----------------------------------------------------------- FIVE DAYS ABOVE ITALY By Peter Bridges SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES -----------------------------------------------------------In the late 1960s, my wife and I discovered a handsome town called Selva, in the Val Gardena among Italy's Dolomites. Selva sits a mile above sea level among woods and pastures, backed by dramatic peaks. The inhabitants are Ladins, an interesting and prosperous people, one of Italy's smallest ethnic minorities. Over the years, we have returned often, to hike and to ski, to visit the Val Gardena and the adjacent Ladin valley, the Val Badia. However, we had never spent a night out on the mountains, away from our hotel or rented apartment. Now that we have reached 70, it seemed time to do a hut-to-hut trek. We recruited two other couples with whom we had climbed - without technical expertise - a number of sizable mountains, including Mount Elbert and other 14,000-foot summits in Colorado. We decided against using a tour company. We knew the region, Italy's largely German-speaking Alto Adige, or South Tyrol, and the Dolomite huts have telephones and sometimes e-mail. One of us knew Hubert Fink, a native of the South Tyrol and former head of the International Ski Instructors Association. He recommended a five-day trek along Alta Via, or High Route, No. 2 (there are 10 such routes), spending nights in four huts. These huts are good-size lodges that provide beds for 60 to 100 people as well as food and drink. Directions would be no problem; Dolomite maps are detailed and trails well-marked. There would be two stretches of what Italians call a "via ferrata," a steep route with fixed cables and occasional rungs for the feet. On each we would be headed upward, which in my experience is easier than going down. Our departure point, in early July, was Bressanone (Brixen in German), a gabled Germanic town on the autostrada and railroad between Verona and the Brenner Pass. Here we had reserved rooms at a bed-and-breakfast, the Garni Weissensteiner, whose windows looked down on a quiet green garden tended by nuns. We discovered a beer fest in a nearby square that evening and danced to the music of an oompah band from Munich. We spent the next morning sightseeing around the old ex-cathedral and its Domplatz, then hired a van and driver for a half-hour ride uphill, past steep farms and woods. This saved us a climb of a vertical mile and brought us to the top of the Valcroce (Kreuztal in German) cable car. We were at the start of our trek, at tree line, 6,500 feet above sea level. In 11/2 hours, we walked two miles up Alpine pastures, past sheep, cattle and horses, to our first hut, the Rifugio Plose, altitude 8,000 feet. Dolomite peaks rose all around us, the higher Austrian Alps beyond. The Grossglockner, Austria's highest peak at 12,457 feet, stood clearly, 50 miles northeast. The Plose had reserved for each couple a private room with beds, pillows and blankets. (Sheets are not provided; one must bring a lightweight sleep sack.) The hut's single shower provided five minutes - it seemed less - of hot water when fed a token costing about $2.50. There even was hot water in the wash basins, a luxury that our later huts lacked, though they did have hot water for a speedy shower. But anyway, why shave? Dinner was good and ample, as were the wine and beer. I had a Wiener schnitzel and a lot of potatoes. And a lot of red wine. We came down to breakfast early and found horses looking at us through the windows. We were on the path by 8, hoping to reach our next hut by midafternoon. Afternoon thunderstorms are not infrequent in July, and except for a stretch of trail today, we would be above tree line until trek's end. In our first hour, we came down into a fine forest that dropped steeply from our trail. This was not advertised as a via ferrata, but there were occasional fixed cables for cautious walkers. Before midday, the forest was behind us, and we were walking up our first steep pitch, a rise of 1,600 vertical feet, to the pass called the Forcella de Putia. Here we ate sandwiches and looked eastward at a dozen new peaks, including the Antelao, that thrust up, unmistakable, beyond Cortina d'Ampezzo. RIFUGIO GENOVE By 3 p.m., we had reached our second hut, the Rifugio Genova, or Schluterhutte, on a grassy alp below the steep, high spikes of the Odle, or Geissler Group. The hut was built in 1898, when this area still lay within the Austro-Hungarian empire. It is thoroughly modernized. Again, each couple had a bedroom; in our next two huts, we would share a six-bunk room. After six hours on the trail, we were hungry and thirsty. For my main dinner course, I had a large plate of kaiserschmarren, egg-and-flour pancakes with cranberry sauce. And red wine, to be sure. The next day started easy, walking across high sunny pastures with many things in bloom: dwarf rhododendrons, orchids and gentians, not infrequently an edelweiss. Ahead of us, we saw our path go leftward across the grass below the Odle peaks, then up across a steep scree slope into a yet steeper cleft. Two hours later, we had labored our way to the top, a little pass called the Forcella de la Roa. Several tough-looking Italian climbers were sitting there, but they soon took off for a via ferrata that Mr. Fink had told us was harder than the one we should take. Ours, when we came to it after a mile across a landscape of rock and scree, amounted to a couple of hundred meters of steep ascent with fixed cables, as well as lots of rock good for gripping and footholds. The route was exposed enough that I did not want to look back or down.RIFUGIO PUEZ Then we were up on a flat, rocky meadow, across which we reached the Rifugio Puez in a couple more miles and more ups and downs than we needed after five hard hours on the trail. That afternoon, as day hikers started back toward Selva, visible far down in the Val Gardena, I walked up behind the hut to doze in grass and sun. My wife and I knew the Puez from times we had hiked here from Selva; the first two-thirds of the route lies along that loveliest of Dolomite valleys, the Vallunga. I first came up here in 1970, carrying our 7-month-old son, Andrew, in a backpack. It was marvelous to be still on Earth, and again at the Puez, more than 30 years later. Our fourth day was the toughest. From the Puez hut, we made our way across the rocky Crespeina plateau. A Ladin tale tells how a lady from Selva came up here 600 years ago with her young son, seeking out the Gannes, witches of the mountains. The lady feared her son would become a musician instead of a knight; the Gannes put a spell on him so that any instrument he touched broke in pieces. The Ladins called him Man de Fjer (Ironhand), but he broke the spell and became one of the greatest of the meistersingers, Oswald von Wolkenstein. In the next two hours, we made our way up and through two passages between Dolomitic spires and down to the Passo Gardena on the highway that circles the Sella Massif. The Sella, heart of the Ladin country, lies at the head of three Ladin-speaking valleys. Up here, in July 1946, 3,000 Ladins gathered to call on the Italian government to recognize them as a separate ethnic group Ñ a request still not fully honored. We crossed the highway, after several large tourist buses and a swarm of Austrian motorcycles passed, to one of three restaurants at the pass, and we lunched in the sun. Amelia Edwards, author of "Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys," came this way in 1872 when there was no restaurant, only a mule track and two dozen wooden crosses marking travelers' deaths in winter. We could identify four distinct groups at nearby tables: city folk from buses, hikers like us with wet backs from heavy packs, trim bicyclists in bright cycling suits, and bulky motorcyclists in black leather.VAL SETUS With lunch over, we walked up into the narrow Val Setus toward the heart of the Sella. The trail zigzagged steeply up through loose scree. We yelled at three hikers above us who knocked loose some sizable stones that cannonaded down toward us. We finally reached the bottom of the via ferrata. It was midafternoon, and we were tired. For 20 minutes then, the world was steepness and rock, my wife moving steadily up in front of me, cables for hands and rungs for feet and hopes that no one would be coming down. At last, the top, where three young Finnish hikers took our picture. It was not far to our next hut, the Rifugio Pisciadu. We sat happily on the deck there and drank cold beer. Our last day was coming up. The next morning, the trail rose farther into the Sella. We were above all vegetation, in a landscape of rock and sun. By 11, we reached the Rifugio Boe and stopped for strudel and coffee on the terrace, looking up at the high point of the Sella, the Piz Boe. The way ahead skirted the peak and was relatively level until finally the path climbed the cone known as the Sass Pordoi, atop which is a large cafe.HIGHEST POINT At 9,700 feet, the highest point on our trek, we savored the view from the cafe terrace and then took the cable car that drops steeply, 3,000 vertical feet, to the Passo Pordoi and the highway. We lunched there at the Hotel Col di Lana on delicious large gnocchi with ricotta and spinach. Our trek was over. In the afternoon came the public bus that took us counterclockwise around the Sella, a grand ride for about $6 each. The young driver played Mozart on his tape deck and encouraged Audis coming toward us to stop and let him round tight curves. By 5, we had reached Selva and our favorite hotel, the Flora, which we found had maintained its good cooking and, though recently elevated to three stars, its reasonable prices. The next day, we were city people again, in sweltering Rome.Arranging a trek in the Dolomites Dolomite huts are open by the beginning of July and remain open until September or later. Bressanone/Brixen is a stop for frequent InterCity trains, which take about 3½ hours from Milan, seven to eight hours from Rome. Several buses run daily from Selva to the rail stations at Bressanone and Bolzano/Bozen, also an InterCity stop and closer to Milan and Rome. Dolomite trekkers must be prepared to climb a total of a vertical half-mile during five or six hours' walk each day. A good-size backpack is needed to carry a day's lunch and water; wool sweater or fleece; rain jacket; hat; change of clothing; sandals for hut use; cotton or silk sleep sack; pajamas; toilet articles; and a towel, which I forgot. (My cotton sleep sack came from www.campmor.com for about $25.) Guided treks at reasonable prices can be arranged through the Val Gardena guide association (Associazione Guide Alpine Val Gardena, 39048 Selva Gardena, Italy), telephone, 39/0471-794133; Web, www.guidegardena.com; e-mail, info@guidegardena.com. The summer 2005 price per person for a six-day group trek is about $830, which includes lodging, dinners and breakfasts, transportation and guide. Dolomite treks also are offered by On Top of Fort Collins, Colo. (www.ontopmountaineering.com, 800/506-7177) and Wilderness Travel of Berkeley, Calif. (www.wildernesstravel.com, 800/368-2794). Hut and hotel reservations are essential for those planning their own treks:
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