The lower Susa valley seen from the small hamlet of Alpe Martino. This picture summarize almost everything about this area. The Alps rise here directly from the Padana plain to hills almost 2000m high, so the exceptionally hot microclimate allow for a luscious vegetation even here, a place 200m higher than Zermatt.
Until the late 40's of the XX century, this part of the Susa hills were densely inhabited (as can be guessed by the villages on the background), as people had traditionally preferred taking home in the hills in order to avoid the swampy valley floor, that saw also the regular passage of armies traversing the Alps to invade Italy (starting from Hannibal).
However, economical crisis and the death of traditional mountain activities sparked an exodus of truly biblical proportions, "encouraged" also by the horrors of anti-german guerrilla warfare, who was fought here between 1943 and 1945, and was particularly savage and bloody. By 1980, the entire north side of the Susa valley had lost almost 90% of the population living there 50 years before. The hundred of small abandoned cabins you'll find along the trail pay a mute testimony to this drama.