Читать книгу Walking and Trekking in the Gran Paradiso. Alta Via 2 trek and 28 day walks онлайн

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A 1981 census put the permanent population of the Gran Paradiso at 8359, in sharp contrast to the 1881 peak of 20,616. A large number of villages have been abandoned over this period and walkers will find themselves wandering along age-old paths punctuated with votive shrines and passing through long-empty hamlets decorated with intriguing religious frescoes. Higher up, the functional shepherds' huts give a clear picture of now-historic lifestyles.

Today, the Gran Paradiso National Park has a nucleus of 51 rangers (four of whom are women) who spend their time on patrols, carrying out essential wildlife censuses and discouraging poaching. The Park does not have an easy life. Illegal hunting continues, storms frequently require urgent bridge and path maintenance work and, whatever government is in power, funds are cut drastically so that there are never enough staff or facilities.

Some statistics

From its beginning with the royal donation of 2200 hectares, the park today has a total area of 70,000 hectares (700km2). Of this, 10 per cent is wooded, 16.5 per cent used for pasture and agriculture, 24 per cent uncultivated and 40 per cent classified sterile. A total of 57 glaciers of varying dimensions occupy 9.5 per cent. Visitors can observe a wide range of ice-related phenomena: vast rock slabs polished smooth by the passage of some ancient glacier; groups of ‘roches moutonnées’, so called due to their similarity to recumbent sheep; U-shaped valleys crafted by the long-gone ice mass and erratics or huge boulders carried far from their starting place by the glacier into different geological contexts.