This mountain range brings into play the saying "If at first you don't succeed, try,try again". After the first attempt which was thwarted by rainy weather and new knowledge of it's difficulty, we returned and gave it a second try. This time from another city above it, with the idea of walking down to it as suggested by our faithful phone contact (still don't know his name). So upon arrival we were told by one gentleman to go just a little further up the mountain to a little town called Farafetta. There are so many mountains in this range, we have no clue which one is ours, but were pretty positive that the giant one staring at us more than likely is our mountain. God was faithful again providing people along the way like arrows, to point us in the right direction until you get to the last person which has three maps and lots of details and has been there.
So full of info and pretty clear directions, of we go down into the valley. I'm starting to dislike the going down into the valley part because there is always a going back up part and boy did we go up. We hadn't gotten far and Joyce started to break down (the attack) overheating (wasn't hot out), stomach ache, winded like we had been climbing a steep mountain but we were only 5 minutes in. We decided to eat our sandwiches now instead of continuing our fast of fruit only, hoping this would help. It didn't, but true to form she plowed through and eventually overcame the set back and up we went into areas of fallen trees, over grown grass, mud ,oh did I mention somewhat poorly marked paths, ticks, low branches and going up weaving across rocky water runoffs that thankfully were dry, but sleek with moss, we finally arrived 3 hours later at the top of Femmina Morta. All along the way we saw signs of the war, foxholes, bunkers and when we got to the top what seemed like a command post or what was left of it. We staked claim, broke bread proclaimed that the Kings kids have arrived to break down the enemies altars and set up the Kings place.
Now at this point there were 4 ways we could go to get to our anticipated next peaks of Alpi di Vitigliana & Mount Verruca but we did not find the Green Marker sign telling us which way to go. We took pictures of the map but when your up there, and you can't see the sun through the trees, you have no clue which way is which. We needed 00, but all that was there was 19. Should we keep going straight, which went down, and I'm sure back up again, or to the right, or to the left on 19? I wrote down sign numbers and had 19 but crossed it off when the guy pulled out yet another map. Maybe 19 will turn into 00. We started heading left, but Joyce really felt we were walking on the ridge of Femmina Morta so after about 10 minutes we starting heading to the right for about 30 minutes, but it was really heading down hill, getting darker, starting to rain and there were no markers indicating we were heading towards our mountains. We decided it would be best to get off the mountain instead of
wandering ( most likely for hours) hoping to find something that would
give us some direction, wisdom prevailed.
So down we went a bit discouraged we couldn't not carry on, because we would have to come back up this way again to finish them or try to hit them from down in the valley on the other side of the mountain range, even though we were told how difficult it would be. So we decided to continue on with our plan to sleep in our car and get up real early and do what would have been our last mountain. We had a student coming with her parents to spend the night so we were kind of going to be under a little time pressure if we didn't get up early so we decided to position ourselves at the base of Mt Citerna.
Imagine our surprise when we arrived at the base to find a little trail sign that said 3 hours. Really because on the map it seemed like it was only about 1/2 that time. Guido decided to park the car and go back and read the sign because he saw something barely visible as well. He came back and said it was one of the big mountains we missed and it could be reached by this same trail, and that was what was 3 hours away. Yahooooo. We parked the car and took a walk through the countryside. Imagine that after all the walking lol. What a beautiful sunset to end a really emotionally hard day.
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