After 5 hours of driving we're almost back where we started...

The main ridge of the Alps is a formidable barrier between Switzerland and Italy, and the Monte Rosa massif, with the Dufourspitze (4634m) as the Swiss country high point, is the highest part. We had been on the Swiss side of it until this morning, hoping to climb the Dufourspitze, among others, but the snow conditions were not good. We only got a few hundred metes above the 3000m mark, with the top layer of the snow being too soft to make good progress. And so we decided to go down and drive around to the Italian side, where the ski lifts provide easy access, reaching as high as 3275 at Punta Indren, and several refugios much higher up make everything a whole lot easier. We are approaching the village of Alagna, our destination for the day. As the crow flies, that's some 20 km from where we slept the night before. However, there is no road nearby crossing the Swiss-Italian border and so we had to take the long way around, over the Simplon pass. It was a scenic drive all right, but it took 5 hours. Had the terrain been easy, we could have walked that distance in less time! 4 July 2013.