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ilanaramaThe hiking plan laid out for us from Sëlva di Val Gardena to Compatsch was 11.8 miles with more elevation loss than gain. This would be accomplished by taking the bus from Sëlva to Passo Sella, about 2000’ higher, and beginning the hike there. (The Dolomites region is well-served by buses, and tourists are given cards at the hotels to allow free bus travel within the area – a really awesome idea that more places should embrace, in my opinion.)
We had an inkling this plan might not work the previous night, when we looked at the information booklet about the mountain bike race scheduled for that day. The road to Passo Sella would be closed for a couple of hours in the morning, but as the race was not taking that particular road (it used the dirt and gravel roads that made up many of the marked “trails”) we figured that we’d just have to start our hike a little later. But in the morning we discovered that not only was the road to Passo Sella closed, none of the buses would be running all day!
Time for plan C. Britt got on the phone to Holomites, the company that organized our hike. Meanwhile, I started chatting with some people we’d seen the night before, who were also hiking, and they were in their gear and getting ready to go. I asked one woman where they were hiking today, and she pointed to one of the men and said, “Ask our guide.”
Jakub Doubic (we got his name later from the company he works for, Alpine Hikers, when we wrote them to tell them how awesome he is) told me where they were going – basically where we had come from the day before – and I told him about our problem. “There’s got to be another way,” he said. “Let’s look at the map.”
I spread out our map, which had our planned route highlighted in pink. He pointed out a trail we could use to hike to Passo Sella from our hotel, but it would make the hike very long, with a lot of elevation gain (that 2000’ we would have avoided!) and we’d be starting rather late. Then he pointed to another line on the map. “Probably the best thing to do would be to take the Ciampinoi gondola and then go around the mountains here, the Sassolungo, on the north instead of on the south. Then you meet your trail at the Sasso Piatto hut.”
I was worried there might be snow, going around the north side of the mountains, but it turned out his group had hiked that trail on their way to Sëlva, and he assured me there was only one spot of a little snow, easily passed. So, plan G (for Gondola) it was!
Just for fun I turned on my GPS watch as we headed out of the Hotel Tyrol, so our GPS track includes an incredibly fast, incredibly steep mile from 0.4 to 1.5 as we zooomed up in the gondola car :-) When we exited at the top we saw a map showing us a ski-map style view of the trails we’d be taking: 21 to 526A to 526 to 527, then 7 to 2 and in to Compatsch, on a high plateau called the Alpe di Siusi.
The first trail was really a dirt road going downhill, and there were many hikers on it, as well as a few mountain bikers who zoomed by. The tourist season had gradually caught up with us, it seemed, and also we were in the more spectacular and popular areas now.
Soon we were on an actual trail, contouring high along the edge of the Sassolungo massif, a dramatic collection of pinnacles and peaks. We crossed the “one spot of snow” and continued on, along meadows and forests at the foot of the mountains, finally reaching Sasso Piatto just in time for lunch. Which was delicious! I had dumpling soup, and Britt had a huge bread and cheese plate that I snacked on as well; the leftovers provided the next day’s trail lunch, too.
Our trail from there went pretty much along the ridgeline. Farm buildings and the occasional cow dotted the grassy slopes on both sides.
And then—we caught up to the bicycle race! From the trail we could see some of the riders climbing the Pas de Duron, which was steep enough that many of them got off and walked their bikes. (I was impressed with the few we saw that managed to make it all the way up!) We continued on the road on the downhill side of the pass, carefully staying out of the racers’ way, and then turned off on another dirt road to continue our hike.
After a short distance of dirt road, we turned off onto a trail, which wound around the hills before flattening out across a buttercup-filled meadow, the Alpe di Siusi, where we took a wide, well-used trail between log cabins and ski lifts gently downhill to the village of Compatsch. By this time we were pretty tired, so we were very happy to reach our hotel, the beautiful and elegant Seiser Alm Urthaler and relax until dinner, while looking at the view. It had been 15.3 miles (okay, 14.3 on our feet if you subtract the gondola ride!), about 2300’ gain (again, not counting the gondola), and 4000’ loss.
In the morning we set off across the meadows again. Since Corvara, we’d seen more tourists every day, and this was the busiest yet. However, the combination of broad meadows and lots of people meant no convenient trees to hide in to take a leak! Fortunately we found a “hut” along the way, and after using the facilities we relaxed with espresso drinks—fluid in, fluid out, I guess!
Shortly after our coffee break, the wide, open, gentle trail turned into the trees and narrowed. The gradual downhill got steep, and the tourists mostly vanished. It was a long way down, almost 2100’ over 5.5 miles, most of it in the last two miles! Fortunately we didn’t have to go all the way to the valley floor to get to our hotel, Alpenhotel Rainell, which sits above the ski town of Ortisei.
Since it had been a short hiking day, we had a long afternoon to explore Ortisei, a picture-perfect Tyrolean ski town famous for carved wooden toys. It was really bustling, the busiest place we’d been so far in the Dolomites, but the Purgers Pub (I know, terrible name, but it was named after a local guy named Johann Baptist Purger who lived in the 19th century) seemed to have only a handful of locals at the outside tables, and it served really delicious craft beer. Then we hiked back uphill to the hotel, where they were serving their afternoon cake (this was a thing in many of the hotels we stayed at, complimentary cake in the afternoon!) so we had to get spritzes to wash it down!
The hotel was hosting a “supercar” tour, so the parking lot sported a rainbow array of fancy sports cars
The food here was particularly awesome, too, which we appreciated as this would be our last fancy resort hotel before heading home.
The next morning we had our last layover day, and our plan was to hike Seceda, which is a famous tilted peak with a stunning ridgeline that must be one of the area’s most famous tourist attractions, as its picture features in about three-quarters of the advertisements for places in the area. The main gondola leaves from Ortisei and goes right to the summit, but the man at the hotel desk told us that a maintenance worker had had a fatal accident while working on the gondola the previous month and it had not re-opened; instead, he recommended that we take the bus (free with tourist card!) to Santa Cristina just down the road, where there was another gondola. This one only went to the bottom of the tilted upper meadow, but that was fine with us as it would give us a nice loop hike up to the ridgeline and back. (There’s a chairlift that we could use to skip most of the hiking, but we like to hike! Then again, we could have hiked all the way up from Santa Cristina, with over twice the distance and elevation gain, or even from Ortisei…nah.)
Finding the right bus and figuring out where to get off, even with the help of Google’s bus-map directions, was a fraught affair as usual, and at one point I was convinced we were on the wrong bus, but we made it to Santa Cristina—only a few miles away, but we had to go through two tunnels! The driver told us we needed to walk across the street to get a shuttle bus to the actual Col Raiser gondola station, which we did, and eventually found the “bus” (a van) and when it was full, it took us the short distance up to the station. (On the way back we found we had to wait for half an hour for the next shuttle, so we just walked the half-mile, not too bad as it was downhill on the way back.)
We bought our gondola tickets and got in line—an actual line! But not a long one, fortunately. Soon we were up on the amazing tilted plateau, with mountain views in every direction. Tourist huts and private farm buildings were scattered across the plateau, with fences dividing the private land from the public. It got more and more crowded as we approached the knife-edge ridge. (We wondered whether, if the main gondola had been running, it would have been even more crowded!)
At the top there was a nifty circular mountain-map, identifying all the peaks you could see from the 360° view. https://www.flickr.com/photos/svwindom/53077748316/in/album-72177720309412489/
After hiking up to the top and feasting our eyeballs on all the scenery, we hiked down the short distance to the restaurant at the top of the main (closed) gondola, which was okay but not great (though the views and the beer were awesome), and then we made our way back down the tilted meadows to our gondola station, for a total loop of a bit more than 5 miles and almost 1500' gain and loss. Then we took the gondola back down, walked to the bus stop, and came back to Ortisei.
The next day was just one long travel day: bus to Bolzano, where we had lunch on a piazza, then the train back to Milan via Verona again. On the Verona-Milan leg we were on the express train, the “Frecciarossa” (which means “Red Arrow”) which was really fast—Britt held his phone up to the window with the GPS program running, and got speeds above 155mph! We transferred to the normal slow, poky train to the Milan airport (okay, even the slow, poky trains were in the 90mph range), checked into the airport hotel, ate dinner at the hotel restaurant (not bad, but not like the Dolomites 4-star hotels!) and then turned in.
For the flights back we basically beelined straight for the lounges, hung out and snacked, got on the plane and tried to sleep, lather rinse repeat. We ate dinner at the Dallas Flagship lounge again and it was delicious again – and the waitress we’d had before saw us there and recognized us, and came over to say hi! The only snag was that our plane from Dallas to Durango was delayed (and had a gate change); we were going to get home late as it was, but with the delay we ended up not getting home and into our beds until 1 am MDT, about 28 hours after we’d woken up in Milan. It was an excellent vacation, but we were glad to get home!
We had an inkling this plan might not work the previous night, when we looked at the information booklet about the mountain bike race scheduled for that day. The road to Passo Sella would be closed for a couple of hours in the morning, but as the race was not taking that particular road (it used the dirt and gravel roads that made up many of the marked “trails”) we figured that we’d just have to start our hike a little later. But in the morning we discovered that not only was the road to Passo Sella closed, none of the buses would be running all day!
Time for plan C. Britt got on the phone to Holomites, the company that organized our hike. Meanwhile, I started chatting with some people we’d seen the night before, who were also hiking, and they were in their gear and getting ready to go. I asked one woman where they were hiking today, and she pointed to one of the men and said, “Ask our guide.”
Jakub Doubic (we got his name later from the company he works for, Alpine Hikers, when we wrote them to tell them how awesome he is) told me where they were going – basically where we had come from the day before – and I told him about our problem. “There’s got to be another way,” he said. “Let’s look at the map.”
I spread out our map, which had our planned route highlighted in pink. He pointed out a trail we could use to hike to Passo Sella from our hotel, but it would make the hike very long, with a lot of elevation gain (that 2000’ we would have avoided!) and we’d be starting rather late. Then he pointed to another line on the map. “Probably the best thing to do would be to take the Ciampinoi gondola and then go around the mountains here, the Sassolungo, on the north instead of on the south. Then you meet your trail at the Sasso Piatto hut.”
I was worried there might be snow, going around the north side of the mountains, but it turned out his group had hiked that trail on their way to Sëlva, and he assured me there was only one spot of a little snow, easily passed. So, plan G (for Gondola) it was!
Just for fun I turned on my GPS watch as we headed out of the Hotel Tyrol, so our GPS track includes an incredibly fast, incredibly steep mile from 0.4 to 1.5 as we zooomed up in the gondola car :-) When we exited at the top we saw a map showing us a ski-map style view of the trails we’d be taking: 21 to 526A to 526 to 527, then 7 to 2 and in to Compatsch, on a high plateau called the Alpe di Siusi.
The first trail was really a dirt road going downhill, and there were many hikers on it, as well as a few mountain bikers who zoomed by. The tourist season had gradually caught up with us, it seemed, and also we were in the more spectacular and popular areas now.
Soon we were on an actual trail, contouring high along the edge of the Sassolungo massif, a dramatic collection of pinnacles and peaks. We crossed the “one spot of snow” and continued on, along meadows and forests at the foot of the mountains, finally reaching Sasso Piatto just in time for lunch. Which was delicious! I had dumpling soup, and Britt had a huge bread and cheese plate that I snacked on as well; the leftovers provided the next day’s trail lunch, too.
Our trail from there went pretty much along the ridgeline. Farm buildings and the occasional cow dotted the grassy slopes on both sides.
And then—we caught up to the bicycle race! From the trail we could see some of the riders climbing the Pas de Duron, which was steep enough that many of them got off and walked their bikes. (I was impressed with the few we saw that managed to make it all the way up!) We continued on the road on the downhill side of the pass, carefully staying out of the racers’ way, and then turned off on another dirt road to continue our hike.
After a short distance of dirt road, we turned off onto a trail, which wound around the hills before flattening out across a buttercup-filled meadow, the Alpe di Siusi, where we took a wide, well-used trail between log cabins and ski lifts gently downhill to the village of Compatsch. By this time we were pretty tired, so we were very happy to reach our hotel, the beautiful and elegant Seiser Alm Urthaler and relax until dinner, while looking at the view. It had been 15.3 miles (okay, 14.3 on our feet if you subtract the gondola ride!), about 2300’ gain (again, not counting the gondola), and 4000’ loss.
In the morning we set off across the meadows again. Since Corvara, we’d seen more tourists every day, and this was the busiest yet. However, the combination of broad meadows and lots of people meant no convenient trees to hide in to take a leak! Fortunately we found a “hut” along the way, and after using the facilities we relaxed with espresso drinks—fluid in, fluid out, I guess!
Shortly after our coffee break, the wide, open, gentle trail turned into the trees and narrowed. The gradual downhill got steep, and the tourists mostly vanished. It was a long way down, almost 2100’ over 5.5 miles, most of it in the last two miles! Fortunately we didn’t have to go all the way to the valley floor to get to our hotel, Alpenhotel Rainell, which sits above the ski town of Ortisei.
Since it had been a short hiking day, we had a long afternoon to explore Ortisei, a picture-perfect Tyrolean ski town famous for carved wooden toys. It was really bustling, the busiest place we’d been so far in the Dolomites, but the Purgers Pub (I know, terrible name, but it was named after a local guy named Johann Baptist Purger who lived in the 19th century) seemed to have only a handful of locals at the outside tables, and it served really delicious craft beer. Then we hiked back uphill to the hotel, where they were serving their afternoon cake (this was a thing in many of the hotels we stayed at, complimentary cake in the afternoon!) so we had to get spritzes to wash it down!
The hotel was hosting a “supercar” tour, so the parking lot sported a rainbow array of fancy sports cars
The food here was particularly awesome, too, which we appreciated as this would be our last fancy resort hotel before heading home.
The next morning we had our last layover day, and our plan was to hike Seceda, which is a famous tilted peak with a stunning ridgeline that must be one of the area’s most famous tourist attractions, as its picture features in about three-quarters of the advertisements for places in the area. The main gondola leaves from Ortisei and goes right to the summit, but the man at the hotel desk told us that a maintenance worker had had a fatal accident while working on the gondola the previous month and it had not re-opened; instead, he recommended that we take the bus (free with tourist card!) to Santa Cristina just down the road, where there was another gondola. This one only went to the bottom of the tilted upper meadow, but that was fine with us as it would give us a nice loop hike up to the ridgeline and back. (There’s a chairlift that we could use to skip most of the hiking, but we like to hike! Then again, we could have hiked all the way up from Santa Cristina, with over twice the distance and elevation gain, or even from Ortisei…nah.)
Finding the right bus and figuring out where to get off, even with the help of Google’s bus-map directions, was a fraught affair as usual, and at one point I was convinced we were on the wrong bus, but we made it to Santa Cristina—only a few miles away, but we had to go through two tunnels! The driver told us we needed to walk across the street to get a shuttle bus to the actual Col Raiser gondola station, which we did, and eventually found the “bus” (a van) and when it was full, it took us the short distance up to the station. (On the way back we found we had to wait for half an hour for the next shuttle, so we just walked the half-mile, not too bad as it was downhill on the way back.)
We bought our gondola tickets and got in line—an actual line! But not a long one, fortunately. Soon we were up on the amazing tilted plateau, with mountain views in every direction. Tourist huts and private farm buildings were scattered across the plateau, with fences dividing the private land from the public. It got more and more crowded as we approached the knife-edge ridge. (We wondered whether, if the main gondola had been running, it would have been even more crowded!)
At the top there was a nifty circular mountain-map, identifying all the peaks you could see from the 360° view. https://www.flickr.com/photos/svwindom/53077748316/in/album-72177720309412489/
After hiking up to the top and feasting our eyeballs on all the scenery, we hiked down the short distance to the restaurant at the top of the main (closed) gondola, which was okay but not great (though the views and the beer were awesome), and then we made our way back down the tilted meadows to our gondola station, for a total loop of a bit more than 5 miles and almost 1500' gain and loss. Then we took the gondola back down, walked to the bus stop, and came back to Ortisei.
The next day was just one long travel day: bus to Bolzano, where we had lunch on a piazza, then the train back to Milan via Verona again. On the Verona-Milan leg we were on the express train, the “Frecciarossa” (which means “Red Arrow”) which was really fast—Britt held his phone up to the window with the GPS program running, and got speeds above 155mph! We transferred to the normal slow, poky train to the Milan airport (okay, even the slow, poky trains were in the 90mph range), checked into the airport hotel, ate dinner at the hotel restaurant (not bad, but not like the Dolomites 4-star hotels!) and then turned in.
For the flights back we basically beelined straight for the lounges, hung out and snacked, got on the plane and tried to sleep, lather rinse repeat. We ate dinner at the Dallas Flagship lounge again and it was delicious again – and the waitress we’d had before saw us there and recognized us, and came over to say hi! The only snag was that our plane from Dallas to Durango was delayed (and had a gate change); we were going to get home late as it was, but with the delay we ended up not getting home and into our beds until 1 am MDT, about 28 hours after we’d woken up in Milan. It was an excellent vacation, but we were glad to get home!
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Date: 2023-07-31 01:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-08-01 09:06 pm (UTC)