Day 16 – Hike To The Tuff Alm

Feb 20, 2023

Today’s Adventure

Monday was a beautiful day for a hike with clear skies and plenty of sun. Some high clouds would come in later, however. We started our day with a bus ride from the autostazione in Castelrotto. This bus took us through Seis to our stop at the campground near St. Konstantin, a short but scenic 15 minute ride. From there we followed a dedicated hiking and biking path along the road that gave us a nice view across the fields to the church of St. Konstantin.

After crossing the road we found the trailhead and started our hike. First leg of Trail 13 went through a quiet mostly rural area residential area that had some lovely homes. We then passed a couple of small lakes before turning off the gravel road and heading into the woods and up a rock and root-filled trail. Sections of the trail made me think of the Appian Way with a rough surface that was more or less paved with large cobbles; it was definitely the kind of terrain where you could easily twist an ankle so we were very careful.

After a fairly steep but happily rather short climb we broke out of the forest into a scenic but quite hilly meadow. From there we could see the Tuff Alm set high on a knoll and set in the shadow of the nearby Piccolo Sciliar.

We arrived just a bit before 12 Noon so we had our pick of tables on the sun terrace at Tuff Alm. The restaurant never got very busy while we were there, but it was still good to get a choice table. Our table offered nice views north towards Austria, east towards Switzerland, and south across Bolzano towards the Brenta Dolomites. For most of the day, as with much of our time in Castelrotto, the valley around Bolzano was trapped under an inversion layer that greatly limited visibility. We were glad that all of our outings were high enough to be above this soup!

After perusing the menu Cindy ordered the traditional Tyrolean dumplings, in this case grilled and not in a broth. Her dish included a cabbage slaw that included shredded speck and looked very tasty. Stuart ordered the spicy fried ribs with rostkartoffeln, one of his most unique meals from the trip.

The Tuff Alm had a very cool cat that stopped by to see us shortly after we arrived. He was very social but also rather wary of the dogs that other guests brought with them. We asked the waitress what his name was (in my Google Translate German) and she said that they called him “the old one”.

After lunch the clouds were starting to roll in so we decided to head back. We left the Tuff Alm in a different direction from our arrival. We followed Trail 1B, which was basically a two-track gravel access road for Tuff Alm. We followed this road back down the mountain and rejoined our original path where we had branched off earlier. This brought us back to the two lakes, but instead of following Trail 13 back to our starting point at St. Konstantin we continued on Trail 1 down to the hilltop town of Völs am Schlern.

We passed some very interesting homes on the way down to Völs (as the locals say), one of which was a modern glass interpretation of the classic Tyrolean chalet done almost entirely in glass and steel. Another highlight was a home that was essentially there as an excuse to hold up a spectacular roof top deck with a lovely view of the surrounding valley. We saw a lot of interesting residential architecture on this trip!

Today we walked just over 5 miles with about 1200 feet of elevation in around 2-1/2 hours.

For Innichen’s main page click here.

For Castelrotto’s main page click here.

For the entire trip’s main page click here.