We woke up before dawn to photograph again at Baita Segantini and its reflecting pond. Looking downhill into the valley, surrounded by peaks was also a fantastic view.
After breakfast we drove twisting mountain roads to Col Raider and its gondola. We hiked about 30 minutes to get to Rifugio Firenze. On the way, we passed a pasture with a herd of golden horses that came galloping to meet us.
We had lunch at the Rifugio, but what we ate is lost in the blur. Rifugio lunches are full meals and our main meal of the day. It was complicated when we ate as a group, since people didn’t recognize their order when the wait staff announced it. Then we had to pay individually and remember to do it before the afternoon was over. Their payment system kept track of the group order pretty well and we could tick off and pay for the items we had ordered. Sometimes it turned out that the system thought a drink was already paid for.
Mid afternoon we walked back to the gondolas with our camera packs to take the gondola to the top of Seceda ridge. (The gondola closed relatively early so we had a long time at the top to enjoy the view.) We rode high above green fields and mountain houses.
Flocks of Alpine Choughs, high-elevation crow-like birds with yellow bills, hung out at the gondola terminal and flew up in a swirl now and then. We had a class about night photography as we sat in the field with a panorama of mountains all around.
Sunset didn’t color up much, but there was a dramatic hammerhead of a storm cloud in the east that caught some pink light. The layers of distant blue mountain ridges were beautiful.
We needed our headlamps for the long hike down in the dark. It was tiring and the steep downhill revived Pam’s knee tendonitis problem. Of course it took us twice as long as everybody else, but one of the leaders acted as sweep and stuck with us since it was a new trail and very dark night.