Ok, what are you supposed to do when you have 16 happy guests coming to Monterosa for skiing 3 days and the snow has not come yet?
You worry like crazy and think how the crap you are going to manage this.
Then as a miracle, you are driving your rental car to Champoluc and white flakes fall slowly to the road – and you don’t even have any chains….
But this is amazing and all is going to be fine at the end!
Well, it is not snowing forever, and the open slopes in Champoluc these days are only 2, Ostafa and Sarezza. Not so much you think, but then you also think that this was what there was at all when you were a teenager, for a century ago, and you were in love with this place. So where is the problem?
We skied our two slopes and then we went hiking to one of the enchanted places around: Mascognaz. It is a 1600th century village at 2000 meters with a private road accessible only to hard core vehicles as a Swedish military vehicle or scooters.
To come here we went through the woods on a Walser path. The Walser inhabited these regions above 1500 meters and spread out all over the Alps with their beautiful villages.
We had a discussion on our way about how self sufficient they were. They handled on salt for example, and they probably exchanged salt against milk or things like that. So they were not totally self sufficient in the end. Anyways - they lived where others could not manage to live. As Mascognaz.
Now there is a charming hotel in Mascognaz, that a man with a vision let build here for love more than believing he would get so much money out of it. He is as I am an old tourist in Champoluc, his grand father hiking all the way by feet to get here at the beginning of the last century. That man started a trend in the valley of Champoluc, of rebuilding old houses and letting old villages on their last breath get back to life again.
On the ancient Walser path we go between Crest and Mascognaz and my Swedish guests are enchanted. It is probably one of the best experiences of the whole trip. So different to all that they have been imagining of thinking about their trip to the Alps.