This weekend I went with Fabio and Michele hiking on the mountains. I love hiking but it was quite some time I didn’t go, so I was a bit excited. Our target was Scaffaiolo lake (1775m), a place on the Appennini mountains between Modena and Pistoia, in the Frignano Natural Park area. The plan was to drive to hut Capanno Tassoni (1317m) and then walk up hill from there.

We weren’t equipped with complex stuff, in particular no crampons and no ice axes, so Michele called the hut’s caretaker to check for weather and snow conditions. Luckily enough, we were told there was some snow around 1500m but nothing difficult. My equipment was: a bottle of water, a couple sandwiches, one apple, some chocolate, a compass, a map, Aku boots, a waterproof wind-stopper jacket, hat, sunglasses.

Once we got to Capanno Tassoni - around 10am - we wore boots, reviewed the map, checked everything and started to walk uphill on trail CAI415, heading to Croce Arcana pass (1680m). Initial landscape was green forest. As expected, after a while we found ourselves walking over snow, but nothing too difficult. Luckily enough, my trousers turned out to be mostly snow-proof and the weather was warm enough so the thin jacket was sufficient.

In 80 minutes we made it to the pass. Up there you find no tree at all, just thin grass, and the pass is at the ridge on the border between Emilia Romagna and Toscana so the wind flows strong and steady moving between the two sides of the Appennini chain. A little cross and a military monument with a pair of howitzers mark the place. From there we switched to trail CAI00, that is walking east-bound on the ridge. The top of the mountains was mostly clean, probably because the south slope is more exposed to the sun and maybe also because of the stronger wind, so the walk was definitely easy with the added bonus of an awesome 360 degrees view on the surrounding valleys. Believe it or not, there were people jogging and cycling over there.

Moving forward we climbed mount Spigolino (1825m), rested a bit on the top and finally reached Lake Scaffaiolo (1775m) at 1pm, just on time to taste a big slice of hand-made blueberry cake at Rifugio Duca Degli Abruzzi. Good! Lake Scaffaiolo is a strange water basin on the top of the mountain. The ridge splits in two parallel lines and rain water (and melting snow) accumulate in the middle, forming a thin lake (just 2.5m deep). At least twenty people were there, resting, sunbathing, playing with their dog, having lunch, wetting their feet in the lake.

We tried to go down though trail CAI401 but bad signals hidden by snow made us get it wrong, so after some off-track we ended up on trail CAI333. No problem, the path was beautiful anyway and through CAI335 we quickly joined CAI401 in Cingio Ermidiano. At that point the weather got really warm. I had to undress to a simple t-shirt. From there we followed CAI401 to Della Riva pass and finally we took CAI445 back to Rifugio Tassoni. We walked 6h30 in total: whoa!