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ilanaramaThe Pederü bus stop turned out to be at a solitary hotel/restaurant at the head of a valley. A road (with a few mountain bikers on it) switchbacked upward along the valley’s left side, and a trail (already beginning to fill with hikers) switchbacked upward along the valley’s left side. We shouldered our small packs, unfolded our hiking poles, stepped through the gate that kept the cows out of the hotel grounds, and started up the trail.
The road soon crossed the left ridge and disappeared, but as our trail mounted the ridge on the right, another road came up to cross our path. After the first climb out of the valley, we found ourselves crisscrossing the road multiple times, and sometimes walking along it; the narrow ridge didn’t have a lot of room for both a road and a trail. We saw no vehicles, though, just mountain bikes, mostly e-bikes. In addition to hiking trails, there are numerous designated mountain bike routes through the Dolomites, and businesses to rent tourists e-bikes and route them along the mountains – another way to enjoy the scenery.
We (and several cyclists) stopped for lunch at the Rifugio Fanes, one of the huts we’d been given information about. We were a little early for the Dolomites season, and many places wouldn’t open until June 15th, but our maps were marked to show us the huts that were already open so we could plan whether we could get lunch on the trail, or needed to bring food.
We’ve stayed in mountain huts in Colorado, both in summer and in winter (reaching them through cross-country skiing), and we also stayed in several huts on the hiking tracks when we were in New Zealand back in 2008-9. Calling them “huts” has always seemed a little weird, because they’re fairly large and can accommodate a lot of people, but they don’t have staff, they just have shared cooking facilities. The huts in the Dolomites, though, were a level up from even this! I’d call them mountain hotel/restaurants, really. But whatever you call it, it’s awesome to get some hot venison stew, dumplings, and a dark beer for trail lunch!
We continued up and over a ridge to a small lake, then when the road started down a valley we cut off on a trail to join up with another road. Again, these “roads” were really used almost entirely by hikers and mountain bikers, so really it was like hiking on a wide trail. It hadn’t been particularly crowded as far as the lake, but past it we saw even fewer people.
A couple of French mountain bikers, a man and a woman about our ages, passed us from behind, then stopped, asking in broken English and Italian if the hut was ahead. We looked at our map and saw that there was a hut farther down the road, on the other side of a low pass, so we gave them the thumbs up; but not long after, we caught up with them sitting despondently by the side of the road.
“Okay?” we asked.
The man shook his head. The woman, who had more English, explained they had hoped to get to Rifugio Fanes for lunch, but they still hadn’t found it, and they were really hungry.
We felt very embarrassed – we’d sent them the wrong way, but in our defense, we didn’t know which hut they were talking about. We explained to them that we’d come from there, and it wasn’t that far, but in the other direction, and we showed them the map and where they needed to make the turn. Hopefully they found it before they starved to death!
We continued on over the low pass ahead. On the other side the trail descended steeply, with occasional sets of stairs; it would not have been a good bike route!
Eventually we got to the bottom of the valley. The map had made it look like we’d need to walk alongside the main road to get to the town of Armentarola, but we followed the signs and found ourselves on a pleasant forested trail that took us nearly all the way. The signage in general was really excellent; the trails were marked with copious red and white blazes on the trees and rocks alongside, sometimes with the trail number painted on the blaze as well, and every intersection had a signpost. Though I was a bit startled to see my name (well, almost) on this one, as we neared Armentarola:
We found our hotel, the Gran Paradisio, and it was paradise indeed to take off our hiking boots after 11 miles and 2500 vertical feet (more or less in both directions - we usually ended up at approximately the same elevation we started at).
After breakfast the next morning we found our “trail” out. The first mile was a paved path between local farms, which we left for a logging access dirt road. We were deep in the trees, so it was not particularly scenic, and we both grumbled a little until we broke out into the higher meadows, where we could see the mountains.
And then we came to a high meadow dotted with picturesque cabins, the Pralongià Plateau. We passed another hiker, our first, and then a small group of mountain bikers passed us. We followed the trail (still really a road) as it slowly climbed through the meadow, winding its way among the cabins, until we topped out at the saddle and saw many more hikers. Also, many more mountain bikers, almost all on e-bikes. (One man in lycra, standing up and pumping hard on a steep climb, proudly proclaimed, “No e-bike!” when he got to the top, and everybody applauded!) And finally, as we rounded the corner of the slope, we saw the top of the Pralongià chairlift: We were hiking across a ski resort.
Actually there were multiple chairlifts and gondolas here, which explained why there were so many hikers and bicyclists at the top of this mountain. We hiked across the slender ridgeline, the “Tru Panoramich,” just as it started to drizzle, and quickly found a copse of trees for shelter while we ate the lunch we’d brought from the Gran Paradisio. When we were finished we hiked the rest of the way across the top of the ski area, then descended on a newly-cut trail underneath a gondola, and made it nearly to the town of Corvara before the skies decided to really open up. Hastily we pulled on our rain jackets, then descended the rest of the way to the town and found the Hotel Posta Zirm, where we’d be spending two nights. We’d covered 9 miles and climbed/descended about 2100 feet.
After three moderately strenuous hiking days, we were ready for a rest day. One of the things Daniel had mentioned as an option for our planned layover in Corvara was to take the Boè gondola to the Piz Boè Alpine Lounge, which upon googling I discovered was a fancy restaurant high on the mountain across the valley from us. Piz Boè itself is a 3152 meter (10,340’) peak, but although it is quite dramatic it is also considered the easiest 3000m summit in the Dolomites as there are several routes which rely on taking the summer-operation ski lifts part way; one option is to take the Boè gondola to 2200m (about 7200’), and then a chairlift to gain more altitude before hiking, but the chairlift hadn’t opened for the season yet, so we agreed that maybe climbing a high peak wouldn’t be on the agenda for our rest day. :-) Instead we decided to take the gondola up and hike around a little, then have a fancy lunch, which turned out to be an excellent plan.
The Boè gondola climbs nearly 2000 feet over a mile and a half distance. The bright yellow egg-shaped cars carry 8, but we were the only riders in our car.
When we got out of the gondola, we hiked up the steep road that paralleled the still-closed chairlift until we reached the short trail that led to Lago Boè, a tiny but very pretty lake. Then we slowly wandered back down to the Alpine Lounge. There were only a few people in the large bar, so we let the servers know we were going to sit on the side with the awesome view (duh!) and we settled in for an amazing lunch! We had fancy spritzes and “L’Aperitivo Misto” which included shrimp wrapped in pastry strands, anchovies, ham, and most deliciously buffalo burrata with black truffle, with honeyed ricotta and whole-wheat sourdough bread. Yum!
(You can sort of see our route out the next day on this picture taken out the restaurant window. We switchbacked up in the woods just to the right of the ridge, crossed the faint trail visible under the rock massif, and went up to the high plateau visible in the upper left.)
The next morning we got a packed lunch from the hotel restaurant and set out across Corvara. We were excited and a bit apprehensive about the day’s route, which would take us to the highest elevation of our trek; when Daniel had drawn it on the map, he’d mentioned that he wasn’t sure if there was still snow, and he’d marked an alternate route just in case. I had brought my mini-gaiters, and as Britt hadn’t brought his we had spent a little time after our excursion the previous day checking out the many outdoors stores in Corvara, but none of them carried what we wanted. (We had also ogled the very fancy e-mountain-bikes for sale and rent. Dolomites tourism has enthusiastically embraced the e-bike trend!)
We worked our way up the streets, past hotels and houses, and found the trail that led us into the forest. The trail switchbacked relentlessly upward through the forest, though at a decent grade that didn’t feel too hard, and after about an hour we broke out of the trees and onto the shoulder of Sassongher Mountain. Just below us, we could see the top of another gondola – we could have taken the easy way up, I guess!
We contoured around the cliffs and then worked our way up the trail, above a scattering of sheep grazing in a small meadow and past several other hikers. We tended to pass a lot of people while going uphill, and I suspect it was because we live at more or less the elevation of these trails, while other tourists most likely live closer to sea level. (The trail signs give the hiking time, rather than the distance, to the indicated location, and I noticed that we usually were faster than the given time on the flat or uphill, and slower than the given time when going downhill.)
Eventually we reached the Forcella de Ciampei, but rather than continuing over that pass we turned left to cross the rock and tundra plateau toward a higher pass, the Forcella de Crespeina. There was indeed still snow, but it was either avoidable or easily tromped across. The views were spectacular in every direction, and we enjoyed the rare sensation of being above treeline while still having plenty of oxygen!
At the pass, marked with the ubiquitous crucifix, we looked down into Val de Chedul, the glacier-carved valley below. On the left side of the valley several moderate-looking trails converged on a pass that was one of our possible alternate routes, but we were headed straight down the valley. We could see hikers struggling up the trail toward us and could tell it was steep; our knees were not going to like it!
We hit a somewhat flatter spot and decided to move off the trail into the nearby rocks to have lunch. As soon as the food came out, several bold corvids with yellow beaks (pretty sure they were Alpine choughs, Pyrrhocorax graculus) came out to snatch any crumbs that we might let fall.
After lunch we continued down, down, down, from tundra and rock to trees and moss, and when the Val de Chedul joined the gentler and broader Vallunga we turned left and followed another trail into the ski town of Sëlva di Val Gardena, our destination for the night. It had been just over 10 miles, with over 3500' of elevation gain and loss.
The small town was bustling, and we could see some of the streets were closed off for what looked like a bike race for small kids; the front of our hotel, the Hotel Tyrol, was draped with bunting and signs proclaiming it the headquarters for the BMW HERO Dolomites mountain bike race. We enjoyed the complimentary prosecco and snacks (hey, it had been a while since lunch!), then after a shower poked around the very extensive spa area, moving between the indoor pool, outdoor pool, jacuzzi (tepid as usual), and sauna. It was nice to have an evening to relax, especially since the next day would be our longest day...
We did not yet realize just how long it was going to be!
The road soon crossed the left ridge and disappeared, but as our trail mounted the ridge on the right, another road came up to cross our path. After the first climb out of the valley, we found ourselves crisscrossing the road multiple times, and sometimes walking along it; the narrow ridge didn’t have a lot of room for both a road and a trail. We saw no vehicles, though, just mountain bikes, mostly e-bikes. In addition to hiking trails, there are numerous designated mountain bike routes through the Dolomites, and businesses to rent tourists e-bikes and route them along the mountains – another way to enjoy the scenery.
We (and several cyclists) stopped for lunch at the Rifugio Fanes, one of the huts we’d been given information about. We were a little early for the Dolomites season, and many places wouldn’t open until June 15th, but our maps were marked to show us the huts that were already open so we could plan whether we could get lunch on the trail, or needed to bring food.
We’ve stayed in mountain huts in Colorado, both in summer and in winter (reaching them through cross-country skiing), and we also stayed in several huts on the hiking tracks when we were in New Zealand back in 2008-9. Calling them “huts” has always seemed a little weird, because they’re fairly large and can accommodate a lot of people, but they don’t have staff, they just have shared cooking facilities. The huts in the Dolomites, though, were a level up from even this! I’d call them mountain hotel/restaurants, really. But whatever you call it, it’s awesome to get some hot venison stew, dumplings, and a dark beer for trail lunch!
We continued up and over a ridge to a small lake, then when the road started down a valley we cut off on a trail to join up with another road. Again, these “roads” were really used almost entirely by hikers and mountain bikers, so really it was like hiking on a wide trail. It hadn’t been particularly crowded as far as the lake, but past it we saw even fewer people.
A couple of French mountain bikers, a man and a woman about our ages, passed us from behind, then stopped, asking in broken English and Italian if the hut was ahead. We looked at our map and saw that there was a hut farther down the road, on the other side of a low pass, so we gave them the thumbs up; but not long after, we caught up with them sitting despondently by the side of the road.
“Okay?” we asked.
The man shook his head. The woman, who had more English, explained they had hoped to get to Rifugio Fanes for lunch, but they still hadn’t found it, and they were really hungry.
We felt very embarrassed – we’d sent them the wrong way, but in our defense, we didn’t know which hut they were talking about. We explained to them that we’d come from there, and it wasn’t that far, but in the other direction, and we showed them the map and where they needed to make the turn. Hopefully they found it before they starved to death!
We continued on over the low pass ahead. On the other side the trail descended steeply, with occasional sets of stairs; it would not have been a good bike route!
Eventually we got to the bottom of the valley. The map had made it look like we’d need to walk alongside the main road to get to the town of Armentarola, but we followed the signs and found ourselves on a pleasant forested trail that took us nearly all the way. The signage in general was really excellent; the trails were marked with copious red and white blazes on the trees and rocks alongside, sometimes with the trail number painted on the blaze as well, and every intersection had a signpost. Though I was a bit startled to see my name (well, almost) on this one, as we neared Armentarola:
We found our hotel, the Gran Paradisio, and it was paradise indeed to take off our hiking boots after 11 miles and 2500 vertical feet (more or less in both directions - we usually ended up at approximately the same elevation we started at).
After breakfast the next morning we found our “trail” out. The first mile was a paved path between local farms, which we left for a logging access dirt road. We were deep in the trees, so it was not particularly scenic, and we both grumbled a little until we broke out into the higher meadows, where we could see the mountains.
And then we came to a high meadow dotted with picturesque cabins, the Pralongià Plateau. We passed another hiker, our first, and then a small group of mountain bikers passed us. We followed the trail (still really a road) as it slowly climbed through the meadow, winding its way among the cabins, until we topped out at the saddle and saw many more hikers. Also, many more mountain bikers, almost all on e-bikes. (One man in lycra, standing up and pumping hard on a steep climb, proudly proclaimed, “No e-bike!” when he got to the top, and everybody applauded!) And finally, as we rounded the corner of the slope, we saw the top of the Pralongià chairlift: We were hiking across a ski resort.
Actually there were multiple chairlifts and gondolas here, which explained why there were so many hikers and bicyclists at the top of this mountain. We hiked across the slender ridgeline, the “Tru Panoramich,” just as it started to drizzle, and quickly found a copse of trees for shelter while we ate the lunch we’d brought from the Gran Paradisio. When we were finished we hiked the rest of the way across the top of the ski area, then descended on a newly-cut trail underneath a gondola, and made it nearly to the town of Corvara before the skies decided to really open up. Hastily we pulled on our rain jackets, then descended the rest of the way to the town and found the Hotel Posta Zirm, where we’d be spending two nights. We’d covered 9 miles and climbed/descended about 2100 feet.
After three moderately strenuous hiking days, we were ready for a rest day. One of the things Daniel had mentioned as an option for our planned layover in Corvara was to take the Boè gondola to the Piz Boè Alpine Lounge, which upon googling I discovered was a fancy restaurant high on the mountain across the valley from us. Piz Boè itself is a 3152 meter (10,340’) peak, but although it is quite dramatic it is also considered the easiest 3000m summit in the Dolomites as there are several routes which rely on taking the summer-operation ski lifts part way; one option is to take the Boè gondola to 2200m (about 7200’), and then a chairlift to gain more altitude before hiking, but the chairlift hadn’t opened for the season yet, so we agreed that maybe climbing a high peak wouldn’t be on the agenda for our rest day. :-) Instead we decided to take the gondola up and hike around a little, then have a fancy lunch, which turned out to be an excellent plan.
The Boè gondola climbs nearly 2000 feet over a mile and a half distance. The bright yellow egg-shaped cars carry 8, but we were the only riders in our car.
When we got out of the gondola, we hiked up the steep road that paralleled the still-closed chairlift until we reached the short trail that led to Lago Boè, a tiny but very pretty lake. Then we slowly wandered back down to the Alpine Lounge. There were only a few people in the large bar, so we let the servers know we were going to sit on the side with the awesome view (duh!) and we settled in for an amazing lunch! We had fancy spritzes and “L’Aperitivo Misto” which included shrimp wrapped in pastry strands, anchovies, ham, and most deliciously buffalo burrata with black truffle, with honeyed ricotta and whole-wheat sourdough bread. Yum!
(You can sort of see our route out the next day on this picture taken out the restaurant window. We switchbacked up in the woods just to the right of the ridge, crossed the faint trail visible under the rock massif, and went up to the high plateau visible in the upper left.)
The next morning we got a packed lunch from the hotel restaurant and set out across Corvara. We were excited and a bit apprehensive about the day’s route, which would take us to the highest elevation of our trek; when Daniel had drawn it on the map, he’d mentioned that he wasn’t sure if there was still snow, and he’d marked an alternate route just in case. I had brought my mini-gaiters, and as Britt hadn’t brought his we had spent a little time after our excursion the previous day checking out the many outdoors stores in Corvara, but none of them carried what we wanted. (We had also ogled the very fancy e-mountain-bikes for sale and rent. Dolomites tourism has enthusiastically embraced the e-bike trend!)
We worked our way up the streets, past hotels and houses, and found the trail that led us into the forest. The trail switchbacked relentlessly upward through the forest, though at a decent grade that didn’t feel too hard, and after about an hour we broke out of the trees and onto the shoulder of Sassongher Mountain. Just below us, we could see the top of another gondola – we could have taken the easy way up, I guess!
We contoured around the cliffs and then worked our way up the trail, above a scattering of sheep grazing in a small meadow and past several other hikers. We tended to pass a lot of people while going uphill, and I suspect it was because we live at more or less the elevation of these trails, while other tourists most likely live closer to sea level. (The trail signs give the hiking time, rather than the distance, to the indicated location, and I noticed that we usually were faster than the given time on the flat or uphill, and slower than the given time when going downhill.)
Eventually we reached the Forcella de Ciampei, but rather than continuing over that pass we turned left to cross the rock and tundra plateau toward a higher pass, the Forcella de Crespeina. There was indeed still snow, but it was either avoidable or easily tromped across. The views were spectacular in every direction, and we enjoyed the rare sensation of being above treeline while still having plenty of oxygen!
At the pass, marked with the ubiquitous crucifix, we looked down into Val de Chedul, the glacier-carved valley below. On the left side of the valley several moderate-looking trails converged on a pass that was one of our possible alternate routes, but we were headed straight down the valley. We could see hikers struggling up the trail toward us and could tell it was steep; our knees were not going to like it!
We hit a somewhat flatter spot and decided to move off the trail into the nearby rocks to have lunch. As soon as the food came out, several bold corvids with yellow beaks (pretty sure they were Alpine choughs, Pyrrhocorax graculus) came out to snatch any crumbs that we might let fall.
After lunch we continued down, down, down, from tundra and rock to trees and moss, and when the Val de Chedul joined the gentler and broader Vallunga we turned left and followed another trail into the ski town of Sëlva di Val Gardena, our destination for the night. It had been just over 10 miles, with over 3500' of elevation gain and loss.
The small town was bustling, and we could see some of the streets were closed off for what looked like a bike race for small kids; the front of our hotel, the Hotel Tyrol, was draped with bunting and signs proclaiming it the headquarters for the BMW HERO Dolomites mountain bike race. We enjoyed the complimentary prosecco and snacks (hey, it had been a while since lunch!), then after a shower poked around the very extensive spa area, moving between the indoor pool, outdoor pool, jacuzzi (tepid as usual), and sauna. It was nice to have an evening to relax, especially since the next day would be our longest day...
We did not yet realize just how long it was going to be!