A “cursed” valley and some hikers not exactly prepared. To put it mildly. With one of them even having to spend the night near some abandoned houses waiting for rescue. This is what emerges from the account of the Massa station of the Alpine and Speleological Rescue, which between Saturday, July 25 and Sunday, July 26 carried out two interventions always located in the Valle degli Alberghi, a solitary and wild place in the Apuan Alps now completely uninhabited. The only human presence, besides the quarry remains, is the Casa degli Alberghi, at 973 meters above sea level, a large building that provided shelter to quarrymen and is located on the slopes of Monte Contrario.
Hikers off trail
The first activation of the Massa station of the SAST, which arrived around 7:30 PM on Saturday, July 25, concerned the rescue of three young people from the province of Florence. The hikers had left in the morning from Val Serenaia with the aim of spending the night at the Aronte bivouac at Passo della Focolaccia. During the journey, they took the wrong path and found themselves on the opposite side, at the bottom of the Valle degli Alberghi. The three, exhausted, without water reserves and with unsuitable footwear, were rescued by the ground team, which had left at 8 PM from Biforco. One of the three components was rescued by the regional air ambulance Pegaso 1.
Read more Superenalotto, today’s winning numbers, Saturday, July 25
Missing hiker
On the morning of Sunday, July 26, however, the station was activated for a missing hiker who was later found by the regional air ambulance Pegaso 3 at the beginning of Canal Fondone, at about 1000 meters above sea level. The man spent the night sheltered by the old disused houses located above the cava Romana, on trail 167. From an initial reconstruction, it seems that the man, after having walked the via ferrata of Monte Contrario, lost the path several times. The ground team reached the point resulting from the coordinates obtained from the Single Emergency Number but did not find him, so the air ambulance was activated. A team of firefighters also joined the scene to support the operations. In the end, the man was found by the air ambulance crew, who then headed to the Cinquale base.
