It is impossible to try and lay out a classification of the most beautiful tracks of the Abetone complex, but perhaps, when the weather is good and the sky particularly clear, the Val di Luce (Valley of Light) assumes an unsurpassable air: a jewel of nature pinpointed with icy lakes, majestic ridges, breath taking skiing tracks that cut into the mountain sides almost without solutions of continuity. Once you’ve left the car at the wide parking space, those who need a bit of practice can enjoy the ski lifts in the training field; for those who haven’t got problems they have the one of choice alone.

The Alpe delleTre Potenze (1940 metres) is the one dominating the valley and from up there, reachable with the new three placed chair lift, you can opt for different solutions: keeping to the left and proceeding along the ridge, the track faces pretty demanding drops, but it also draws curves to soften the descent. This also gives you the opportunity to stop in that splendid terrace given by the old «Albergo Farinati»: the ideal solution for a reinvigorating stop or a lunch in the sun, with the sandwiches in the backpack or choosing among local dishes offered by the structure.

A hotel with its own history, worth telling: it is entirely built with the stones from these mountains and has a rectangular base that respects fascist architecture, but with a an unusually lopsided side, so much so as to recall from afar the outline of a ship stuck among the rocks of the mountain. In fact the Albergo Farinati rises on a rock spur 1700 metres high and after years of abandonment only recently it was restored and reconverted into a restaurant.

This building represents the most visible trace of the Pharaonic project that was elaborated during the twenty years of fascism and which was supposed to transform the valley in an enormous tourist centre. It was 1935 in fact, when engineer Farinati, first podestà of the Abetone municipality, purchased this small paradise which was then called Valle delle Pozze for its many water sources.

Farinati designed a great hotel with many dependences, tracks and ski lifts and an ice skating ring. In his grand project he did not neglect the summer season, designing a car circuit and a hippodrome for horse races. The immense tourist centre was to be presided by a huge beacon that ws to be built on the ridge of the Alpe delle Tre Potenze: this beacon, would then have transformed the wild Valle delle Pozze in the very modern tourist centre Valle della Luce. The war interrupted for ever the works, probably saving the natural beauties of the valley, which would later be built only partially. Of the grandiose Farinati project, the only things to survive are therefore his hotel and the name he had chosen for this valley: Val di Luce.