The First Three Days on the GR20

      After a delicious breakfast at the Hotel U Castellu, in Vizzavona, we started our first day on the GR20. We ascended steadily, hiking now in a beautiful green light filtered through the heavy canopy of beech trees, now on pine-needle-soft soil in pine forests, now on open slopes with views over mountains to the sea. We got to the Refuge U Figonu at quarter till three. Ten minutes later the heavens opened with a downpour of rain. We registered at the refuge, then walked through the rain with our backpacks to find an unoccupied dry tent, where we stowed our gear before returning to the refuge for dinner.

The refuge was crowded with people escaping the rain. The food was awful (mashed-up stew, followed by chunks of chewy beef), but at dinner we made friends with two German men, Patrick and Peter, who had started the GR 20 in Moncalle, and a German woman, Britta, who was hiking the second half of the GR20 alone because her boyfriend had had to drop out. (See last week's post.)

      The next day we climbed still higher, wading (sometimes knee-deep for me) across two beautiful large rivers

and hiking to a broad prairie of low-growing Scotch broom before descending steeply through a recently burned forest, then, in mid-afternoon down a steep, rocky road that was murder on my feet. Just after we arrived at the Refuge di Vertdi,, the rain poured down. We had planned to hike another two miles to Refuge Prati, but, warm and dry in di Verdi, where there was a fire in the fireplace, hiking boots steaming dry on the hearth, a dog asleep in a tunnel under the fireplace, and a cook cooking meat on the fire, we were grateful enough to stay there, even though it would add two miles to the next day's already long hike – ten miles, now, to Refuge d'Usciolu. We ate a delicious dinner of pork and zucchini with the two Dutchmen and Britta.

Britta and me preparing our packs for the day's hike

      The next day we were in the high country at last. We climbed high. We climbed and climbed, but in a cloud that obscured all views. We did some serious, difficult rock climbing, the hand-over-hand kind, pulling ourselves up big-step rocks, squeezing through narrow rock passes. When the trail finally took us to the top of one side of the ridge and over it, we found it taking us up the other side – up, up, up, over, and up up, up, and back over again, in a sort of climbing zig-zag. Just as I thought the trail had at last turned down, it perversely started up again, then more seriously up, climbing a whole darn rocky mountain peak. When we got to the top, we crossed the knife-edge spine of the ridge and started down the other side, but not very far down before we started up again.

      There was no top.

      At the first drops of rain, we stopped to don rain gear. When serious rain didn't materialize, we stopped to take rain gear off. When rain seemed imminent again, we put it back on. Then it did rain. Then it was raining hard. And then, by gum, the rain turned to hail. And up and up and up we went, in the hail and the rain, to the very tip-top of the sharply pointed peak. I thought it was downright sadistic for the trail to go there. In the hail and hard rain.

      But, of course, that's where the trail had to go to get us where we were going. We kept expecting d'Usciolu over every ridge, but no. Nothing. No refuge, no people ahead. Only the cloud, the mountain, an expanse of rock or meadow. The day was waning. Had we passed d'Usciolu? But how could we have? But where was it? Without battery power in the phone, we couldn't check the map. Rain poured down. I began to imagine us having to spend the night huddled together under a protective rock, 6400 feet on the mountain.

      "If we can't see it around this next corner," Mike said, "I think we might have pass it."

      Around the corner – no refuge. I was dismayed, but Mike was staring intently into the valley. "Look," he said. "I see a spot of orange. And tents!" I couldn't see them, but I told him I was glad to believe in his mirage.

      So we came down the mountain into d'Usciolu,

Farther down the mountain, where the refuge is more visible – and other hikers!

arriving in a flash-flood creakbed in which two horses and a mule were tethered, and then crossing a muddy area where people were trying to direct water away from their tents. Tents spilled down the hill higgledy-piggledy. I couldn't find the reception. People were lined up in the rain to buy food and drink at the store, which would open shortly. After wandering around stupidly for a while, we were directed to a doorway, where I told the man there that we had reservations for a tent that night.

      "Where's your proof?" he demanded. I explained that I had made reservations online and hadn't received any proof. He was surly, but when I showed him my passport and he found my name on a list, he assigned us to tent #18.

      It took us a while to find tent #18 as we wandered through the maze of tents in the rain, but when we did, that was it for me. I didn't like the crowded, unfriendly, decidedly unaesthetic atmosphere and the muddy wet site. In spite of the rain cover for my pack, my sleeping was wet on both ends. I crawled into it to dry it with my body heat and refused to move.

      Mike went to the store and returned with nuts, two oranges (!), and trail mix for tomorrow's breakfast and lunch, and a beer for him and an orange juice for me. And chocolate. We ate the half sandwiches we had saved from that wonderful Refuge di Verdi, and that was dinner.  It was still raining outside the tent. Inside, I read My Antonia to Mike until I was too sleepy to continue.

      It had been a day of challenges – difficult hiking, bad weather, long hours. It was one of my favorite days on the trail.