On the 10th of May, the Funivie Courmayeur Mont Blanc closed its last winter lift, and the Cresta d'Arp ridge above the village fell silent for the first time since early December.
Courmayeur sits at 1,224 m at the head of the Aosta Valley in northwestern Italy, on the Italian side of the Mont Blanc massif. Its year-round population is 2,789. In winter it can reach 12,000 with visitors; in August it doubles again.
Between the ski close in mid-May and the summer opening of the via ferrata and trekking routes in mid-June, the town is briefly emptied of both crowds.
Via Roma, the central pedestrian street, runs four hundred metres between the Piazza Brocherel and the Chiesa di San Pantaleone. In the third week of May, perhaps a third of its shops were closed for annual cleaning and restocking, and the cafés that remained open had outdoor tables but few patrons.
The Caffè della Posta, which has been on Via Roma since 1911 and is the oldest continuously operating café in the village, closes for ten days in late May for the proprietress's annual holiday. Signora Anna-Maria Rolando, the third generation of her family to run the café, takes the train down to her sister's house in Pinerolo.
The Skyway Monte Bianco cable car, the spectacular three-stage lift that climbs from Pontal d'Entrèves at 1,300 m to Pointe Helbronner at 3,466 m, runs year-round except for a ten-day maintenance closure in early June and a similar closure in November.
On the 20th of May the Skyway was operating but lightly used. The morning's first ascent at 9:15 carried perhaps fifteen passengers, against four hundred capacity. By the second stage at the Pavillon du Mont Fréty, several had disembarked to walk the spring botanical garden, which opens on the 1st of June and was being prepared by the resident gardener, Renata Cossavella.
Cossavella, who has tended the alpine garden since 2009, was planting saxifrages and small soldanellas on the 20th. She said the garden's opening is timed to the snowmelt, not the calendar. If the snow is not gone, there is nothing to look at, she said. So I wait.
The Società delle Guide di Courmayeur, founded in 1850 and the second-oldest mountain-guiding company in the world after Chamonix, runs a skeleton roster in late May. Of its 130 active guides, perhaps twenty-five are working in the valley at any time. The rest are at home, in Patagonia, in the Himalaya, or recovering.
The guides' museum on Via Mons. de Stefano, opened in 1929, is closed in May and reopens for the summer season on the 25th of June. The museum's curator, Pietro Bellati, uses the closure to rotate displays.
Up the Val Vény, the road to the Hotel Visaille and the Lac de Combal closes for the winter on the 1st of November and reopens to traffic in stages depending on snow conditions. In a normal year the lower section reopens around the 20th of May.
On the 21st of May the road was open to the Cantine de la Visaille and gated beyond. The Val Ferret road, on the opposite side of the valley, opened to the Hotel Lavachey on the 17th. The further trekking trailheads were still snow-covered.
The Rifugio Bertone, at 1,989 m above La Palud, opens for the summer season on the 1st of June. The Rifugio Bonatti, at 2,025 m, opens on the 15th. The Rifugio Elisabetta Soldini, at 2,195 m in the upper Val Vény, opens on the 20th.
Through late May the high refuges are unstaffed, but the winter-room emergency shelter is available to anyone willing to walk in. On the 19th the Rifugio Elisabetta's winter room had a logbook with eleven entries since the previous October.
The town's hotels rotate their closures. The Auberge de la Maison, in the hamlet of Entrèves, closes from the 4th of May to the 18th of June. The Grand Hotel Royal e Golf closes for the same five weeks. The Hotel Berthod stays open year-round.
Lucia Marengo grew up in the Aosta Valley, and her family's bookshop in Via Roma has been continuously open since her grandfather opened it in 1956. She remembers May in Courmayeur as the month when the town's children took over the streets, riding bicycles in the pedestrian zone without weaving around tourists.
Anders Hoffmann, the IFMGA guide and editor of Mountain Ledger, has worked routes on the Italian side of the Mont Blanc range for over two decades. He calls the late-spring window the most pleasant time to be in Courmayeur as a guide because, he said, there are no clients.
The Funivie Courmayeur Mont Blanc opens its summer lifts to Plan Chécrouit on the 21st of June. The chairlift to the Cresta d'Arp ridge, used in summer for via ferrata access and trekking, opens on the 28th.
Until then the lifts sit in the lower station with their cabins stacked, and the upper terminal at 2,624 m is locked.
The Tour du Mont Blanc trekkers, who walk an eleven-day circuit through France, Italy and Switzerland, will pass through Courmayeur in numbers from the last week of June onward. In the third week of May there were perhaps a dozen early trekkers in town, mostly testing equipment for later attempts.
May in Courmayeur is a month of last things and first things. The last skiers leave. The last avalanche control teams sweep the high gullies. The first refuge keepers walk in to open their buildings. The first botanists arrive at the Pavillon garden.
It is a month for residents.
