It has been a dream since I first came to live in Italy: climbing the Monte Cisa. Not that it's a particularly high or spectacular mountain with its 1698m, far from it. But it's been staring me in the face right from the start. On the following picture, taken from our terrace, you can see it on the left, with its steep rocky westerly slope. If you look very carefully, you can see that right to the left of the summit there is a meadow. And in that meadow there is a tree. Well, I've always said that one day I'd be standing right next to that tree. So I went for it...
I rode with my Vespa along small, winding mountain roads to get as close to the mountain as possible. Here I'm already getting nearer... tension is rising... I'm filled with anticipation... I simply MUST get to the top!
The road is getting worse, only dirt and rocks. But I carry on unabated. The problem is that the road goes through the forests so I haven't got a clue anymore whether I'm close to the point I had selected to start my climb or not. Eventually I guess I must be close enough to have a go so I park my scooter and look up through the woods. I can hardly see any sky, let alone a recognisable point, but I just know the mountain must be there. Filled with courage I start to climb. The ground is very steep and slippery with all those leaves, but by jumping from tree to tree I have sufficient things to hold on to in order not to slide all the way down again. Apart from painful, this would have been quite embarrassing... :-)
Slowly I'm beginning to make out more and more blue in between the highest trees. Could it be that I'm already approaching the summit?... No... It's just a wide open space filled with what looks like an avalanche of rocks. Above these rocks there's another forest. But it appears to me that the summit couldn't be far beyond that so I just carry on, leaping from one rock to the next until I reach the outskirts of that second forest. The view is just spectacular and I can already see our house way below in the distance, so I must already be quite high indeed.
I climb through the woods again. Steep... tiring... slippery... The top can't be far now... it can't be far... Again there's more and more blue in between the leaves... it must be right over there...
Uh... not quite. Apart from having slightly miscalculated my point of departure (i.e. much too far to the west, right under that incredibly steep wall of rock in stead of the easier way through the woods on the left) I'm absolutely gutted to find out that the hardest part is yet to come! Oh bother...
Holding onto branches, leaves or even lumps of grass, I manoeuvre very carefully to the east, high, forested cliffs as well right above as below me. Very scary but still doable. Again there are more and more trees which give me grip and places to rest and I climb and climb... And then... the trees in front of me open up... behold... the meadow with the tree where I wanted to be so very much... I've made it!!!
The panorama is just breathtaking from the summit! Here's a zoomed-in picture of our house, indicated with a red arrow. I called Christine with my mobile and told her to get the binoculars. "Yes!", she said, "I can see you, barely, but still...!"
As usual I've made a 360° panorama. You can download it here:
It's over 6MB but I can assure you that it's well worth it, at least I think so...
Then, after about half an hour of gazing and feeling good about myself, I decide that it's time to go down again. By chance I meet a local sheep herder who was looking for his flock (they're roaming about freely in the mountains) and he told me that there's a much easier way down, right along the westerly edge. It's steep, he assured me, but not too difficult. I'm holding my breath because I'm not really a big fan of "steep", "deep" and ladders but decide to give it a go. All in all, this mountain is steep everywhere. One last look at the summit...
And one other piece of rock, sticking out just a tad lower...
The way down...
When I've finally reached more solid ground about half an hour later, I meet the road again I was following earlier on to reach the mountain. Now I'm following it down, hoping to find my dear little Vespa again. It's almost an hour's walk, during which I actually spot a male deer, and eventually... there it is...
Riding home again, watching the sunset...
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