Grand Tour 1.0

y.In the fall of 2022 Cindy and I finally made it back to the Dolomites (and the Italian province of Südtirol) after 2-1/2 very strange and difficult years.  We first visited this mountainous, outdoor-oriented wonderland in January of 2020, only a few short weeks before COVID turned the world upside down.  Little did we know as we were leaving that it would take us so long to make our much-warranted return trip for further exploration.

The Dolomites span seven northern Italian provinces with arguably the greatest concentration in Südtirol, where countless pinnacles, massifs, plateaus, cliffs, and valleys combine to create postcard views no matter which way you look.  While technically part of the Alps, you’ll rarely if ever hear the locals (or the local tourism offices) refer to these mountains as anything other than the Dolomites.  It’s a dramatic landscape filled with eighteen light gray limestone peaks topping out over 10,000 feet and countless others not far below that. There are also a number of alpine meadows that present a soft green contrast to the otherwise rocky and sometimes almost lunar landscape.  Factor in the fall spectacle of thousands of larch trees turning brilliant gold and it’s no wonder that the mountains were named as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009.

Südtirol (also known as South Tyrol in English and Alto Adige in Italian) is the northernmost province in Italy and shares roughly half of its border with Austria.  In fact Südtirol was part of Austria until immediately after World War I when it was granted to Italy as part of Austria’s war reparations.   It has been a full century since Südtirol’s annexation but the overall character of the people, language, architecture, and food are still quite Germanic (and proudly so).  That’s not to say, however, that there isn’t a distinct Italian flair in the larger towns and cities like Bolzano and Merano.  The total population of Südtirol is just over 500,000 people, about 60% of whom claim German as their primary language.  This percentage gets notably higher as you move north and/or away from the larger cities and towns, so it’s sometimes hard to believe that you’re actually in Italy when you’re out enjoying the more remote areas of the province and hearing nothing but German or the regional Ladin.

As with our past trips to Europe we did not rent a car because we much prefer going local and using only regional trains and buses.  This saves us the expense of renting a car, the exorbitant cost of gas, questions about licensing and insurance, and the hassle of parking.  It also eliminates the stress on both the driver and navigator caused by the narrow and winding mountain roads – taking the bus or train leaves both passengers free to enjoy the scenery.

Not having a car meant that we needed to plan our days around the published schedules and routes for buses and trains.  This was more than offset by gaining the option to take what we call ‘open jaw’ hikes where we were able to combine two or more hiking routes so long as the end points were each accessible by train or bus.  For example we could start in one valley, traverse a mountain saddle, and descend into a different valley to some other trailhead.  This tended to put us on trails with much lower foot traffic as none of the car-bound folks had this same flexibility. We did use one Uber-like car service in Cortina d’Ampezzo to get us to a particularly attractive trailhead that was also particularly hard to reach via public transit, but other than that we stuck to our transportation plan.

Cindy and I stayed in four different locations over the course of this month-long adventure : Alta Badia from September 21 to September 24, Innichen from September 24 to October 1, Ortisei from October 1 to October 8, and Brixen from October 8 to October 23.  We had originally thought that we would simply use Brixen as our base camp for the entire trip as it is a lovely town in a great location with all of the right amenities including excellent bus and train access.  That plan held for a while, but as we studied our ever-growing bucket list of outings it quickly became obvious that unless we wanted to spend an unacceptable amount of time on buses and/or trains each day we really needed to expand our ‘hub and spoke’ concept to include multiple base camps. You can read more about each location and our adventures in the area by clicking on the links in this paragraph or at the bottom of the page.

These four locations were carefully chosen for access to hiking terrain, great views of the Dolomites, and (needless to say) their charm.  From a more practical perspective they all had easy access to the regional bus and train networks, a fair-sized grocery store, and appropriate lodging.  The lodging requirement presented a bit of challenge.  We prefer to stay in furnished holiday apartments (known as Ferienwohnungen in German) but this region tends to be more geared to hotel-style properties so finding true bedrooms and full kitchens wasn’t always eas