Cingino dam ibex

We have always dreamed to see alpine ibex in the wild. As we weren't lucky to meet them, we decided to go to a place where they would be for sure - dam of Cingino lake. Unfortunately, it is not an easy place to reach without car, so we had to wait some time for an opportunity to go.

 

Finally, one nice day in September we got to lake Campliccioli to start a trail. 

 

To get to that lake go to Antrona Schieranco till lake of Antrona and then either continue up the very narrow (with ~15 hairpin turns) road with traffic prohibited (there is a sign) or start a track from the lake (approx. 45 minutes more). The (prohibited) road is supposedly not used on the weekends, but when we came on Tuesday we were "lucky" to meet a big cement mixer car coming down. To our luck there was a place to move from the road to let him pass, but if we were several turns further up it would have been much more difficult, because there are some parts of the road without any place for two cars to pass each other.

 

The first animal we met was not an ibex but a marmot, just near Campliccioli lake. The trail is easy and the views of the valley are spectacular in the beginning, approximately till altitude of 1700 meters (~2 hours). Then it turns right and the steeper ascent begins.

After meeting some more marmots and sheep, when our GPS showed that about 100 meters up left we finally saw a part of the dam in the distance, and even from here we noticed that ibex were there. With this encouragement soon we reached the lake of Cingino (after about 3:30 hours from the start). Though we had seen the pictures on the internet, we still stared at ibex in amazement, while they behaved as though it was nothing special and a usual task for them to climb almost vertical dam.

 

As we started rather late (around 11:00), we had only 7 hours to return before darkness in order to come down the narrow road safely. And so, unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to continue the trail to lake Camposecco (which is kind of a usual one-day route in this area). After visiting the bivuoac near lake Cingino and refilling water bottles in the nearby fountain we descended back the same way as we went up.

 

Very nice route with wonderful views!

 

Max & Polina