left margin


 

We brewed up soup and ate our first batch of cheese and salami. Wonderful. The weather held, as luck would have it, until we completed the first passage delicat—a quaint phrase which actually refers to your life-expectancy, not to the rocky, steep, pathless stretch of trail that it purports to mark on the map.

Figure 4: Brambles and bracken

And then the rains came. We had crossed Capu Ghioru (1486 m), the last of the day's cols, and could now see the hut. The sight, which filled us with joy and relief on this our first day, we soon came to realize was a menace in disguise. In some cases we could have even thrown a stone onto the apparition, but that did not prevent us taking anything up to two hours to actually step through its portals. On this occasion we were lucky. A mere one hour later, with water spilling out of the top of our boots, and with the appendages dropping off our alloy simians, we finally collapsed through the door.

Alfie and Martha had built up quite a lead by the time they broached the refuge, so that by the time Claudia and I reached its sanctuary, Alfie had already worked some wizardry with the stove, and it was starting to show signs of warmth. Since I thought I was already soaked to the skin and freezing, I couldn't think of a better time to brave the shower advertised outside the refuge. Wrong. On both counts. Firstly, in my haste to get the ordeal over with, I slipped right off a rock slab and hit the ground base before apex. Now I was wet, but I was also covered in mud and had professional-looking grazes on my back and hands. But that is what showers are for. So I stood under the stream of mountain-temperature water for as long as I could stand (twenty seconds at least), and attempted to wash my self and my shorts. Now I was really wet and freezing, so back to the refuge, trying not to repeat the acrobatics of the route down.
 

Dinner was prepared. The so-called drinking water had insects in it, but if you poured carefully they stayed at the bottom of the container. We tried not to think what microscopic things might be in there, if the macroscopic things were so obvious and prevalent.

As if the gods were trying to cheer us up and egg us on, there was half a bottle of wine on the table. It seemed inconceivable that someone had lugged wine all the way up there (still in its glass bottle). That someone should have done so, and then not drained it, was bordering on madness. Or, they were coming back. Towards the end of the meal (at the cheese course as luck would have it), Alfie and I convinced ourselves that indeed the owner was mad, and was therefore not coming back. We toasted him or her and savored the abandoned nectar with our cheese.

2 - 3 - 4