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Alpine Crossing 2013 – Day 28: Biv. Orsiera – Usseaux

We got up at 6:00am. After so many hours of sleep I should be awake…but I was not. All the others were still sleeping. We just packed our bags and left the “bedroom”. I just had to go back once to put the blanket back into the cupboard…oh my god… I think it is always like that…better don’t go back if you left once! The air inside could have been cut into half… We left the Bivaccio – without breakfast – again. And I realized how much I need a coffee in the morning! Again, the weather was very strange this morning. There were huge cumulus clouds already at 6am…and parts of the sky were in red. This usually is not a good sign. But what to do? Resign again? Drawback again? This kind of weather really sucks…it takes away all the fun and creates very unpleasant situations. In fact all we do always and absolutely depends on the weather. At home the weather maybe is not nice…but I can ignore it or not. It does not make a difference. Here it is essential…and nobody can control it and in the mountains it is often even hard to predict it. Many words…anyway…we decided to climb up this time – about 700m. When we arrived at the pass the other side was completely in clouds. We climbed down a few meters and were right inside the fog…and so we were not able to observe the weather any more. God how I hate this situation. You don’t know if you should hurry or not – you are just like blind. Usually we check the weather reports every morning using the smartphone but since we arrived at the Bivaccio we did not have any signal…and asking others for the weather didn’t work for us – at least not in Italy. In fact many people just don’t know because they don’t care and often we heard the same thing: “It’s okay…it’s good like today…maybe. Some rain maybe in the afternoon…maybe not…”. In other words “I don’t know and I don’t care.”. We climbed down through the fog. Actually we both needed a break but we did not want to stop. Luckily no rain and no storm came today. So we made it safely to Usseaux – according to the local marketing (again) “one of the nicest Italian cities” :P . After we had a shower (it was absolutely required after our night in the Bivaccio) we went to the only cafè we found. There were quite some people around. We were just ignored for 10 minutes. Then we started to waive. We were still ignored for 10 minutes (it was no self service :) ). At home I would have already left the cafè..but here in “one of the nicest villages of Italy” I can’t just leave :P Suddenly a woman came and asked if we want to eat. I said “duo cafe latte per farvore”…and what is cake in Italian…???….”and do you have cake”? I know this is  not nice but the waitress just turned around and went to another table…and ignored us for another 10 minutes. Then we left – without coffee and without cake… Anyway.. The dinner tonight was great. We sat together with a family from Switzerland, four others from Germany and a woman from Finland who spoke 7 languages fluently… scary :) Everything was made from local products. We spent a nice evening on the hut and went to bed at 10pm. According to the hut owner the weather will be fine tomorrow…if we can believe that?

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