(written a couple weeks ago)

After a true water logging in Switzerland and Austria, we opted to jump down to the southern Alps. Thankfully, my parents were game for a big change of plans as they were meeting us in Austria and they had planned to hike there. They met us in Innsbruck in the pouring rain and we all ran together to Sudtirol, a region that was part of Austria until after WWI when it became part of Italy. From St. Ulrich, we took a cable car to the ridge where we began our first hike in the Dolomiti. The weather was still unstable, so our pace had to be swift, but we were all blown away by how dramatic the scenery was. We knew that the pass would be the crux of the hike, but Sati and I were not expecting to bring Joyce and Egils on a hike with cables! Heh heh. It’s one thing to lead friends on hiking or canyoneering or BC snowboarding routes. It’s another thing altogether to bring your 60-something and 70-something year old mother and step-father on a trail in a foreign land. And like the Italian families we see here climbing steep, rocky, muddy trails through these mountains, mom and Egils were champs! They smiled and laughed right through the hardest parts (even on our next, more difficult, climb). We arrived at Refugio Puez right at beer thirty and sat in awe of the landscape among sheep and rabbits, surrounded by people of all ages who just love to hike. Awesome.

Sati and I continued on in the morning ushered out of camp by a white-faced brown sheep chasing rabbits behind the refuge. We hiked across an absolutely magnificent plateau through a white rock tunnel and out to another valley while my parents hiked back to town. Horses whinnied in the distance hidden behind chalky boulders somewhere in the table land while the cloud base dropped toward us. We decided that the weather was too dangerous to fly down to the valley.

We passed another refuge and shortly after that began to meet hikers climbing up from the valley desperate for us to tell them that they were nearly to the refuge. It was still the morning and I couldn’t quite understand why they were so sweaty and out of breath. Italian hikers, like I said, are so hearty and happy. Then the trail made it all clear, dropping through a 25 foot wide chute with switch backs, hand rails, mud and stairs for a thousand feet at least, and finally just easing off to a very steep trail. Whew!

A couple days later, we had made it to Cortina, where we again met my parents in the pouring rain. We stayed the night at the strangely awesome Hotel Corona where they gave Sati and I a bedroom, a second bedroom and a bathroom with a tub for the price of one room and where both choices for the entree at the restaurant were veal. In the morning, we would set off on a hike to another refuge. The woman at the Tourist Office had said that the hike should be about two hours and would be fine for people of all ages. There would be a set of cables at the pass, but a good hike.

First, let me say that the hikes in the Dolomiti were absolutely spectacular. The views include towering spires and deep chasms and are grand, grand, grand. Many of the trails were made by army guys during the war; army guys with good knees, long legs and strong hearts! As we picked our way up a steep, immense scree slope, trying not to knock boulders onto each other, I wondered what my parents were thinking. I also wondered what treats the trail would hold for us on the other side of the pass. We stopped for lunch at the pass and Sati and I traced the route of the trail only to find it seem to end abruptly about half way up a sheer cliff face in the distance. We glanced at each other uneasily and ate our deer salami and cheese sandwiches. Far ahead on the trail we watched with great anticipation as a couple of hikers approached the cliff on the trail. They were specks in the distance (and I don’t mean “speck” as in Austrian bacon) and as they reached the end of the trail at the rock wall they stopped and seemed to be shuffling with their gear or taking a break. Sati and I stared expectantly while my mother and Egils oohed and ahhed about the view. Finally, the first of the two hikers started forward again, while the second waited. The hiker seemed to traverse the cliff face like Spiderman with a sheer drop into the valley below. The second hiker followed and they both rounded the far corner of the face. Sati and I swallowed our lunch and got ready to continue.

When we arrived at the cliff, I asked my parents if they were ok with the cable traverse of the cliff. They said things like, “What do you mean? Of course,” and, “Why not?” And across the cables we went, not looking down, not stopping. The switchback cables after that were a breeze and we rounded the ridge about three hours into the hike. The hike became a scramble of interesting downclimbs on worn-smooth limestone and wet earth. My parents were careful, and so, so happy to be there. The first view of the refuge and the otherworldly aquamarine of glacier-fed Lake Sorapis surrounded by a thundering natural amphitheater of commanding peaks absolutely broke my brain. Even an absolute drenching a half hour before we reached the refuge could not dull the excitement we all had to be in such a place. It was amazingly beautiful.

We had fallen in love with Italian refugios and after Sati and I said our goodbyes the following day to my mom and Egils, we knew we’d try to stay in at least one more. A few days later we found ourselves to be the only guests in the Refugio Chiampizzulon on the downslope of the Italian Alps. During a games of 45s our hosts brought us out complimentary homemade cake to go with the Prosecco we were drinking. You can’t have Prosecco without cake! They treated us to some antipasto as well and we all ate our dinner together in front of the wood burning stove. After dinner they opened a bottle of Nonino Amaro, which had been our favorite as well, and we shared some chamomile grappa aromatica that we had picked up along the way. Lemoncello was had and we laughed and laughed. In the morning, they gave us a gift which they boxed up in a cardboard box, which I would carry for the rest of the hike and they wouldn’t let us leave without some homemade biscuits for the trail.

I’ll always remember our time in Italy with fondness for the warm, comfortable huts perched among massive Dolomiti peaks.