Riding The Triangle Ridge
“The silhouette of the Apennines’ profile in front of us and the glimmer of the lake water reflected to our eyes evoke a dance of colors, a beautiful performance that keeps us in silence. ”
Larius.
How it was used to be known.
A land which bore a man who wrote a lot of accounts on the Italian wars and battles in the 16th century. His eyewitness accounts were some of the few significant prominent sources in that period. Paolo Giovio. A chronicler he was.
Among of all his notes, one was about this land. It was firstly published in Venice, then went viral among the Romans. From there, the land became an important hub. It connected Italy and Northern Europe during the Roman Imperial period.
However later, the land’s name transformed.
Como Lake it is now.
Larius
Its name is fading away, but leaving an existence. Triangolo Lario.
It lays inside of quite an island, bordered by the two diagonal branches of Como Lake which flow to Lecco and city of Como. The geographical shape of the mountains, seen from above, creates a shape of a triangle where a 1.682 meter height of peak rests there, Monte San Primo.
I stand there, on its highest ridge. I see our group are catching their breath. The ascend we just went through was pretty tough. We started from Rifugio Martina where the paths were divided. Without realizing it, we took the steep and slippery path. We forced our knees much that we had to stop in the shade to rest them, as well as to fill in our lungs with fresh air. However, despite its difficulty, the path gives a more pleasant view than the path that crosses the inner valley.
On the highest ridge there, the transition that occurs when I look around is fascinating. To the north, a peninsula is sticking out between the two lake branches where one can see the reason why it is called a triangle. The landscape in its vertex is where Bellagio lays. I gaze further beyond. The lake cities lay comfortably on the foot of the mountains with their dramatic peaks. Then I look toward the south. The rolling hill of Brianza with its wide range of plains fills in the view. The shadow of the layered hills gives a poetry image one can find in the paintings. Lastly I gaze from the east across the west. I find a distant continuous elevated crest, dividing all these landscapes.
Not long after, the wind blows stronger. We decide to get a bit of rest after ascending for hours. We sit below the cross, take out our lunch boxes from our sacks while facing to the South. The silhouette of the Apennines’ profile in front of us and the glimmer of the lake water reflected to our eyes evoke a dance of colors, a beautiful performance that keeps us in silence.
As the sun is starting to hide itself, we start to walk down the mountain by the ridge. The path from the peak is partly covered in snow as we walk down. Our shoes get soaked, and the cold starts to sneak in from our feet pores. We need to keep on moving to burn some heat but, unhurriedly so that we don't get slipped. Along the way, the view offers a beautiful scenery of pre-Alps mountain. The weather in January is perfect as the precipitation is low while the temperature is not deadly freezing, and the peaks are covered with snow, giving us an outstanding panorama.
Along the distance we see the devoid of vegetation, but mainly colonized by scrubs which grow by itself without any handling. This is an outcome of the culture of the civilization long time ago where the beeches which had mainly covered the area had been cut for its wood which was used for heating and construction.
Walking even more down, we pass a large area of what seemed to be hay meadows, with a couple of abandoned mountain huts scattered around. They seemed to be used as a part of the cattle breeding culture to produce dairy products and human settlements back in the past. The meadow size seemed to be able to allow a lot of spacing for grazing. This can be related as a reason of the lack of the vegetation in this area, as they had cut the wood to extend the meadow for their animals, which gradually eliminated the vegetation.
Few hours later, despite the way back is filled with snow and the difficulty to see what lies underneath it, we manage to arrive back to our car and get our feet warm as they are almost frozen dipped in the snow, while thinking of getting back here in spring to see the vegetation comes to alive.
