Italy III: Dolomites Trek (2/2)
Continued from the previous post on the Dolomites Trek...
Day 4: We hiked most of the popular Sassolungo Circuit Hike, starting at Rifugio Valentini and ending at Rifugio Sasso Piatto. Sassolungo (“long stone”) is a notable mountain that is large enough to make a day out of circumnavigating it.
Sassolungo
The beginning was mostly flat and downhill through a beautiful area that looked like a botanical garden.
Mountain views near the "botanical garden"
After an ~hour we hit a Mercedes-sponsored rifugio that had very luxurious bathrooms (uplighting, etc.).
Cows by the Mercedes rifugio
From there we walked uphill for a couple hours, mostly along the side of the cliff with stunning views of the valley below, and then stopped for lunch at Rifugio Vicenza along the way (the gnocchi was great).
Walking uphill along Sassolungo
Valley views
View of Rifugio Vicenza
After lunch we continued for a couple hours to Rifugio Sasso Piatto – I don’t really remember this part of the hike. This was one of our easier and shorter hiking days, and given the popularity and comparative ease of this trail, we encountered many more tourists, and more Americans than any other day of the trek.
More walking
Rifugio Sasso Piatto was the most crowded rifugio we stayed at, and we had to stay in a shared dormitory (bunk beds with 10 spots, though luckily 4 spots remained empty) because the private rooms were booked out by the time we reserved our trek ~6 weeks in advance. The shared dormitory was not quite as bad as expected (Nyquil + Loop earplugs + eye mask did the trick) and the food was pretty good.
Day 5: This was the most epic day, and the most difficult. Pretty much every part of this ~9-hour day was surreally beautiful, starting with the first couple of hours through Alpine meadows dotted with sheep, cows, and horses. There were a few times we had to walk right by cows and bulls that were not fenced in and seemed skittish.
We saw a horse scaring off a skittish bull
Sassolungo
About 4 hours in, by the time we reached Rifugio Antermoia, the landscape had really changed.
Rifugio Antermoia
We walked around an insane glacial lake (strong Banff teahouse hike vibes) to encounter Passo d’Antermoia – a pass that our trek organizer had warned us might require us to walk in snow up to our knees, and that stood between us and the recommended lunch spot, Rifugio Passo Principe.
The glacial lake
Trying to make it up Passo D'Antermoia
View from the top of the pass
Despite the organizer’s caveat, I had not expected that we’d effectively be walking up a ski slope so steep that it would have been difficult without the snow (particularly with a pack weighing 20-25% of my body weight), let alone now slipping and sliding down it in the wintery conditions, even with crampons. This Sisphyean hike was the first time in the trek that I was not sure I would make it to the next rifugio – the second time being when we eventually reached the top and saw that we had to descend just as steep a downhill, which we found even harder and resulted in many slips and falls (thankfully cushioned by lots of snow).
Some of the perilous downhill (this photo does not do it justice)
We saw almost no one else on this path, though we did spot a few via ferrata hikers who actually donned their helmets for this descent. It took us 2x the budgeted amount of time to complete, and when we finally, miraculously reached Rifugio Passo Principe, we were more than a little disappointed to find that it was closed and under construction. So much for lunch after 7 hours of intense hiking!
Heading down from Passo Principe
Luckily, after continuing along down a scenic valley surrounded by mountains for about 40 minutes, we encountered Rifugio Vajolet, which had the first and only vegan food menu we found in the Dolomites. The food was a delight, and couldn’t have been a more timely reward for us.
Rifugio Vajolet's vegan crepe with mushrooms, gnocchi with soy ragu, and salad with eggs, beans, and cheese really hit the spot.
After this, we had just another ~40 minutes descent to Rifugio Stella Alpina, where the very sweet proprietress welcomed us and just 1 other guest for the night. The rifugio was comfortable and clean, with some of the more basic food we ate. It was quite an experience waking up to cows mooing and jangling their bells.
Rifugio Stella Alpina
Day 6: Sadly, our last day’s hiking itinerary was almost entirely disrupted due to snow. We only hiked about an hour from Stella Alpina over to the town of Ciampedie, where we took a quick cable car down to Vigo di Fassa, the largest town we had seen all week.
From there we took a ~30 minute bus ride down to Lago di Carezza, a very clear, highly Instagrammable lake with a flat ~25 minute walk around its circumference. Both the bus and the lake were very crowded with tourists. It was nice, but in my opinion, didn’t hold a candle to any of the hikes we did.
Lago di Carezza
We ended our trip with a bus ride up to Castel Latemar, the basic hotel that we were put up in for our first and last nights. We grabbed a pretty good lunch nearby at Hennenstal Restaurant, whose menu thankfully offered a few non-Tyrolean food options (pizza! Grilled vegetables!) – refreshing after a week of eating the same few things every day.
Food
We were expecting to eat delicious Italian food every day in the Dolomites. In reality, we mostly ate Tyrolean food, which we came to learn is quite different. As vegetarians, our options were limited to a few common dishes that were available at pretty much every hut:
Fried eggs with slices of baked potato
Polenta with sauteed mushrooms and thick slices of swiss cheese
A very basic “mixed salad” of lettuce, raddichio, shredded carrots, corn (and a few lucky times, beans). Two of our rifugios also had a salad bar at dinner, which thankfully had more ingredient options.
Canederli – a traditional dumpling-like dish that was delicious and also the most buttery thing I have ever eaten in my entire life
Pasta (sometimes) – the pro tip here is to always get the types of pasta that are made fresh (e.g., tagliatelle, gnocchi, ravioli) and not those that are dry pastas (e.g., spaghetti, penne). The fresh pastas we ate in the Dolomites were generally pretty good, if typically not as good as Italian food we’ve had in other parts of Italy, whereas the dry pastas tasted like American “Italian” food.
The spaghetti at Rifugio Contrin was a bit like a kids' meal at an Olive Garden...
Cheese plate – A couple of places had a “cheese plate” but this really only consisted of various cheeses and maybe a jam, without the expected fruit or nuts we’re accustomed to in the U.S.
Desserts: Tiramisu, apple strudel, ice cream – though we usually skipped these and asked for fruit. Tyrol is known for its apples, and Rifugio Dolomia served us really delicious apples for dessert.
Breakfast: We always had the same thing – bread + cheese + boiled egg (except for Rifugio Contrin, which didn’t even offer eggs) and yogurt + muesli (only Rifugio Valentini offered any fresh fruit at breakfast). There were usually also various pastries and jams available.
A note on water: Some of the rifugios had potable water and others didn't. Sometimes they had these structures for refilling water bottles and bladders, but the water from these spouts was sometimes not potable -- always worth asking first!
We were very glad to have packed lots of protein-heavy snacks for the trek (protein powder, nuts, edamame, vegan jerky, protein bars). By the end, we were relieved to return to a greater variety of food options and availability of fresh fruit and vegetables (yay fiber!).
Overall, the Dolomites trek was one of the coolest ways I’ve ever spent a week. It made me a bit more confident in my backpacking abilities, and it was also humbling to encounter many incredibly fit hikers (Europeans set a high bar!). It was helpful having the trip organized by a knowledgeable operator and traversing less crowded areas than many of the standard Dolomites day hikes. I’d gladly go back to the Dolomites – they are vast and there are so many other parts to explore!