The most beautiful hikes in Le Marche

The Lame Rosse (Red Blades), rock formation with their predominant red ‘scales’ shaped by atmospheric agents, is one of the most well-known and fascinating places in the Monti Sibillini National Park and beyond.

The itinerary has the same outward and return journeys and starts from a vantage point that overlooks the northern shore of Lake Fiastra, an artificial basin built along the incredibly green Valle del Fiastrone which is made up principally of a holm-oak forest, until it reaches the gravelly bed of the Fosso della Regina, on top of which sit the ‘Red Blades’.

In a glacial valley enclosed by rock walls that reach almost 2500 meters, in the southern part of Monti Sibillini National Park, the Pilato Lake can be reached  through different paths; the route described here starts from Pian Perduto, located north-west of the lake. We leave the car at Fonte San Lorenzo and take a steep path that crosses a beech forest, a remnant of the forest that once covered the whole area.

Once in Capanna Ghezzi, the itinerary continues in a pastoral landscape that provides splendid views of the small town of Castelluccio and its heaths, until it reaches Forca Viola (1936 m asl), the entrance to the Valle del Lago di Pilato.

From here we begin a series of up-and-down paths along the eastern slope of the Cresta del Redentore in an alpine environment made up of screes, grassy stretches and beautiful high-altitude blooms that take us up to the lake (1940 m asl).

Dominated by the imposing rocky wall of Pizzo del Diavolo, the lake is home to a small shellfish unique of its kind in the world: the Chirocefalo del Marchesoni.

The return trip in on the same path.