will accept these reasons as being sufficient in themselves to go there, while those coming under their own steam from France will see it as the first valley to explore when travelling down Valle d’Aosta from Courmayeur and the Mont Blanc tunnel. With no obvious display of its appeal from the insignificant entrance at Leverogne, Val Grisenche nevertheless leads to much quiet beauty, and few who appreciate nature in the raw will be disappointed by what they find there.
In its lower reaches the valley is narrow and heavily wooded, but as you head south-westward so it widens to a few rough pastures and small, huddled hamlets, stone-built and little changed by the centuries. Planaval lies below a tributary glen through which a trail visits a ruined hamlet, with a side-path climbing to the blue-green Lago di Fondo, while the main trail continues alongside the Château Blanc glacier before crossing a glacier pass traversed by both Alta Via 2 and the GTGP long-distance routes. On the far side of the col, and some way below it, stands Rifugio Deffeyes with several tarns nearby, and another trail cutting back over Passo Alto into the Sopra glen by which a two-day circuit could be achieved.
Another major trail leading from Planaval strikes upvalley, rising on a long slant across the left-hand mountainside to Lago di San Grato which has a small stone chapel at its southern end. Several trails break away from this tarn; one of these leads to a crossing of the frontier ridge at Col du Mont, on the French side of which lies the privately-owned Refuge la Motte. Returning from this col to Val Grisenche a good path descends to a service road and the bed of the valley, passing on the way a memorial that recalls the death by avalanche during the last war, of German officers and their prisoners who were being forced to carry supplies up to the col.
Upvalley beyond Planaval there are more hamlets and clusters of simple buildings. Valgrisenche itself boasts a foodstore and a post office, and from it a walking route that heads up the true right bank of the valley before climbing to Rifugio de l’Épée. Above this hut Col de la Finestra (or Col Fenêtre) provides a high route into Val di Rhêmes. Continuing beyond Valgrisenche village you come to Bonne, set on a ledge overlooking the dammed Lago di Beauregard, the only unfortunate scar in the valley. This long ribbon of reservoir was unwanted and deeply resented by the local population when it was created in the 1960s, because it drowned the hamlet of Fornet. Resentment lingers on as, apparently, it has not yet been used to capacity.
After Bonne a service road climbs high above the lake through scarlet masses of rosebay willowherb, then descends to the main Dora di Valgrisenche below the buildings of Grand Alpe and the trail junction for Col du Mont. A farm building nearby has been adapted to serve as a simple bar/restaurant. Vehicles are not allowed beyond this point, and only footpaths and farm tracks score into the wild, upper region that entices from the south.
Here Val Grisenche rises under a glacial cirque topped by the Grande Sassière, where the Ghiacciaio di Gliairetta sweeps across the cirque’s header wall which carries the international frontier in an eastward kink – ghiacciaio, incidentally, being the Italian word for glacier. This upper part of the valley is an untamed delight. Laced with numerous streams and waterfalls, and with the Italian Alpine Club’s (CAI) Rifugio Mario Bezzi set at 2284 metres on the right bank of the Dora di Valgrisenche at Alp Vaudet, the lonely uplands may be explored at leisure. Apart from glacier crossings and summit routes that lie outside the scope of this book, more walking trails entice across both of the valley’s limiting walls. On the western side Col du Lac Noir and Col du Rocher Blanc, the two separated by Point du Rocher Blanc, offer ways over the frontier to the valley of Isère below Tignes, while the east wall has a crossing point at Col le Bassac Derè leading to the upper Val di Rhêmes and Rifugio Benevolo. Another worthwhile outing from the Bezzi hut, a local there-and-back route but on a poorly defined footpath, takes you across the meadows of Piano di Vaudet and up to the tarn of Lago di San Martino north-east of the hut.
The foregoing paragraphs offered just a few suggestions of walking possibilities in the valley. There are, of course, many others, including a circular tour made by adopting existing paths, or yet more ridge crossings to west or east. By linking two or more cols demanding circuits show themselves as distinct possibilities, while activists with scrambling experience will never run short of ideas for collecting summits with outstanding panoramas.
Val di Rhêmes
Gained by road from Villeneuve, which has a useful tourist office, the next valley to the east of Val Grisenche is Val di Rhêmes, a broader, more open glen than its neighbour, whose river more or less defines the national park’s western boundary. A little longer than Val Grisenche, there are clear signs that outside money is being spent on the renovation of several hamlets in a tasteful way. There’s camping to be had in Rhêmes St Georges, and modest hotel accommodation in Rhêmes Notre-Dame, a small but pretty village with a foodstore, while set upon a grassy bluff near the head of the valley Rifugio Benevolo attracts plenty of day visitors by virtue of a short and easy (and extremely attractive) approach from the roadhead at Thumel.
This waterfall is seen on the way to Rifugio Benevolo in Val di Rhêmes
Whilst there are walks to be had in the valley’s lower and middle sections, the main concentration here should be focused on the Benevolo hut. Around it green pastures are buckled into hillocks and hollows backed in the south by jutting cliffs and crags, and dominated by the impressive rock tower of Granta Parei (3387m). The actual head of the valley is blocked by a low amphitheatre – a scene of ice and snow, small peaks, big rubble-strewn moraines, and level pastures pitted with marmot burrows. The French border traces the cirque crest, beyond which lies the Vanoise National Park, while to east and west projecting ridges have their own appeal.
One highly recommended day walk from the Benevolo hut makes a circuit of Truc Santa Elena, a rocky hill rising a short distance away to the south. On tackling this circuit one has an evolving variety of scenery to enjoy, from gentle pastures to rough scree bowls, from a close view of glaciers and churning moraines to big rock walls and waterfalls, boulder tips and small tarns with alpine flowers at their edges. On a beautiful September day under perfect walking conditions I had this circuit to myself, other than the marmots, that is, while around the hut dozens of visitors sat blinking in the sunlight.
Other possibilities inevitably involve the traverse of walling ridges. Although Alta Via 2 avoids the higher crossings (it tackles cols on either side of Rhêmes Notre-Dame farther downstream), the true mountain wanderer will surely not be deterred by a rich selection of cols above the 3000 metre mark, most of which are clearly defined and in all but unseasonal weather should be easy enough to follow, whilst still being demanding enough to provide a sense of achievement at the end of the day. To the east of Rifugio Benevolo the walling ridge divides Val di Rhêmes from the upper Val Savarenche. Three high cols here offer linking routes, and since two huts lie on the far side of the ridge, on the Nivolet plateau, scattered with lakes and astride the borders of Aosta and Piedmont, more circular tours become obvious temptations.
Traditional buildings in the Val Savarenche, Eastern Graians
Val Savarenche
Road access to this valley from Valle d’Aosta is the same as that for Val di Rhêmes until Introd, from which handsome village superb westward views show the Italian face of Mont Blanc shining in the morning light. Val di Rhêmes and Val Savarenche are similar in their lower reaches, both being narrow, heavily wooded V-clefts that open to green pastures. Val Savarenche is a little wilder than its neighbour, though, and with the Gran Paradiso itself forming the main attraction, shared equally with the next glen to the east, Valnontey. This dividing ridge is, however, not solely of mountain interest on account of Gran Paradiso, for the northern end proudly boasts the shapely Grivola (3969m), and there’s also the Gran Serra, Herbetet and other notable peaks that draw the eye with their graceful forms. Several hamlets are spaced along the bed of the valley, all of which have some form of accommodation. There’s camping to be had just south of Creton, a wooded campsite (Camping Gran Paradiso) a little further upstream on the true right bank of the river, and another more open site at the roadhead at Pont, while no less than four huts provide accommodation on the walling mountains: