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| Skiing up |
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| Skiing down again |
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| Vulture |
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| Marmots emerging |
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| Animal tracks |
Mike here. At Easter I had my traditional ski-touring weekend with my friend Pete. This time we were in the Sesvenna hut in the Italian Alps, close to the Swiss border. On Saturday we left the EU to ascend a peak in Switzerland and re-entered a few hours later, without anybody even seeing us cross the border, let alone ask for our passports. We were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves completely alone most of the time, despite it being public holidays with perfect weather. We skied in the morning when the snow was still frozen, and spent the afternoons sunbathing on the hut terrace and admiring the views.
Every so often we spotted what looked like rocks on the snow which hadn't been there a moment before. On closer inspection these turned out to be marmots, emerging from their tunnels after their winter hibernation. Seeing that it was sunny, they fetched their families to come out and explore. Meanwhile there was a huge, impressive bird circling above. The hut warden told us that this was a young bearded vulture (or lammergeyer), whose mother had died last year and who flies over the hut every day. Sorry for the poor picture quality, but it's not easy photographing a bird several hundred metres away with a hand-held pocket camera.
The animal tracks in the snow were on a hike in the local alps a week later, and show that as well as Belka (left) and a bird (right) also squirrels and mice live up on the rocky ridges at 1700m altitude.
