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The weather up ahead is foul and all I can see is a menacing sky obscuring my favourite view in the park, if not in the entire Alps. Right ahead of us stands the Gran Paradiso that gave the park its name, the only 4,000m mountain entirely in Italy; Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa are shared with France and Switzerland.At least, the mountain was there last year. There are Olympian views of towering grey granite and moraine slopes and dirty glacial snouts. There’s even an alpine botanical garden (in Valnontey) housing more than 2,000 rare and common, native and foreign species (open June to September). Most importantly, the park is also home to more than 3,000 stambecchi (up from 416 since the Second World War) – and though that’s almost 60 acres for every ibex, we’re apparently in with a reasonable chance of glimpsing Europe’s largest alpine animal.Beyond Valnontey, the path meanders along the valley floor. Faced with local pressure and a tumbling ibex population, King Vittorio Emmanuele III donated his private reserve for the preservation of flora, fauna and natural beauty.Today, the park is more than 170,000 acres, with 500 miles of marked trails, 11 refuges and more high pastures, scalable peaks and passes, larch and pine forests and cavernous valleys than any one person could use in a week of walking.

The park’s original 5,000 acres were hunting grounds belonging to the royal house of Savoy. A few hotels (seemingly closed), one bar (open, empty) and a pasture strewn with tens of thousands of wild crocuses later and we’re into the wilderness.It was the fate of one animal that brought about the opening of this, Italy’s first national park, in December 1922: the ibex, known here as lo stambecco. We pass four men slowly, ever so slowly, removing a giant sign that reads “Cogne Snow Park”, before rising sharply to enter a narrow gorge that marks the entrance to the national park. We continue through pine glades, the icy blue-green Torrente Valnontey gushing along our left and sheer granite cliffs and scree to the right, before opening out 40 uphill minutes later into the unmistakable U-shape of a deep glacial valley.This is Valnontey – village, valley and river share the name – and the last populated stop before emptiness Though in early spring it hardly looks populated at all.

But the rest of the year it is just perfect.From Cogne, our springtime walk crosses the meadows of Sant’Orso, still scarred from ski tracks. In the summer, it is a gateway to the Gran Paradiso for thousands of hikers and climbers – too many thousands in mid-August. Cogne’s church has a handsome bell tower and the village is justly famous for lace-making in the Venetian style al tombolo (literally, “on the drum”) and wood carving, although most of the visitors come for outdoor pursuits .In winter, Cogne is the best spot in the Valle d’Aosta for cross-country skiing, and was reputedly in the running to host the event for the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics. It is still possible to hike up to the original Colonna mine at 2,300m. It is a cycle played out in Italy’s hills from the Val di Susa to Udine, but nowhere is it more marked than in the Parco Nazionale del Gran Paradiso.
Our walk starts gently enough in Cogne.

This alpine village first found prosperity seven centuries ago with magnetite (iron ore) mining, an industry that once supported more than 20,000 Valdostans in the valley below. In spring, the dirty white of melting snow and parched brown of desiccated foliage turns to emerald green with staccato bursts of pink fruit blossom, yellow cowslips and violet alpine flowers. Over the summer, the greens will pale, before autumn’s mustards and russets erupt, a last riot before the long winter. The seasons switch rapidly in northern Italy.