Motto di Paraone

Motto di Paraone and yet again mountains, outdoor life, hiking, fresh air. As you’ll know from previous musings, these are all the things we love and as I said previously, we haven’t waxed lyrical enough about the hiking in “our” mountains.

Our off-grid outdoor summer life in Italy isn’t all about touring the towns of Lake Como, although one would be forgiven for thinking such as it is what we write about. A big chunk of our time is spent hiking and biking around Lake Como and the mountains that surround it. Always exploring, always finding new things, but also always repeating the familiar things we love.

Above our summer off-grid digs there are mountains that we walk every year. Certain walks that we do again and again. It re-acquaints us with our mountains. The walks are familiar, like old friends and somehow that is comforting. It’s the aah moment when we can feel any tiredness or stress from our travels fade away.

I’m continuing with sharing some of our mountain walks, to give the reader a feel for the sheer magnificence, scale, diversity and peace that the mountains give us. I hope my words and the photos (mostly photos) can continue to do them justice.

We walked Motto di Paraone very early on in our explore of the mountains around us. The walk had sort of faded in my memory as I recall it had been difficult in places to trace the path, and at that point the familiarity of our surroundings was not yet fully developed. However, we re-did the walk a couple of years ago with family and it is now one that I look forward to doing every year.

What to expect on a Motto di Paraone walk

The walk starts off on unpaved roads, so the footing is good. This is a familiar road for us as we have several walks that start in the same way. It goes through trees offering shade and dappled sunlight, with birdsong and occasional deer spottings. En-route we look out for alpine berries. June and July are good for blueberries, raspberries and strawberries; the berries are so small but somehow it fees like the flavour has been concentrated to fit into such tiny vessels. In Autumn we look for mushrooms; Porcini, girolles, hedgehog mushrooms, porcelain…I never thought I was a forager, but here it’s a huge part of mountain life. The Italians are incensed if we leave before the mushroom season “Ma, i funghi!”. I thought perhaps I was exaggerating their passion, but one of our Italian friends recently said “non ho la malatia dei funghi”, translation “I don’t have the mushroom disease”, meaning he doesn’t have the crazy urge to go mushroom hunting as some Italians do….said by an Italian, I’m just saying.

Back to the walk. Once out of the tree-line the views of the mountains are spectacular. We can see over to the Chiavenna valley, the Valtellina valley (of the wine) and the end of Lake Como where the river Adda flows into the lake, the colour turning from a milky turquioise to the crystal clear acqua colour of the lake. There is a distinct line where the two meet, a final flourish of independence from the Adda before it submits and merges with the water of the Lake. In the other direction the Italian Pre-Alps start to peak out, showing the way to Switzerland.

Before the peak of Monte Paraone, we come across old World War 1 trenches, carved into the mountainside. Who’s up for a bit of history?:

Called the Cadorna Line, after being established by General Luigi Cadorna during WW1, it consists of trenches, communication routes and artillery posts positioned to prevent potential Austro/Hungarian advances south through Switzerland and the Valtellina valley.

There’s always something interesting or beautiful to grab the eye. When we reach the top of Paraone, the views open out even more and it’s possible to see Lake Como to the south and the mountains of the Upper Lario. A deep sigh moment and a great place to stop, have a seat, reflect and refuel with some lunch.

The section down to Rifugio Giovo goes past more trenches, over a small lump topped with a pilon and along some narrow paths before the final descent down what looks like a vertiginous ridge, in reality not that bad (but photos…and some walkers may beg to differ).

At Giovo we often stop and take advantage of the wooden benches looking across the valley to the mountains on the other side and to the horseshoe of the valley. This is also the start of another circular walk that takes us over the mountains to Switzerland….another post I think.

This is our turning point and on the walk back we follow the dirt road for an easy and gradual descent, taking a few carved out short-cuts to cut out some of the long zig-zags that the road must take. We take a couple of “unofficial” short cuts too, a bit of fun going off-piste to cut some corners and look out for some of those mountain mushrooms. Porcini risotto tonight I think…