We were up early on Sunday and grabbed a quick breakfast. Right before leaving for the morning hike, the mystery of why the local dog spent so much time on the ledge staring at the ground far below was solved – marmots.
And after finally spotting one, he flew down the mountain intent on capturing it. But by the time he reached the spot where the marmot had been, it was nowhere to be found. And instead he came upon and even bigger find – a mountain goat. But the dog had no chance of keeping up with it given the rough terrain and gave up following a valiant effort.
The morning hike took us up towards the Freiny glacier. In general, the hike was less severe than the most difficult portions of the hike on Saturday.
That said, there were still a few challenging sections, which included some boulder hopping. And given the uneven / unstable footing during some sections, all of us ended up taking a minor spill at one point or another.
After a couple of hours, we finally arrived at our destination – a ledge overlooking the glacier where we’d rest a bit and have a snack.
As we were enjoying the break there was a mini avalanche on the glacier. Though we weren’t in any danger in hindsight, at the time I was a bit on edge as I saw literally tons of ice crashing down in our direction. And the sound was like anything else that I'd ever heard.
The glacier was very impressive and the views of the mountains and valley below were well worth the hard work that the hike required.
We even noticed some true mountain climbers halfway up the huge vertical face in the bottom right picture above. The following is a close-up, though they’re still hard to see.
Once we regained our strength, we made our way back towards the refuge for lunch. The route back took us through some snow and gave us a nice view of the Brouillard glacier as well.
Here's a view of Rifugio Monzino from above during the return hike.
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