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I’m in a bit of a depresh.
I wasn’t expecting it.
I’ve been randomly welling up with tears for the past few days. Work call? Tears. In the shower? Tears. Making lunch? Tears.
I find sitting at my desk makes me squirm with discomfort, the feeling of being confined to one spot, unbearable.
This time, just a week ago, I was driving the winding roads of northern Italy, eyes wide, vibrating with anticipation of the adventure that lay ahead—the adventure I’d been dreaming of for years.
Now, that adventure is in the rearview mirror, and I wish, more than anything, to go back and bury myself inside every moment.
Life is cruel that way, isn’t it? Everything ends. Even the good stuff (ope, here come the tears again).
I’m thankful for Substack in so many ways, the opportunity to recount my adventures wasn’t one I was expecting. To be able to write about and share my experiences makes the transition back to normal life a little bit easier. By writing about them, I get to live there just a little bit longer.
I have a travel bucket list, and it’s DEEP. I’m talking, 50+ locations deep. And not one of them involves exploring a major European city or sitting by the beach with a cocktail. That’s just not my style.
I want to GET UP IT IN. To have a unique experience.
To get acquainted with the world in a way most people wouldn’t dare.
Truthfully, the sheer size of this list intimidates me. Where to start? How to choose?
At some point, you just have to make a decision and pull the trigger. But most of the time, things just kind of ~materialize~ from somewhere in the ether.
That’s how this trip to the Dolomites happened.
One minute we’re talking about it, the next we’re booking flights, as if some force from ~the universe~ was moving my fingers across the mouse pad of my laptop while I was blacked out.
So from September 8-13th, my husband and I, alongside two close friends, Tori and Roen, strapped on our backpacks, laced up our hiking boots, and descended on the Dolomites
(as a disclaimer, this post ended up being MUCH longer than I anticipated, so I’ve divided it into sections—itinerary, reflections, and daily diary— depending on what you might be interested in learning about this trip. Enjoy at your hearts content!)
Itinerary
There is so much to explore in the Dolomites. There are over 60 rifugios and quite literally an infinite amount of routes to take, most noteably, the Alta Via 1 and 2, Seiser Alm to Rosengarten, Tre Cime Traverse, Pale di San Martine and Alpe di Siusi.
I highly recommended using a booking service to book your trip, and book as early as possible, especially if the route you take is important to you. I’m talking, up to a year in advance. Here’s why:
Rifugios have very limited availability, especially along more popular routes like the Alta Via 1. As you start to plan your route, you’ll likely run into the issue of some huts along the route being booked up, causing you to have to get creative with detours, which may have significant impacts on your overall experience. Furthermore, for most of the huts, booking isn’t straightforward. You have to email or call most of them, and by the time they get back to you, they may be booked.
I tried to do it all myself initially and it was… a mess. So confusing.
We used MONT Trekking to book our trip and we had a great experience with them. We essentially told them what we were looking for: the number of days, the difficulty level, date range, accommodation preferences, and route preference and they took care of everything. The total cost was roughly $1,000 per person, which included a detailed itinerary, full board at all huts (breakfast and diner included), and basecamp hotel. All we really needed to do was show up which was SO nice. Plus, they were so responsive and helpful with all of our questions and were on top of helping us reroute when the weather turned south.
But like I said, book EARLY. Our trip was set for early September (which is considered nearly the off-season) and we booked in March but did not get any of our route preferences.
At first, I was a little bummed about this because we didn’t get to see any of the famous landmarks of the Dolomite like Tre Cime, Lago di Brais, or Seceda. But honestly? All of the Dolomites is absolutely breathtaking. So if you don’t get to hike any of the main routes, don’t sweat it. We were in the Val di Fassa area and it was stunning. Although, I’d love to go back and explore the Cortina d’Ampezzo side.
Here was our route and itinerary:
Day 1:
Arrive at basecamp hotel
Hotel Ramon, Campitello di Fassa
Day 2:
A shuttle (arranged by MONT Trekking) picked us up and drove us to the trail head at Passo San Pellegrino
Hike to Rifugio Contrin
Trail Stats: Ascent 790 m. Descent 680 m. Distance 10 km.
Day 3:
Rifugio Contrin to Lago Fedaia
Trail Stats: Ascent 1190 m. Descent 1180 m. Distance 18 km.
Day 4:
Lago Fedaia to Rifugio Kostner
Trail Stats: Ascent 1250 m. Descent 740 m. Distance 12 km.
Day 5:
Intended route:
Rifugio Kostner to Passo Sella
Ascent 900 m. Descent 1220 m. Distance 12 km.
Actual route due to impeding storm (in red): Depart Rifugio Kostner by lift and Gondola to Corvara. Bus to Passo Pordoi. Bus to Passo Sella. 1 hour hike to Rifugio Des Alpes
Day 6:
Intended Route:
Passo Sella to Campitello di Fassa via Malga Micheluzzi and jeep taxi
Trail stats: Ascent 731 m. Descent 1060 m. Distance 15 km.
Actual route due to historic snowfall:
Gondola to Campitello di Fassa and Hotel Ramon
Lessons from the trail
I love putting myself in novel situations because it shows you parts of yourself that you don’t normally get to see. They expose the parts of your life that are and aren’t working. This is what I took away from this trip:
Do less, better
When you’re hiking hut-to-hut, you have one thing on your agenda each day: get to the next hut. Life is simple. There are hardly any choices to make. This made me keenly aware of how much I overthink my life. Too many spinning plates, too many things on my to-do list. With less to do, fewer things darting around in my head, less stiving, my brain was so much happier.
It made me realize that in trying to do so much every day, I’ve become paralyzed, crushed under an avalanche of to-do’s and goals. It made me want to strip things back and simplify my life.
Nothing really matters all that much
Along that same vein, without an abundance of options, choices, routines, and things, it became apparent that most of the things that consume my waking thoughts are bullshit. Self-care consumes so much of my thoughts, to a point that I’m realizing it’s becoming a prison. I didn’t think about how to optimize myself once and it was so freeing.
Just go and figure it out later
I’m always looking things up, researching, and trying to be efficient. But in that, I waste so much time—I’d probably figure it out just fine if I thought about things less before and just went for it.
Much of our itinerary was not much more than what I shared above: Take this trail and end up here. It seemed too simple, too daunting in the maze of cliffs, valleys, and towering rock spires. I wanted to know exactly where I was heading ahead of time. But that wasn’t an option. We just looked at the map that night before, cross-referenced it with the itinerary, and went.
And it was fine.
This is something I’ve known for a while, but I need to let go of the idea that I need to know every little detail about something before I go/do/buy. The stakes ain’t that high and more often than not it ruins my ability to be present (I’m looking at you, that night in Milan where we spent two hours trying to find somewhere to eat and ended up going back to the Airbnb and eating at the place next door that turned out to be a delicious local hot spot).
Be curious
One thing I wish I did more was talk more with the locals. I crave an Anthony Bourdain-style of travel—getting off the beaten path and getting to the heart of a place. But that’s not necessarily something that comes easy to me or is in my nature. It’s something I have to stretch myself to do. However, I found safety in the insular nature of traveling in a group.
I wish I talked to the owner of Rifugio Kostner about his experiences as a climbing guide and his bond with his dog, Nila. I wish I smoked a joint with the staff of Des Alpes and figured out how one comes to work at a mountain hut. I wish I got out of my comfort zone more. Not just during this trip, but all the time. Everyone has a story and the best way to see the world, to really see the world, is to listen to other people’s stories.
No use crying over 2 feet of snow
I’d be lying if I said learning that we had to forfeit 2/5 days of hiking didn’t make me extremely sad. We’d come all this way to do this thing, but what are you going to do? Change the weather? I found comfort in something I had said before we even left: “Whatever happens is the experience we’re supposed to have”. You don’t always need an explanation for why things happen the way they do, you only need to accept that they happen and move on.
Take more pictures
I love being both in front of and behind the camera. It’s actually a point of embarrassment for me. I don’t know why, but something about it seems so lame. Maybe it’s the rise of shameless influencer culture and public shaming of people taking pictures of everything, but I really do love it. But the embarrassment I feel keeps me from both stopping to take pictures and asking people to take pictures of me. In the ~150 photos in our shared group album, I’m in less than 10, which is disappointing, to say the least (now I know how dads on vacation in the 90’s felt). I even brought my tripod because I didn’t want to have to keep asking people to take pictures of me, but I never used it because I was embarrassed. But that’s no one’s fault but my own.
Travel Journal
Day 1
8:15 AM We got picked up by a shuttle at our base camp hotel in the pouring rain alongside two other couples— an older couple from San Jose, California, and an endearing young couple with global citizen vibes from Belgium and Indonesia by way of Amsterdam. We got dropped off at the trailhead (still in the pouring rain), fixed our packs with rain covers, and couldn’t help but make jokes about “drop shock”, referencing the History Channel show Alone.
As we walked, the rain started to lessen, and the clouds that had socked in our views began to lift, showing glimpses of the towering rock walls and spires surrounding us. As we began our ascent, we found ourselves in a valley of almost neon-green grass that sang with the song of the bells from the cows that were scattered throughout the hills.
As we continued to climb, it became clear that this hike would not be a walk in the park. We came to a landing and looked up, glancing back and forth between the trail above us and our downloaded map, comparing notes. Ahead of us were miles of scree and thousands of feet of elevation gain as we made our way through a narrow gully between mountain peaks.
We put our heads down and slogged up the mountain feet slipping back in the scree with each step, getting our first real taste of what the next several days would bring.
Finally at the top, we found ourselves back in the clouds, accompanied by biting winds. With low visibility, we somehow lost the trail. But as we descended, the fog lessened and we could see the entire valley on the other side of the mountain lay out before us, and the path became clear as we traced it down the to bottom.
Suddenly, we rounded a corner, looked up and across the valley, and were treated to our first spectacular view of the Dolomites: the famous Sossolungo group rose from the valley before us, the clouds just high enough for us to see them in their entirety. Struck by their beauty, my eyes began to fill with tears as our group was losing it—filling the valley full of “holy shit”’s, “wow”’s, and various whoops and hollers.
We continued our descent to our first hut, Rifugio Contrin, surrounded by the chirps of marmots, warning each other of our approach.
When we arrived at Rifugio Contrin, the place was like a buzzing metropolis, with hikers arriving from various surrounding trails and relaxing at the picnic tables surrounding the property with Aperol Spritzes in hand.
We ran into the couple from San Jose—Joe and Noel (who we affectionately nicknamed “Joel”/mom and dad)—who gave us Advil for the head cold my husband had developed the night before.
Truthfully, this hut was my least favorite. First, when we went to the room they told us was ours upon check-in, it was occupied and completely full. We (read: not me because I hate confrontation) went back to let them know that that wasn’t going to work (obviously), we got…to summarize the entire interaction in as few words as possible—a lot of attitude.
Then, they told us that we needed to pay for shower tokens to use the hot water in the shared bathrooms, which I did, only to find later that this was an out-right lie.
Finally, the food was… not good. Did you know that polenta could be hard? Because I didn’t until then.
All things considered, though, I was just happy to be there and went to sleep with a tired body and a happy soul.
Day 2
Day two will forever go down in infamy as the day that absolutely crushed our spirits.
The day started out amazing. We packed up our stuff and left Rifugio Contrin in good weather. The scenery was stunning as we walked through a rolling green valley surrounded by rocky mountain peaks in the distance, with better footing and a more gradual climb than the previous day.
Then we made it to the Ciampac ski resort. The plan was to make the descent into the town of Alba for lunch, then finish our day with a final ascent to our rifugio at Lake Fedaia.
That was the plan.
The descent into town was probably the toughest descent I’ve ever done. And I’m no stranger to tough descents. My legs were shaking uncontrollably by the end.
But at least we would get to take a break and refuel at the bottom.
We thought.
Turns out (and we found this to be true for most of Italy), most restaurants close in the middle of the day. When we finally arrived in Alba, NOTHING was open. To add to our defeat, this day was supposed to be 18km and 7 hours of hiking, but at this point we had already walked for almost 6 hours and had gone 15km. And by our estimates, we still had 3 hours and big ascent left to go. We were also nearly out of water and had burned through most of our snacks for the day.
We started scrambling. Is there a bus that can take us to the lake? Nope, the bus stopped running for the season 3 days ago.
No choice but to keep going.
As we rejoined the trail and began leaving Alba, we came across the last thing any of us wanted to see or expected:
Trail closed for logging.
Perfect.
We navigated our way back to the road and sat on the shoulder in a construction zone, defeated.
We had the number for a taxi service we were supposed to use to get back to our base camp hotel on the final day, maybe we try that? As we tried to get ahold of them, we stuck our thumbs out on the side of the road, attempting to hitchhike, but got nothing more than strange looks and a sorry shrug from two women in a VW bus painted with flowers going in the opposite direction.
Final confirmation from the taxi service? Not available.
As we were about to pick our sorry asses up and get to walking, who else did we see coming up the road than Joel. It was a relief to see someone familiar and to commiserate with, as they were having the same experience.
We walked up the road a bit to find where we could rejoin the trail and got to hiking, feet heavy but trying to move quickly to get it over with.
We drudged along, and the trail flattened out to a logging road for a couple of miles.
A relief.
Then, like a mirage in a desert, a hotel appeared at the end of the road, seemingly out of nowhere. Parched, we dragged ourselves up the front steps, into the cafe lobby and ordered 4 liters of water, not trying to mask our desperation. As we waited for the man behind the counter to grab them and ring us up, I noticed a sign advertising popsicles—we’re going to need four of those, too.
We sat on the front porch enjoying our popsicles in the sun and I felt my soul returning to my body just enough to finish the last push to the lake.
And it was a push.
When we finally got to the lake, we were welcomed by Joel, the Belgian couple, a couple we met more formally later that evening named Ashley and Garret from Bellingham, Washington, and a smattering of other hikers we’d seen over the past two days, sitting in a grassy area outside of a rifugio.
But it wasn’t our rifugio.
Our rifugio was on the other side of the bridge that crossed the dam.
Why was everyone here?
As it turns out, the bridge was closed for military “war games”. Just above the grassy area were tanks and military personnel in full tactical gear.
So close but so far.
We sat and chatted with the group until they opened the bridge again. Luckily for us, that was only 20 minutes. But Garret and Ashley said they had been there for over an hour.
We crossed to bridge as various tanks and military vehicles departed the area, finally making it to Rifugio Dolomia, and were greeted by the friendliest host and one of the best meals we had in any of the rifugios.
At dinner, the room began to buzz with the news of snowfall by the end of the week.
Day 3
On the morning of day 3, we needed to be up and at ‘em early, because they were closing the bridge again at 7:30. We were one of the last ones to leave the rifugio, and we scrambled to depart as we saw the military vehicles arrive earlier than expected.
After we left with haste, we were able to settle down as we got further from the area and were treated to gorgeous views of the lake from above.
By this day, we had finally hit our stride. Our bodies, while beaten and tired, had begun to adapt to the demands of the terrain. We felt like we knew what we were doing, learned from our mistakes, and were ready to tackle the day ahead.
Along the way, there were quite a few rifugios to stop at, and, having been burned by not having enough food that previous two days, learned to stop and take advantage whenever possible.
A couple of hours into the hike, we stopped at the first rifugio we came across and found Joel had done the same. We ordered coffee, topped off our water, and sat and chatted with them for a while, eventually all leaving together, walking and talking until we made it to the next rifugio. They pressed on into the town of Passo Pordoi below, but we, tantalized by the smell from outside, didn’t want to take any chances and stopped for lunch at Rifugio Fredarola.
We were not disappointed.
This rifugio was like someone took a modern, city hotel and dropped it in the mountains in northern Italy. It was brand new and everything was cool and chic with a modern-mountain aesthetic. We sat at a table overlooking the mountain range to the south, and the table was so new you could still smell the fresh cedar.
We ordered hot chocolates, charcuterie, and sandwiches and ate our fill, happy to be properly fueled for the rest of the day.
We then descended to Passo Pordoi and made a short traverse on a road to where we would again ascend into the mountains surrounding Piz Boe.
This was my favorite section of hiking of the whole trip, full of class 2 and 3 terrain and took us right up to the base of the mountain. We then traversed along a narrow edge all the way to our 3rd hut.
As we traversed, we rounded a corner and were suddenly stuck in a dense fog. Zero visibility.
Then, a text from Joel: they got lost and would be arriving late to the hut.
As we made our way to the rifugio, the fog danced around us and had a certain eerie romanticism to it.
Finally, we made it to Rifugio Kostner.
This was the rifugio I was looking forward to staying at most—perched on the edge of a cliff, surrounded by imposing towers of rock on the backside.
But if it weren’t for pictures, I wouldn’t have known.
Everything was so socked in you couldn’t see a damn thing
We parked ourselves in the dining room, drank tea, and played card games. The owner’s old golden retriever, Nila, lay in the middle of the floor in front of the fire, seemingly oblivious and unbothered by all of the visitors—surely she’s seen thousands of people come and go in her time.
Joel busted through the door several hours later like wet dogs, soaked to the bone. There was such litter visibility out of the windows of the hut that we didn’t notice it had started pouring rain.
At dinner, we were served a hearty meal with locally sourced ingredients with the warmest hospitality, making up for the looming reality of the choice we would have to make about the next day: earlier in the week, we had been alerted by the company we booked the trip through that there was significant snowfall in the forecast, and were given an alternative route to get to the next hut, as our previously planned route would be extremely unsafe. Before retiring for the night, we talked with the other hikers sharing our route about what they planned to do. No one wanted to make a call before the morning, but as the wind was whipping and rain was tapping on the window, it didn’t look promising.
Day 4
We woke up to the same deluge we went to bed with. Garret said it was snowing when he woke up in the middle of the night. We took our time with breakfast—a beautiful spread, complete with comically large bowls of coffee—knowing that we would not be able to complete our trek as planned.
We leisurely packed our things, since the first bus we needed to take on our alternative route didn’t leave until 10. We left our hut and descended into a thick fog as icy rain pelted our faces, making our way to the lift.
We got on the lift and huddled under our backpacks—a sorry attempt to shield ourselves from the weather. From the lift, we got into a gondola which took us down to the beautiful town of Corvara. We found the rest of the group in a coffee shop near the bus station and ordered hot chocolate as we waited for the bus.
A mistake.
The wide turn radius of the bus combined with the narrow, windy mountain roads caused those with even the strongest stomachs among us to turn green, with several people stating that it was their first time experiencing motion sickness. I, being no stranger to motion sickness, was anticipating a full evacuation of the hot chocolate that had been so comforting just 30 minutes prior.
The bus dropped us off in Passo Pordoi, where we found refuge from the weather, now a full-blown snowstorm, in a cafe across from our next bus stop as we all desperately tried anything to make us feel better before we had to endure it all over again.
Aboard the next bus, I was keen to sit in the very front.
We said goodbye to the rest of the group—Joel, and the Belgian couple— as they got off at different stops, their itineraries diverging from ours. We got off at our stop with Ashley and Garret in tow to near white-out conditions, struggling to find the trail under the snow that was quickly piling up.
For nearly an hour we walked, snow pelting our faces, trying our best to embrace the unexpected adventure of it all, as we made our way to Rifugio Des Alpes around 1:00 PM.
We all had lunch together in the hut and spent the rest of the day resting and playing cards.
We reconvened at dinner and found that only us, Ashley and Garret, and one other couple were staying there. Everyone else surely cancelling their plans due to the weather.
My group, Ashley and Garret all sat at the same table for dinner, as we’d gotten to know each other well over the last 24 hours.
The other couple staying in the rifugio, Tom and Jane, an older couple in the 60s from the Midwest, entered the dining room, and we invited them to come sit with us.
An invitation we later regretted.
The conversation started fine, asking us where we were from and what we did. It soon became apparent that they were actually not interested in learning anything about us, but were simply asking questions as a guise to be able to talk about themselves. They were well-traveled and took every opportunity to talk about all of the places they’d been.
Look.
I love a good travel story, but their stories quickly became less story and more just bragging.
Using exaggerated accents to mispronounce the names of places around the globe (like when white girls pronounce Ibiza Ibitha. I get that’s how it’s pronounced locally but you’re just being annoying).
A few hours of this and we all started looking around the table at each other, needing an out.
They didn’t take the yawning hint, and eventually, we just had to get up from the table— “it’s late, we really should turn in”.
Day 5
At breakfast in the morning, the staff had set the dining room so we would all sit together again.
Great. More of Tom and Jane talking at us at 7 am. Just what I wanted.
We finished breakfast and took our time leaving the rifugio—today we would be heading back to our base camp hotel, which coincidentally was at the bottom of the gondola that left right from our rifugio.
We descended the gondola to just below the snow line and checked into our hotel. We spent the day exploring the local town and enjoying the hotel spa, complete with a vitamin C infusion shower, steam room, sauna, cold mist shower, soaking tub, and lounge (for only 5€ a person— the United States could never).
I’m not a very experienced traveler, but I do know that if you hold too tight to your expectations, you won’t have as good of a time. Things will go off the rails, things won’t go according to plan, and if you don’t roll with the punches, you’re missing the point. Travel should change your perspective and broaden your lens. If you don’t take the bad with the good and be flexible, you’ll miss a potentially life-changing experience and a great story as you hold too tight to what you thought it was supposed to be.