Dolomites

The best book in English that I have found for Dolomite hikes is the Cicerone Guide, "Walking in the Dolomites" by Gillian Price.

As most often happens, we start our hiking trip at our friends house in St. Marcel in the Savoie. We got up early in the morning knowing that it was going to be a long drive from France up over the Alps, across Italy and up to the Dolmites. We were up and over the Col de Petit Saint Bernard pass early and dropped down into Italy on a very narrow, almost one lane road, winding back and forth and back forth. We finally made it down to the plain across the top of Italy past Milan, past the turn to Venice and north up to the Dolomites. It took all day to drive, so we spent our first night at a campground so we could start hiking early the next day.

This hike was in two sections. See the map at the bottom of this page. Our first hike was a several day trek, then we made our way back to the campground for a night and off again to the other side of the valley for more hiking.

We camped at Camping International Cologna on the Lago di Centro Cadore for our first and third nights. They had a nice bar and pizzeria. Dave claims he had the best pizza he's ever had in his life there. It was a thin crusted pizza with smoked mozzarella cheese.

Starting out in the village of Pozalle. Many hikers head straight up the road next to the cars through the village to go to Rifugio Antelao, but we wanted to take the less direct and more interesting route. We headed up through the pretty village with the clicking of hiking poles on pavement and were on trail before long.

En route we passed small mountain huts, but mostly it was uninhabited wild land.

We took a side trail to go up to a ridge top to the Chapel of San Dionisio. This ancient pagen rites site was named after the Greek god of fertility and wine, Dionysus. Often known as the Roman god, Bacchus. The door was locked but peeking in through the windows, the interior was remarkably spotless and renovated. This is still a popular place and once a year in the summer, a local celebration occurs.

The view from the chapel was a 360 degree panorama of steep, grey pointed peaks and deep, green valleys. We were in the Marmarole region of the Dolomites an area much less frequented by hikers. The forests and meadows are full of wildlife and wildflowers. It is a place of many stories and legends like the one about the giant who had fallen in love with a maiden, but to his misfortune, a witch had cursed him. He would be turned to stone if he ever fell in love. He hurled himself at the mountains with his broken heart as he turned to stone and created the magnificent peak of Antelao.

From there we hiked down to Rifugio Antelao for the night. The setting could not have been more perfect. There was an old jeep track to the Rifugio as is often the case in the Dolomites, in part thanks to roads built during the World Wars, but not many ventured this far by vehicle.

The next day was business on the trail as usual, up and up and up before dropping back down, down, down.

Sitting close to the border between Austria and Italy, this area was a battle hotspot during both World Wars. Up in the surrounding mountainsides we could see caves and tunnels carved into the stone where the soldiers kept watch on movement below. In some valleys, the land was pocked with bomb craters like this one.

This day holds many vivid memories for me. It was one of the hottest days of hiking I can recall. I was not too bright and did not anticipate needing as much water as I did. Thanks to dearest Amy, ever the patient and caring nurse, she stuck with me during the last couple of miles as I was probably close to heatstroke. My own dumb fault. About two-thirds of the way up to Rifugio Chiggiato, the woods became thicker and shadier and there was a refreshing, cool spring where I practically immersed myself inside and out. I felt like one of those expanding sponges.

Another distinct memory of this spot was meeting two young Italian men hiking along the trail. When they learned we were from Seattle, they smiled and remarked with the only English words they seemed to know, "Ahh! Nirvana! Kurt Cobain!" 

Finally, we arrived at Rifugio Chiggiato. It seemed so remote and isolated, yet it was a cheerful, comfortable Rifugio run by a young couple and their young son. The husband spoke the most English or French and helped us get situated. His wife seemed very shy and didn't speak a word. The meal that night that she cooked was incredible. Pumpkin ravioli was my favorite. When we left, I told her in broken Italian how much I enjoyed the meal the night before. Her beaming smile revealed she was really just shy, not grumpy.

The view from Rifugio Chiggiato. Seemed like we were on the top of the world. This was before the storm, but that evening huge thunderheads rolled in and settled down on the peaks. A thunder and lightening show worthy of the Greek gods ensued for the evening's entertainment.

The dining room at the Rifugio had this amazing stove with ceramic warming racks. Our guardian host told us that skiers and snowmobilers do come up in the late and early season to stay. And at this altitude, the warmth of the stove could be needed at any time.

I have to mention the event we all remember who were sleeping peacefully that night at Chiggiato. In the wee hours of the dead of night, a scream pierced the silence with a bone chilling howl. Several brave ones leaped from their beds to defend us from the night demons only to find a fellow hiker fighting his way out of a tightly wrapped sheet. Enough said, but anyone who was there can only smile at the memory. No harm was done and we all gained a story we can all tell for years to come. Though I'm not naming names!

Despite the night's excitement, we were all up again early to head out for the day's long walk ahead.

The rest of the day we hiked along in high alpine meadows stopping at a Rifugio midway for lunch and our usual sieste. We had one big challenge ahead as we dropped down into the woods. It was an unrelenting steep, knee-jarring descent that went on for miles and miles. We hiked down through areas of mountain huts that could have been right out of a fairy tale or Hansel and Gretel. The meadows were covered in wildflowers and tempting berries. I witnessed a new hiking technique by Amy as she walked backwards down the trail to give her knees a rest from the endless pounding.

We all survived and ended up in the lovely village of Lozzo and it's stone houses, flower boxes and many fountains. We had a car parked here from the shuttle we did a few days before. The boys took the bus and we drove back to the Camping International Cologna for a night's rest before heading out for another hiking adventure the next day.

Because of the distance we wanted to cover, we needed to start the day with a shuttle of cars so we are sure to have a ride available at the end of the hike. So we split up into two groups. One group of us had a head start so we had the luxury of a long lunch while we waited for our shuttle drivers, Dave and Klebert, to catch up to us.

At every Rifugio we purchase lunches for the next day and we are never disappointed at what we find in the lunch bags. Always local cheese, bread and some sort of ham or sausage for the meat eaters which is everybody but me.

We all finally met up and had a delightful, but long distance day through unbelievably beautiful meadows surrounded by the granite spikes of the Dolomite mountains. Almost always along the way we encounter a small Rifugio such as this one, Rifugio Giaf, where we can stop and refresh.

It was hard to not stop and take photos every few minutes as the scenery was jaw dropping gorgeous.

The clouds were there only for effect. They never threatened or caused any rain that day.

As we started to drop back down towards our next nights Rifugio, we passed by this old mountain hut. Turned out it was inhabited by a woman and her family, but she spent many years here alone with her dog. Her name was Wauda and in the woodshed there were photos, news clippings and journals that told her story. They were out of the direct weather but still clearly needed better preservation. It was fascinating to see.

We made it to Rifugio Padova in time for drinks and a rest before dinner.

We added our own color to the Rifugio with our towels hanging out of our room window to dry.

The rooms were large and comfortable at Rifugio Padova. The usual bunks with a blanket and pillow. Despite the fact that grubby hikers are passing through here every day, the Rifugios are always clean and tidy.

Rifugio Padova had a wood carving contest at least once in their history and the place is covered in fantastic wood carvings such as this Alpinist on belay over the front door.

And this one we will always think of as a kindred spirit of Amy, the mushroom hunter.

After a good night's sleep, we headed out again, out of the green meadows directly up into the rugged peaks that are nothing but rock.

If you look really, really close you can see the boys scrambling high up on the scree slope. This is what they did for fun while waiting for slow pokes like me to arrive at the pass.

And after the up, up, up to the pass, comes the down, down, down.

Our hike ended at this road pass where we were going to catch the bus back to the town, Pieve di Cadore. But we soon learned that the buses don't run on Sundays! It was a momentary dilemma, but the bar owner had some contacts, called a friend, who called another friend and before long we had two Italian men loading us and our gear into their cars and we careened on down the winding mountain roads in record time. Not a bad way to get there fast. We all agreed in the end it was much better than the bus.

Pieve di Cadore is an interesting town where the painter Titian was born, though he is more often associated with Florence. This was the house where he lived. I read that he often painted the Dolomite peaks into many of his paintings even when supposedly set in the Holy Land. A year or so later I looked for myself at his paintings in the Louvre in Paris and sure enough, there they were - pastoral lands of the Middle East with Italian Dolomite peaks jutting up to the sky in the background.

That afternoon after our hike out from Rifugio Padova and our wild ride in the citizen taxis, we all piled into the cars and drove further down the mountains into the Po Valley where we eventually navigated ourselves by some miracle to a large parking garage just outside Venice. We caught the Vaporetto into the city, located our incredibly luxurious, yet cheap hotel thanks to Amy's travel expertise, washed off a few cubic feet of dirt and set off to explore the city and of course take a Gondola ride.

Some parting words of wisdom about Venice -- never order the Venetian Meat Plate at 11pm at night. It is nothing but trouble. Otherwise Viva Italia!

This map is not accurate for mileage. It shows approximate location of the trails we followed.


View Dolomites in a larger map