We stayed at a much fancier hut (Rifugio Pederu, which I mentioned in the previous post) than before, I’m not sure which one I prefer more between the simple hut the first night and fancy hut the second night, ha. I loved the remoteness and simplicity of the first but having a steaming hot shower is always nice too.

The trek today was much longer than the day before, about 10 miles and 4,000 elevation gain. We hiked straight up or straight down for most of it but had one relaxed section that was pretty flat meandering through a beautiful valley. It was out of the norm for the flatness but we enjoyed it. We also hiked up and over a pass to a little lake and phew, it was snowy, windy, and icy. We took our time on the snow and ice and it all worked out a-ok. Once we got to the lake, Austin decided to ice bath sitting in the freezing alpine lake and I decided to walk into the water to ice part of my legs. After we got out, we both were quite cold and headed to our next hut. The trek to the hut was about 20 minutes of straight down switchbacks so our legs felt like jello. The hut was place in such a stunning location tucked up against a huge rock wall, it was more remote that the previous night’s and we loved our stay there. We got to the hut around 3pm and passed time outside in the sun, sipped on an aperol spritz, read, watched the llamas, and met a couple of families (one from Israel and one from San Francisco). It is quite impressive that these kiddos are trekking as much as they are! One family had a 10 year old girl who was crushing it, I could see us doing something like this as a family once we have kids. Once the sun went down, it got even colder so we headed inside and played cards until dinner. The huts definitely do not short you on food, it’s actually great because after hiking big days, refueling is important!

The gully you can spot between the mountains in the first photo is the one we descended to get to the lake. The second photo is a picture on our descent in the gully, it was quite steep and icy!