Day 1 – The Luis Trenker Promenade

Oct 1, 2022

Today’s Adventure

Today was our move from Innichen to Ortisei for the next segment of our month-long adventure. As the crow flies it’s not that far, but when there are mountains involved the mileage starts to add up. Our route would take us down the Val Pusteria to Fortezza via train, then down the Val Isarco to Waidbruck (Ponte Gardena) via train, and then up the Val Gardena to Ortisei via bus.

The day started out smoothly with Luca, our driver from the Zin Senfter Residence, giving us a ride back to the Innichen Bahnhof. While waiting for our train we used the handy Südtirolmobil app on our iPhones to confirm the travel schedule for the day. It was then we noticed an unexpected warning message that the bus we were planning to take on the final leg to Ortisei was not running due to a rockslide that was blocking the road. This could have been a real problem regardless of our transportation strategy (train, bus, or car) if transit up and down the Val Gardena was truly stopped – something that we experienced back in 1991 during one of our trips to Zermatt, Switzerland when a rockslide at Randa completely blocked that valley’s road, rail, and river.

We exchanged texts with Simon Moroder, the owner of our apartment, to see if he knew anything. While he was making some calls we did our own research and determined that there were actually two roads going up the valley and two different bus routes; only one of which was impacted. We would need to get off the train earlier than planned (at Brixen) to catch the alternate bus, but that bus would obviously be more crowded as others made the same adjustment to their plans. As it turned out this alternate bus was more of an express and made fewer stops than the original bus so the scheduled time wasn’t nearly as long. Why the Südtirolmobil app originally chose the slower route over the express remains a mystery but in the end we managed to make it to Ortisei on schedule in spite of the added drama.

The bus let us off in the Piazza Sant’Antonio, the town square, which was just a few blocks from our lodging – the Apartments Montblanc on Trebinger Strasse (https://www.apartmentsmontblanc.it/en/). After meeting Simon, dropping our bags, and surveying the apartment we headed out to stretch our legs on the Luis Trenker Weg. This nicely paved trail took us from Ortisei up the northern side of the Val Gardena to Santa Cristina. Along the way we enjoyed big views of the valley below and Sassolungo above, the latter foreshadowing our big outing for the next day.

We then descended and crossed to the other side of the valley where we followed a small road along the Rio Gardena back to Ortisei. All told we walked about six miles with a surprisingly steep stretch along the cliff face just outside of Santa Cristina. A highlight of this walk was the Galleria Museale ex Ferata de Gherdëina Ferrovia della Val Gardena (Museumsgallerie ex Grödnerbahn in German), which is big name for a small railroad museum. This museum is housed inside a tunnel on the outskirts of Santa Cristina and is part of the Luis Trenker Weg, which essentially follows a historic train path up the valley. While there were no locomotives or other rolling stock in the museum there were a number of interesting photo exhibits and some samples of the original narrow gauge track that was found during the restoration of the tunnel.

Once back in Ortisei we made a shopping trip to the Despar grocery store, conveniently located just a block away from our apartment, to start provisioning for the week. Cindy fixed homemade barley soup for dinner and then we enjoyed some pre-recorded college football games via YoutubeTV.

A technical note : For whatever reason the internet provider at our lodging in Innichen would not allow the use of our NordVPN service over the wifi connection if we connected to a server anywhere besides Italy. We needed to connect to servers in the US, which is a necessary trick in order to view US-based programming while traveling in Europe due to licensing constraints. Thankfully we had no problems with this in either Ortisei or Brixen and were able to enjoy college football every night from our cloud-based DVR.

To return to the main page for Ortisei click here.

To return to the main page for the entire trip click here.