South of La Thuile, a well-known Alpine resort in the Aosta Valley, a wide valley opens up, dominated for centuries by the massive Rutor Glacier, the third largest in the Aosta Valley. Its gently rolling, almost flat appearance gave rise to a legend according to which the glacier was once a green pasture belonging to a wealthy landowner. One day a beggar asked the landowner for a cup of milk, but rather than give the beggar any milk, he poured a whole cauldron of it onto the meadow. But karma was lying in wait, and the fine pastures stayed white, covered in snow and ice.
Another interesting story about the glacier, and this time it is no legend. Between 1594 and 1864, that is, during the period of greatest glacial expansion of the Little Ice Age, the Rutor Glacier caused 44 "glacial outburst floods": one of the glacier's two tongues blocked the valley at the foot of today's Rifugio Deffeyes, creating Lago di Santa Margherita, which periodically broke through the ice dam and unleashed a devastating fury on the valley below, sometimes all the way to Aosta.
In 1740 it was written that "the lake empties with such great force that everything it meets in its path is carried as far as the masonry bridges… it causes incredible disasters throughout the Duchy". The floods of 1594 and 1595 in particular were so damaging that they stirred both science and religion into action. In 1596 Simon Tubingher, a German entrepreneur, proposed boring through the mountain to stop the lake from forming again, but the undertaking was judged too expensive. 10 years later the religious route was tried instead, with the building of the chapel of Santa Margherita, which still stands high above the guilty lake. The ruinous outburst floods went on for another 250 years.
Today the glacier is in sharp retreat, bringing those legendary pastures back to light and leaving behind a constellation of periglacial tarns. This hike takes in almost all of them, with stops at the Rutor Falls, at Rifugio Deffeyes and at what remains of the Rutor Glacier, and finally a short detour to the Laghi di Bellacomba.
We start in the woods at La Joux (m1601), soon reaching a first waterfall that already draws plenty of tourists. We continue on a steeper climb to the other 2 drops of the Rutor Falls, before gaining the lovely flat ground of Lago del Ghiacciaio (m2158, 1.45 hours). Then, on hairpins cut into the basin, we climb over its banks to reach Rifugio Deffeyes (m2494, 1 hour).
From here we can venture towards the Rutor Glacier, through a constellation of tarns, to admire the mighty eastern tongue of the glacier (or what is left of it). Whichever round we decide on, we reach the shores of Lago du Rutor, from where we can begin the descent. Before heading down, we can make a short detour to the Laghi di Bellacomba (m2380, 1, 3 hours), which we reach on the level among moraines and green ups and downs, with the stately bulk of Monte Bianco watching us from afar.
From the lakes we descend back to La Joux (m1601, 2 hours). The standard route takes us back to the right bank of the stream, above the Rutor Falls, rejoining the way up, but there is also a path that descends to La Joux staying entirely on the left of the stream, giving us a different route almost all the way to the car park.
