Rifugio Tissi to Rifugio Carestiato

Our way out of Rifugio Tissi took us back down towards the place we entered from yesterday afternoon, and off in the opposite direction. We walked along "The Wall", as I've come to call it, for a brief period of time before entering a gathering of small pine trees. Soon after we exited into a cleared valley and up ahead we sawa big ole herd of cows.

These cows could care less about us, which was good considering my last cow encounter resulted in me nearly having a heart attack and probably scaring that cow half to death. We walked with them, or rather they walked with us, passed some stone ruins (probably an old herders home) up until a small wire fence blocked them from going any further, and we were on our own again.

Another pine forest awaited us, tucked within spires of mountains that looked like chimney stacks. Ahead I saw a waterfall turning into a river that went off into the distance, but we ended up crossing over the top of the waterfall, instead of below it. Shame, that would have made for some good photo-ops.

It took us maybe an hour to get through the main forest part, and then the trail started to ascent towards the face of the mountains that were surrounding this area. Within the nooks and crannys of them I could see huge piles of snow hiding in the shadows and trying to hold out for as long as it could.

Eventually the trail came to a bend around the mountain side, and we passed through a little gap that reminded me of the Lord of the Rings. We met a new travelling companion here who was also German, and was doing a much longer trek through the Alpes and Dolomites which shared part of its trail with the Alta Via 1.

After this bend in the trail it was finally time to start descending, and it was a beautiful descent through a decidious forest that had plenty of stumps and rocks strewn about, plus some wooden benches for sitting on. I took a break here (I had pulled ahead of everyone else during the descent), and as a sat there a butterfly came and rested on my backpack.

The others eventually caught up and we all chilled for a bit. It wasn't much further now until our next resting point: Rifugio Carestiato. It was perched on a rocky outcrop that provided a very nice view of a valley below us, and the clouds flowing past the mountains in the distance. The presence of the forest meant there weren't many areas for exploring around the rifugio, so it was a pretty calm evening full of drinking and playing cards and eating.