Day 19 – A Hike To The Gampen Alm

Feb 23, 2023

Today’s Adventure

For today’s outing Cindy and I ventured into the beautiful and relatively quiet Val di Funes. I say relatively quiet because there is no downhill skiing in this valley so there are fewer tourists vs. the rest of the Dolomites at this time of year. We used Südtirolmobil public transit for the trip north along the Val Isarco and then east up the Val di Funes to the Zannes Hütte. The 24 mile trip took us about 90 minutes, not bad given the steep mountain roads.

At the Zannes Hütte we put on our ice cleats and headed out on a winter hiking trail that took us well past the end of the roads heading up the Val di Funes. It was a steep and steady climb through an evergreen forest until we broke out into the open near the base of the Odles Group. The Odles are a collection of sharp pinnacles packed closely together and creating a very dramatic skyline. The weather didn’t completely cooperate with us in terms of clear skies to show these peaks at their very best, but the scattered clouds and high mountain haze did create some memorable moments.

Once out of the forest we had to cross a large open meadow and make a long, unrelenting climb up into a low bowl just below the highest point of the Val di Funes. Our lunch destination for the day, the Gampen Alm (https://www.gampenalm.com/en/), was nestled in that bowl and offered excellent views all around. We were the first to arrive for lunch and had our choice of seats on the large sun terrace but by the time we left around 1:00 PM (oops, I meant 1300) they had over half of the dining tables filled both inside and out.

After ordering drinks we perused the beautifully made wood-bound menu as well as the daily specials. Cindy decided to go with the house-made sausage with sauerkraut and a speck dumpling. I had the house-made sausage with roasted potatoes and a cabbage slaw salad. Hopefully the accidental consumption of green vegetables doesn’t cause any issues! 🙂

When it came time to settle our tab I was happy to see that even in this very remote corner of the Dolomites you can still use Apple Pay. They obviously have a satellite connection of some sort to allow them to process these transactions as the approval was almost immediate. With the rarest of exceptions this has been a cashless trip – non-contact payment has become the preferred method in this part of the world.

The skies were starting to cloud up as we headed back down the valley towards the Zannes Hütte. The Odles were in and out of the clouds during our hike across the meadow, but for the most part they were socked in. There were enough patches of blue sky around to make sunglasses a necessity, especially with all of the glare off of the snow.

Our reward at the end of the hike was a stop at the Zannes Hütte for a pair of cappuccinsos and an order of Kaiserschmarrn. Kaiserschmarrn, literally “the Kaiser’s Mess” is a traditional local dessert made with torn pancakes that are dusted with powdered sugar and served with homemade jam and/or applesauce. I say ‘pancakes’, but they’re really more of a cross between pancakes and crepes.

After our mid-afternoon boost we boarded a bus and made our way back to Castelrotto. We hiked 4.7 miles today with over 1,300 feet of vertical in 2:11. We’ve now hiked just under 110 miles for the trip and have climbed almost 20,000 feet of vertical with a solid average of less than 30 minutes per mile, even with the snowy and sometimes icy terrain.

For Innichen’s main page click here.

For Castelrotto’s main page click here.

For the entire trip’s main page click here.