The Valnontey and Valsavarenche valleys are the classic approaches. Trails climb to alpine meadows where ibex graze in the open — often in groups, and often close enough to photograph without a long lens. Males with their enormous ridged horns are the animal the park exists for.

The high pastures around the refuges, particularly Vittorio Emanuele II and Sella, are where the best encounters happen at dawn, along with chamois on the steeper ground above.

The rocks and boulder fields hold alpine marmots — abundant, noisy and easy — along with stoat and, if you are exceptionally lucky, the wolves that have recolonised the Alps in recent decades.

The sky holds golden eagle and the bearded vulture, reintroduced to the Alps and now breeding, with a wingspan that turns heads even among people who came for the ibex.

The Paradisia alpine botanical garden at Valnontey is worth an hour for identifying what you have been walking through.

June to September is the season; July and August bring flowers and crowds, September brings the ibex rut approaching and clearer air. Higher trails are snowbound outside summer.

Practicalities

Cogne is the usual base for Valnontey, around an hour from Aosta and reachable by public transport. Refuges must be booked in summer.

The park's history is worth knowing: ibex survived here in a royal hunting reserve when they had been shot out everywhere else in the Alps, and every ibex in the range today descends from this population. Neighbouring Vanoise in France forms a single protected massif across the border.