The Hike up Grappa

The Hike Up Grappa

So yesterday I went with a group to climb Mr. Grappa which is the mountain located behind our campus. Looking at it from campus I didn’t think it would be to challenging. So we started off and decided to stop at a café on our way for a little breakfast before heading up. One local stopped and just asked “Grappa?” I answered “Si, Grappa!” He then gave me a fairly evil smile and just said, “hope you have good shoes,” and then left. I thought about the hiking I did in Boulder, Colorado and said to myself, it can’t be much harder. After an hour of hiking from campus, we finally reached the base of the mountain. Since that was one of the most challenging hikes I had been on, I started rethinking my assumption that this would be a leisurely climb. Here is a picture of the group at the base before starting the actual hike.

About 10 minutes into the actual hike up the mountain, the trails became pretty intense to say the least. Not only were they very narrow (about 2 feet wide at the most) and steep, but the ground had a lot of loose dirt and rocks that were easy to slip on. The trail was in pretty heavy vegetation so it was hard to see how far we had climbed, and to see how much we had left. Finally, about have way up there was a clearing where we stopped to take another group photo. Here is a picture of that:

Needless to say, but most of our group was extremely tired at this point, but we all just kept pushing each other and no one wanted to give up. We had some funny conversations as we hiked on, but since this is a family site I’ll have to leave those out for now haha. We did everything we could to keep our mind off how tired we were and how bad our legs hurt from hiking, hence the funny conversations. We took our time getting up the mountain, enjoyed the sites and what not. But when we finally made it to the top, it instantly made it all worth it!!

Once we were all up there, we shared a bottle of prosseca (which is kind of an Italian champagne, but very good!) and had nutella and peanut butter sandwiches. We sat there for about half an hour enjoying the view and joking about the hike up. I been at the top of a mountain before, but I have never hiked up to one, and I have to say that it was one of the most amazing feelings ever. I can’t say I know what it would feel like to hike Everest or anything but I can tell you I had a very strong sense of accomplishment knowing I just hiked about 6 or 7 miles up a mountain. Then reality set in again and we realized we now had to hike back down the mountain. With the trails being so narrow and steep, we were concerned that the hike down would be just as hard as the hike up. But the hike down went much more smoothly, aside for a few spills by all but nothing major.

Once we got back into town we all went to a gellatoria to get gelato and to celebrate making it up and down the mountain. I am not sure of exact mileage and time but I believe the entire trip was about a 14 mile hike from campus. We left around 7:45 and got back around 2 or 2:30 so we did make good time. With the hike being so difficult, I was fairly surprised at that I was not too sore. Sure it took a lot to get up and down stairs but I thought it was going to be a little worse.