Clearing skies on the Dolomite trek

Day 4 – 5: Our adven­tur­ous efforts to stay on our sched­uled huts despite some changes to trail plans paid off. At the end of the week­end the skies cleared and we we woke up to sun­rise col­ors bathing the famed Tre Cime peaks. No idea what we’ll do with the dozens of pho­tos tak­en through the morning.

From here, we com­plet­ed the loop back down to our start­ing point at Lake Mis­u­ri­na after a dash­ing hike down through the pine forests slash­ing the pre­dict­ed trail times I half. A hap­py team to be mov­ing with ease on dry Dolomite rock again.

The night was spent relax­ing in the heart of the val­ley at the pic­turesque town of Corti­na. Show­ers and cloth­ing swaps for all now that we reunit­ed again with our suit­cas­es and a 3 or 4 or was that 5 course din­ner of local speck, bolog­nese, wel­come sal­ads and piz­zas had our table stacked high­er with dish­es than I think I’ve ever expe­ri­enced on a moun­tain trip; we were offi­cial­ly replenished!

Day 5 was a wel­come casu­al start where we set off to hike the loop around the cinque tor­ri range. Here wjth the sun shin­ing we zigzagged up wild­flower-cov­ered hill­sides and watched climbers bat­tle sun­ny rock cracks before a bustling lunch at the ski refuge-bar at Refu­gio Aver­au. The after­noon saw us break away once again from the crowds and climb up val­ley to the high­light of our trip, Refu­gio Lagazuoi.

With some trail mod­i­fi­ca­tions due to sum­mer rock fall, here John’s d Lisa zipped up the Pas­so Falzarego cable car pass­ing the win­dows and tun­nels of the Ital­ian-Aus­tri­an front of World War One.

San­dra, Todd, and I took the airy tra­verse the mine blown scree and up the famed zig zags to one of the most spec­tac­u­lar view points of all of the Dolomites- just out the front doors of the Lagazuoi hut.