earth to massage and manipulate the walks so that the average walk each day was about 15k, some more (up to 24k), some less (about 10k). Google Earth was an excellent tool for seeing the walk before doing the walk.
After months of creating the walk, it was time to check the gear. This is difficult walk, being steep with no cable cars, very few roads and only a scattering of villages. So I aimed to make my pack as light as possible, 6kg in total. Easier said than done! It’s easy to pack for a walk, not so easy to cull the gear. It meant making drastic decisions like not taking a 3rd set of clothes, and deciding to take more picnic lunches provided by each Rifugio.
Through the Italian Alps
Plotting routes on Google Earth
Our daughter Bonnie who works for Virgin International, was able to obtain discounted standby flights to Europe on several airlines including Etihad and we chose to go in autumn towards the end of August when most people are leaving Europe, but before mid September when it begins to get cold. Booking places ahead whilst going standby meant allowing a few days to actually get to our starting point, so I booked accommodation beginning August 19th in a collection of hotels/pensions/BnB’s and rifuges by internet, email or phone.
Not to forget the training. Ian and I have always maintained a good degree of fitness. Me through walking, jogging, swimming and gym cycling and Ian through cycling and playing tennis. But walking for 7 to 8 hours each day up steep mountains requires more than just a casual fitness level. So we embarked on the task of climbing Mt Cotton up Billiau Rd to the telecommunications towers, an ascent of only 100 metres so requiring many monotonous climbs up and down to accumulate a total climb of 500 to 1000 metres.
Then as they say, it was a matter of living the dream - doing what we had planned!