Hikes in the Alps in February

February hikes below the deep snow: the Cadorna Line above Lake Maggiore, Valle Antrona, Monte Moregallo and the Tracciolino in Valchiavenna.

February is the month when the days grow noticeably longer while the snow at altitude is often at its deepest, and that combination sends us downhill again: to the ridges of the Prealps, the lakes and the valley floors where you can walk without snowshoes. The selection is the same as in January, because it comes from the same season tags, and as then it contains routes that are dry in a mild winter and better postponed in a snowy one. The advice we keep repeating is to choose the destination the day before, looking at the forecast and the snow cover, rather than by the calendar.

Around Lake Maggiore there is the Cima di Morissolo with its fortifications, and the loop of the Antrona and Campliccioli lakes in lower Valle Antrona, a three-hour walk with no technical difficulty. Above Lecco, Monte Moregallo via Sant'Isidoro and Monte Cornizzolo via the Romanesque church of San Pietro al Monte are more demanding climbs, best done on dry ground, while the Boletto and Bolettone loop above Albavilla follows grassy ridges between the plain and Lake Como. In Valchiavenna, Daloo and Lagunc offer a mule track, a small white church and a view over the Piana di Chiavenna in three hours of walking.

Good to know

The tunnels and trenches you pass through on the Cima di Morissolo belong to the Cadorna Line, the system of fortifications built during the First World War along the Swiss border to protect the plain from an attack that never came: the line never saw combat, and today it is protected by Italian law as part of the heritage of the Great War. In winter, with the trees bare, the walkways and gun positions are easier to read than in summer, and the short climb becomes an open-air history lesson.

Above a certain height February is still fully winter, and that height changes from week to week. The avalanche bulletins of the Italian Alpine regions, coordinated by AINEVA, are written for hikers as well as professionals and are worth reading before any route that climbs above the woods; on the low trails of this page, what matters more is ice in shaded gullies and mule tracks covered in wet leaves, which are more slippery than they look.