Porta di Buciaga, from La Rasega

Access

The starting point, on foot, for reaching the Adamé Valley: La Rasega - a locality in the hamlet of Valle in the municipality of Saviore dell'Adamello. To reach the locality of "La Rasega" you take the state road as far as CEDEGOLO then turn right onto the provincial road for Fresine and Valle (the junction is located immediately after the bottleneck in the centre of Cedegolo; not to be confused with the second junction, for Cevo and Saviore, which is located further on, in the village of Demo). The route climbs about 10 km (at Fresine continue straight on) and then, after the hamlet of Valle, continues along the valley on a conveniently level tarmac road for another 2 km or so until you come to a group of farmhouses and a small football pitch, where you can park, either immediately before the sports ground or immediately afterwards.

Introduction

A long hike that requires good training and familiarity with walking at high altitude and overcoming considerable altitude differences.

Description

When the road beyond the 'Rasega' is practicable, you can continue on to malga Lincino, saving about 50 minutes of walking time. (The road is narrow, has some critical hairpin bends, but is asphalted and not too steep). On foot from the "Rasega", follow the road to the malga LINCINO and then continue to the right along the well-marked path. The initial stretch from the "Rasega", after the first two hairpin bends, can also be walked on the (poorly signposted) path which is on the left, passes close to the mountain and comes out on the road at the "Stella Alpina". The "Edelweiss" is a pizza bar in "Le Crüste": it is a characteristic building for its "näif" decorations and the edelweiss in relief on the granite walls, the work of the late owner, a well-known mountaineer and former local partisan. Continuing on, now on the road, you pass by the "Le Crüste" hut; then you reach the "Morcc de Töle" locality, where there is a shrine commemorating a tragic event at the beginning of the 19th century: an avalanche hit and killed a large group of young people who were going "per isiga". Going per isiga meant going with a basket, up the mountain slopes, even in very steep places, to collect grass (the isiga is a grass characteristic for being stringy and resistant to tearing), take it home or to the farmstead, let it dry and use it to feed the livestock, as they did not have sufficient hay meadows. It was particularly tiring as well as dangerous work. Immediately further upstream (visible by the protective fence now in place) there is evidence of a kiln for the manufacture of quicklime: the area is characterised by the presence of limestone rocks and is part of that belt that extends from Concarena, through Colombé, and Lincino to Baitone. This oven, albeit in its simplicity, is preserved intact as it was also used in very recent times (1940s). We then reach the Lincino malga and at the first hairpin bend we follow the path that starts to our right, and we tackle the "müla" (this is how the Lincino-Adamé path is called), in about an hour we arrive in Adamé. On the level path immediately after the junction with the uphill path, there is a memorial stone in memory of four young men who were victims of an avalanche on the Castellaccio gully. We go to the right and here we are in Adamé, here are the water catchment works and the refuge. We continue on the path, which from here on is signpost No. 1 (of the Alta Via dell'Adamello), leaving the torrent to our right; up to the malga it is practically flat, then it climbs up to overcome a slight glacial step. After the first step, a second follows, then we come to a new flat area, this time very wide. At this point, the Baita Adamé is visible, at the bottom, where the valley bends to our left. You can see, to the left, two "casine di mezzo" and to the right the Adamé hut of the CAI Cedegolo. From the refuge to the hut, under normal conditions it takes about an hour. Immediately after the hut, the path splits into two, one continues on the orographic right bank: path signpost No. 1 and then signpost No. 29 to reach, respectively: the Prudenzini hut in Val Salarno, or the Salarno pass (from the Adamé valley); the second, turns right and crosses a small bridge to the orographic left bank, and heads towards the pass and the Buciaga peak (signpost No. 36); we follow the latter. We continue for five minutes, then on our right we find a deviation, which we follow (going straight ahead we go towards the Baroni bivouac, path sign no. 30). The path zig-zags up along a hyperbolic moraine cone that extends from a small valley that descends from a narrow gully further uphill; further on, the path moves to our left to cross a rocky promontory, then turns left again and continues diagonally uphill, heading towards the Porta Buciaga pass. After the rocky promontory we have just passed, the path is not always visible, amidst the mounded rocks, we nevertheless continue between the 'jump' of the step that bounds the coster downwards and the base of Monte Buciaga. When we reach the pass, we can observe all the evidence left behind by the Alpine soldiers of the Great War: there are remains of buildings, trenches, walkways, tunnels and machine-gun firing positions; until a few years ago, considerable amounts of barbed wire and other metal debris could still be seen. During the 1915-18 war, a military cableway for transporting materials also came to this area; there is still evidence of the departure station at the bottom of the valley, near the path along the Adamé Valley, next to a large erratic farmstead. From the Adamé hut to the pass, it takes at least two and a half hours.