Breuil-Cervinia Italy

 I wandered around after I arrived, in the little village, up the trails, no one spoke English, trying to figure out the way up the mountain. I had picked up a hitchhiker, he looked like a robust fellow, maybe a climber who could help me out, but he spoke no English, and only informed me through his phone that it had snowed the night before on the mountain.  The woman in the guide center, in the same building as the tourist office, told me that guides were not taking people up the mountain yet because conditions were still too icy and snowy, and I had heard the Italian guides were so much more daring than their Swiss counterparts. But it didn’t matter, I was not going to hire a guide anyway. On my hike, in the beautiful alpine valley, I made it up to where the Duca egli Abruuzzi hut is, which is not a hut at all, but a large building that serves food to tourists and where you can sleep if you have a sleeping bag. I met a few climbers on my walk, either going up or down, getting ready to climb the mountain, none of them seemed terribly concerned, although none of them were climbing solo.