Valdieri-Rifugio Remondino walk

Over a period of two decades, I reckon I've climbed more than 30 peaks in the Maritime Alps. However, the one big omission from my CV has always been the Argentera, the highpoint of the range. So this short trip with Vic seemed a good way to put that right, by treating it as a short acclimatisation peak en route to Viso. It's a long drive from Nice across the border into Liguria then Piemonte. Pleasant though, especially if you break the drive with salad nicoise in a superb Tende restaurant. The drive to the roadhead at Terme di Valdieri is astonishing: it starts off well surfaced and not too steep, but ends in several miles of bouldery unsurfaced singletrack. Not for the faint-hearted, and not ideal in the tiny C1 hire car we'd just picked up at Nice airport! The walk-in to the Remondino hut at the base of the Argentera is short and sharp, but the scenery at the end of the valley is delightful. I know the other side of this valley (i.e. across the frontier ridge around Le Boreon) very well, just a steep walk away on foot, but hundreds of miles and a day's journey by car. After weaving up through copses, a huge boulder field allows steeper upper slopes below a superb waterfall to be reached. A final steep (and hot) pull gains the upper cwm and the hut in a spectacular position below the pinnacles of Nasta and Argentera. We were both tired after a 5am start from Wales, so a few glasses of wine and an excellent meal of local game (chamois?) and mash sent us off for an early night after enjoying a wonderful cloud inversion as tendrils of mist licked up the Val di Gesso.