Day 6 – Alpe Nemes Hütte

Jan 17, 2020

Today’s Blog Entry

Our Friday outing was a circuit hike starting in the small town of Moos and peaking not far from the Austrian border at the popular Alpe Nemes Hütte. We began our day in Dobbiaco on a regional bus that took us through Innichen and Sesto to today’s trailhead not far from the visitor’s center in Moos.

The outbound trail climbed sharply through the trees and then followed the mostly frozen but quite beautiful Sextner Bach stream up a gorge to the Kreuzberg Pass. This pass is home to the Hotel Kreuzberg, a four star hotel with its own boutique ski hill. We took a break at the hotel before continuing our uphill climb.

From the Kreuzberg Pass we followed a fairly steep trail through the trees until we broke out into some large pastures on a south-facing plateau. It was there that we found the Alpe Nemes Hütte with its commanding view of the Dolomites. This is actually a farm in the summertime but over the years the family that owns it has developed a very successful restaurant and lodging business to keep things running on a year-round basis.

What’s unique about the Alpe Nemes Hütte is that everyone there has arrived on foot, on snowshoes, or on skis – there is no road access in the winter so everyone has earned a nice lunch. In spite of this remote location the restaurant is on the Trip Advisor ‘Top Ten’ list for best places to have lunch in this region. They’re not open for dinner as it would mean a lot of people stumbling down the trail after dark, otherwise I suspect that they’d be on that list also.

After another wonderful lunch with a great view we headed back to Moos via a different path, this time staying high above the gorge and crossing the Saumahd, an open plateau lined with forest. We paid the price for the level nature of the plateau with a fairly steep drop back into town.

Cindy and I felt today’s walk more than any prior day this trip with just under 1,900 feet vertical and a total of 10 miles under our boots …