Vallone degli Ortetti e Lago Paschiet

Balme is a municipality of around a hundred inhabitants in the Val d'Ala, one of the Valli di Lanzo in the province of Turin, hemmed in by the Alpi Graie and crossed by the Stura d'Ala. The village stands on the left bank of the torrent, surrounded by larch woods that close off the valley floor on three sides. From here, or more precisely from the hamlet of Cornetti — reached by taking a downhill road just before the village — access opens up to the Vallone degli Ortetti, one of the least frequented side branches of this alpine system.

The path that climbs the vallone first crosses a dense band of larch forest, where light filters in at an angle between the trunks and the undergrowth stays damp even at the height of summer. Higher up the woods thin out, giving way to historic alpine pastures — dry-stone structures bearing witness to a pastoral presence now much diminished — and to the streams that flow down from the glacial cirques above. The route, classified as of medium difficulty, allows for variants that take in the two Laghi Verdi (Green Lakes) and a detour to the Bivacco Gandolfo, before reaching Lago Paschiet, known for its dark waters that mirror the surrounding rocky ridges.

Lago Paschiet lies in a high-altitude basin where vegetation grows sparse and the landscape takes on the character of the alpine zone proper: rock, water, silence. The lake's dark colour comes from its depth and the nature of its bed, not from pollution or alteration — a trait that sets this basin apart from the clearer, more photographed alpine lakes of neighbouring valleys. The full loop route, starting and finishing at Cornetti, allows walkers to move through a sequence of distinct environments while never losing touch with the glacial morphology that shaped the entire valley.

What sets the Vallone degli Ortetti apart on the Piedmontese hiking scene is its position at the edge of the more travelled circuits. The Valli di Lanzo as a whole receive less attention than the valleys around Cuneo or the Valle d'Aosta, and within this already secluded system, the vallone remains even further off the beaten path. The result is a landscape that has not suffered the infrastructural pressures typical of more celebrated alpine destinations: no chairlift nearby, no equipped rifugio (mountain hut) along the main route, only the discreet presence of the bivouac.

Balme itself, with its parish church and the eighteenth-century Chiesa della Santissima Trinità (Church of the Holy Trinity) in Baroque style, still bears the marks of a mountain community that built its identity on mountaineering — the area has long been associated with mountain guides — and on an agro-pastoral economy. The Vallone degli Ortetti is, in this sense, the natural extension of a territory that has kept a certain distance from mass tourism models, not through deliberate choice but through geographical shape and the modest scale of everything that inhabits it.