Dolomites Trek Underway

The begin­ning of our days in the Dolomites began with a bit of weath­er excite­ment. Meet­ing Fri­day evening for steins of Aus­tri­an beer and polen­ta lake­side the tran­quil Lago Mis­u­ri­na we pre­pared to shake off the jet lag of flights in from Inns­bruck and Venice with casu­al strolls around the lake and a morn­ing gear and snack check before catch­ing trans­port up to the high east­ern pass for our first day out on the trails.

The weath­er gods decid­ed they’d take over instead. Tor­rents of rain pre­dict­ed Fri­day night and all day Sat­ur­day into our first weekend.

But this hard­ly bunch of Wis­con­sinites and Himalayan motor­cy­clists weren’t to be phased.

Stuff­ing a few spare pairs of socks and pants we set off on our first taste of Dolomites Alta Via trails. In this case, a 900 foot climb to the pass of Mont Cole­si for a view of the Dolomite amp­ithe­ater down into the remote Popera range.

Here we descend­ed down for a peace­ful lunch at the Lunel­li hut before our after­noon climb to the Berti Hutte perched incred­i­bly on the cliff wall over­look­ing the valley.

The local hus­band and wife team of Rita and Bruno wel­comed our drenched and smil­ing faces with plen­ty of options to dry out kit before descend­ing to a toasty fire and an evening of cards. These hit guardians have been up on the hills wel­com­ing trekkers and climbers for over 40 years; set­ting an incred­i­ble warmth to our first night up high.

And then, the rains tore through! Our next day was more Scot­tish than Ital­ian and we zipped our way down and back over relics of old war mil­i­tary roads back out of the storm and around the ​‘rel­a­tive­ly’ sun­nier south­ern stretch­es of the Tre Cime range.

Here the team made swift tim­ing reach­ing the spec­tac­u­lar Locatel­li hit at the heart of the world famous Tre Cime ménage just in time for din­ner. Our longest and wildest day by far swap­ping from plan A to B to C and final­ly D in escap­ing this mem­o­rable weath­er system.

Not till days lat­er when we hit civ­i­liza­tion did we read about Sloven­ian emer­gency flood relief just in the Julian Alps next door. It was a wel­come relief our itin­er­ary wasn’t based on hang­ing off via Fer­rara chains climb­ing up and over 9000 foot passes.