Top left: View from Passo di Verrobbio looking north toward Valtellina and Switzerland
Top center: Lago di Pescegallo, Valgerola Italy.
Top right: Tracks from Rifugio Ca' San Marco to Lago di Pescegallo.
Bottom left: Small lake near Passo di Verobbio.
Bottom center: View south over Lago Valmora, near Rifugio Ca' San Marco.
Bottom right: Heading toward Ca' San Marco.
Sometimes the best hikes are the ones that materialize the day before. A friend asked us on Saturday if we wanted to go hiking the next day with a group of friends. Of course we did.
Overview
Duration: 2 hours (walking time)
Elevation: 445 m
Length: 7.8 km
Location: Italy, Bergamo, Alta Valle Brembana
Notes
We got a late start on Sunday due to large group logistics but managed to arrive Rifugio Ca’ San Marco still the respectable morning hour of 10:30 am, where the morning coolness was still perceptible.
Our destination was Lago di Pescegallo and
CAI Sentiero 161, which runs from the rifugio toward Lago di Pescegallo and eventually Passo di Salmurano. With the size of the group, the late start, and unspoken “let’s have ourselves a little Sunday walk but let’s not miss lunch” hanging in the air, we knew this was not going to be an epic hiking day.
From Rifugio Ca’ San Marco, at about 1,830 meters, we headed toward Passo di Verrobbio at 2,026 meters. Once over the pass, the trail enters Val di Bomino and Valtellina. The scenery improved considerably around the pass, where there are remnants of World War I trenches (Linea Cadorna).
Our original destination was Lago di Pescegallo, but lunch exerted a stronger gravitational pull. There wasn’t enough time to descend to the lake and climb back before our reservation, so we turned around above it. Our outing came to 7.8 km with about 445 meters of elevation gain. The lake will have to wait for another day.
Hike to Eat
Back at Rifugio Ca’ San Marco, we arrived just as everyone was ordering lunch. We were with a very hungry group, and we dawdled on the way back to the rifugio, our attention caught by a small snake and a family from Lazio. The snake was likely a
biscia or grass snake.
We went appropriately Valtellinese with pizzoccheri della Valtellina and penne con ragù di lepre. We finished by sharing strüdel, and then someone passed around some very good young goat robiola bought from a vendor who set up shop in the rifugio’s parking lot.
The pizzoccheri were particularly appropriate because we had just walked over the ridge into Valtellina. And so was our wine: a Triacca Valtellina Superiore Inferno 2021, made with Nebbiolo. We were drinking wine from the valley we could see off to the north.
But the gastronomic story didn't end with lunch.
As mentioned, in the parking area outside Ca’ San Marco was a cheese and salumi vendor. This made our day. We left with Bitto, fresh cow's-milk robiola, grasso d’alpe, bresaola, rye bread, dried blueberries, and bisciola – the Valtellinese sweet bread with figs, walnuts, and raisins. The vendor told us that his Bitto came from the milk of cows grazing below the rifugio, probably from the same malga we had looked down on while hiking.
Bitto has a fascinating connection to these valleys. Its origins are traditionally traced back to the Celts who took refuge in Valtellina and, as skilled herders and cheesemakers, developed long-lasting cheeses as a way of preserving the nutritional value of milk. Today's Bitto is a full-fat, semi-hard cheese made from raw whole cow milk, with a small amount of goat milk optionally added. The complicated modern history of cheese also produced "Storico Ribelle," the name adopted by producers who wanted to preserve the older production traditions.
So, one afternoon we had quite the Valtellina lineup: pizzoccheri, Nebbiolo wine from Valtellina, bitto cheese, bresaola (cured meat), bisciola (sweet bread), and gorgeous scenery.
Casa Cantoniera and Linea Cadorna
Today Ca’ San Marco may just seem like another rifugio, but there is more to it.
Ca’ San Marco’s role must be placed inside the geopolitical logic of the Via Priula, a historic communication route and an alpine hiking route that connects Bergamo to Morbegno, passing through the San Marco Pass.
Ca’ San Marco was built in 1593 at the edge of the Venetian mainland territories, it functioned as a casa cantoniera (point of monitoring traffic, goods, and movement) on an international frontier: a staffed outpost at the very crest of the Passo San Marco, where the Republic of Venice met the territories of the Grigioni (Three Leagues). The formal customs house — the actual dogana — sat lower down at Mezzoldo, where goods and travelers were inspected before beginning the climb. Ca’ San Marco, by contrast, was the high‑altitude presence of Venetian authority: a shelter, a control point, and a symbolic marker of the border. In early‑modern Alpine practice, this was typical — customs in the last village, state outpost on the pass itself — and Ca’ San Marco fit that pattern precisely.
Today the pass separates two Lombard valleys: Val Brembana (Province of Bergamo) on the southern side and Valtellina (Province of Sondrio) on the northern side. Administratively it is no longer a state frontier, but geographically it remains a watershed divide between the Brembo and the Adda, and culturally it still marks the transition between two distinct alpine regions with different historical trajectories. Before the unification of Italy, however, this ridge was a true international boundary: Venice to the south, the Grigioni to the north, and beyond them the routes toward Chur, the Rhine, and northern Europe. The Via Priula was built precisely to exploit this crossing, allowing Venetian merchants to bypass Spanish‑controlled Milan and maintain direct access to transalpine trade.
The Orobie form a steep, folded, high‑relief chain that historically acted as a natural barrier: militarily defensible, commercially constraining, and climatically severe. Only a handful of routes could be made viable, and Passo San Marco was one of the few that could be kept open and controlled. Snow, fog, and avalanches made the crossing dangerous; Ca’ San Marco’s bell was used to guide travelers in storms. In this sense, the building’s function was inseparable from the landscape: the mountains created the obstacle, the pass created the opportunity, and Ca’ San Marco was the human instrument that made the frontier navigable and governable.
Nearby and many centuries later, we can see remains of World War I activity. At the Verrobbio pass, which we passed through to go to Lago di Pescegallo, the remains of the trenches built before the outbreak of the First World War by the Italian Army are still present. In anticipation of a possible breakthrough of the Tonale front and a consequent descent of the Austrians along the Valtellina, Italy build these defenses. They are part of the
Cadorna Line. Fortunately, these defensive constructions were never used.
The official name of the Cadorna Line is the Northern Frontier. Cadorna comes from the surname of
Luigi Cadorna (1850 – 1928), Chief of Staff of the Italian Army, who ordered them built. This defensive system is 70 km long, stretching from the Varese area to the Aprica pass in Val Camonica, and served as a second line of defense in case the main front, at Stelvio and Tonale, collapsed or in case of attack by the Austrians through neutral Switzerland. Fortunately, the Cadorna Line was never used.
Cultural Literacy, Italian Style
Our education continued in the car on the way home.
First came an important Bergamasco proverb:
La bóca l’è mai straca se la sa mia de àca – roughly, the mouth is never tired if it hasn't tasted of cow, or, more practically, a meal isn't really finished until you've had some cheese.
Given the amount of cheese we'd just bought, we were apparently taking the proverb seriously.
Then somehow, we arrived at the seven deadly sins and a discussion of
ignavia – sloth, indolence, or the unwillingness to take a stand.
And then came 15 minutes discussing the movie
Amici miei ("My Friends" in English.)
According to our Italian friends,
Amici miei, Mario Monicelli's 1975 comedy, is basically required reading – or viewing – for understanding Italian culture. The film follows a group of middle-aged Florentine men who escape everyday life through their
zingarate: elaborate, spontaneous, and often ridiculous pranks. This is one of those films we've heard referenced enough that not knowing it starts to feel like a gap in our Italian cultural education.
It wasn't the longest hike we've done, and technically we didn't make it all the way down to Lago di Pescegallo. But we crossed from Bergamo into Valtellina, walked past old military trenches, ate pizzoccheri, drank Valtellina wine, bought cheese with roots stretching back to the Celts, and returned home with a lot more.
Not bad for a Sunday.
Photos
Rifugio Ca' San Marco in Alta Valle Brembana, Bergamo, Italy.Left: Menu at Rifugio Ca' San Marco.
Center: The lion of San Marco / Venice affixed on the side of Rifugio Ca' San Marco.
Right: A wine from the nearby Valtellina, a Nebbiolo.
Left: Rifugio Ca' San Marco - pizzoccheri - a typical food from the nearby Valtellina valley.
Center: Rifugio Ca' San Marco - penne con ragù di lepre.
Right: Rifugio Ca' San Marco strudel.
Left: Bitto cheese on polenta crust.
Center: Our cheese and meat haul.
Right: Local vendor's sign at the rifugio, selling cheeses and other products from the nearby valleys.
Left and center: Part of the Linea Cadorna at Passo di Verrobbio.
Right: A cow grazes near Rifugio Ca' San Marco.
