Monte Magnodeno via Erve

The route starts of quite steep, as this route is only 6km long in total with 580meters of ascent, you get an average gradient of about 20%. Starting from the car, you go around the corner up on the asphalt road where there is a very small trail on the left hand side after a few meters, you go up this small trail. The trail is mostly single track and never really exposed, it is easy to follow and presents no difficulties. You very quickly arrive at a junction where you take a sharp right, then you go left quite shortly after. From here on you just follow the trail and the signs indicating Monte Magnodeno. This trail is all done in the woods which gives you shade from the sun, at around 1050 meters of elevation, you leave the woods where you follow the ridge line which is quite flat for a little bit. On the right you now get a great view of Monte Resegone. There is just a little bit left untill you reach the summit, but it is a climb. There are many different small trails here but in the end they all reach the summit more or less. You’re now at the summit! Here you get rewarded with great views (hopefully if the weather is good). There is a rifugio and bivacco up the summit, the bivacco is very clean and has got a light switch and a usb 5v charging port. The rifugio is open I think on Wednesdays and Sundays, more information can be found here: http://www.magnodeno.it/ . There are also many picknick benches and tables at the summit where you can sit down and enjoy your food with a beautiful view.

Going down there are 2 routes to choose, we did the shorter one as we were short on time, the yellow route is the one we did. The blue route is a route that sparked my interest, you follow a ridge line adding about 2/2.5km to your hike, and according to the route planner that I used only an additional 20m of elevation gain.

The initial part going down there are multiple small trails, they end up at the same place so it doesn’t really matter which one you take. Here you get a great view of the alternative route and you can decide here which one you want to take.

If you follow the yellow route, be careful not to miss the exit to the left, as this trail is not easily seen and there was only an old white sign on the floor with some stones around it. The trail in the beginning is not used a lot and a little bit difficult to follow at times. Looking on the map you can see that you’ll get back to a bigger trail later on, from here on it is a lot easier to follow and quite clear on where to go. The descent is quite steep initially, but levels off later on. From the moment that it starts leveling off, you’ll also be following a water stream. This part of the hike surprised me, as we went in april, spring has just started and it was beautiful. It was very green and a lot of flowers were already blossoming. Enjoying the last bit of the trail we got back to the car. Doing this without stopping would only take you about 2 hours. We spent around 3 hours in total because we enjoyed a nice lunch on top of the mountain. It was a perfect hike if you just want to go out for the afternoon.

There is no water anywhere along the road, so you have to carry all the water up yourself, make sure you take plenty!