Rifugio Citta de Fume to Rifugio Tissi

Today's portion of the trek started off with a stretch through a very green pine wood, with a bit of walking on a shoulder of a road. There was also lots of leaping between large rocks that were strewn over portions of the trail. We all played a bit of leap frog this morning with eachother due to us moving at different speeds and getting a different start time this morning.

While the forest was a very lush looking green, it wasn't all that eventful. There weren't many lookout points, and we weren't doing much in terms of elevation. After we finished walking along the shoulder of the road, and got out of the woods, that's when the views started to roll in. The trail also took us up to a ridge where there some old WWII anti-aircraft guns left around as a monument.

We didn't know it but there was an ultra marathon race in the area we were hiking.

The land around us was covered in lush green fields and forests, and criss- crossed by a handful of trails in white, standing out in stark contrast to the green around us. It was time though to start switchbacking up a mountain while staying out of the way of the marathoners who were cascading down its sides. It's amazing none of them twisted an ankle as they leaped from rock to rock.

At the top of the mountain there was a full-service hut with a rudimentary cable car-like thing for sending supplies up and down. Pretty cool looking. We hung out for a short amount of time to get a drink, and then started down the other side as the slower marathoners were making their way up towards us. Such a crowded day on trail.

There was a lake at the bottom that we explored momentarily, but there weren't any good places to sit and dip your feet in given that it was a mostly sandy shore, so we continued on around the lake through the throngs of marathon walkers and runners. Another magnificent sheer wall of mountain and stone greeted us around the other side of the lake as we crested over a small hill.

Rain clouds were starting to move in, so we quicked our pace as we went up and down over small hills and rocky embankments as the trail weaved its way through the mountainside terrain. Luckily it didn't not rain much, only a fine misting here and there.

Eventually the trail turned to the right and we started to ascent once more up to our place of rest of the night: Rifugio Tissi. It was perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking a good-sized town around a lake below. These were some epic views from up here: the tall wall of mountains on one side, and this perilous dropoff to the other overlooking the tops of other mountains and the town.

After dinner we watched the sun set from this cliff overhang, it was a truly beaufitul sight. We stayed up there for hours, until the stars came out. We even spotted Jupiter, which was especially bright around this time of the year.