Day 9 – Hiking The Val Fiscalina

Feb 13, 2023

Today’s Adventure

Today started out with a short bus ride up Strada Statale (highway) SS52 from Innichen into the Sextental valley. We rode past Sexten to a small town called Moos (Moso in Italian). At Moos there’s a branch in the road – the left branch continues up the valley to Kreuzberg Pass where you leave Südtirol while the right branch dead-ends into the stunning Naturpark Drei Zinnen. Guess which way we went?

The bus dropped us off in front of the Chiesa di San Giuseppe in “downtown” Moos. From there we wandered through town towards the the entrance to the Fischeintal valley (also known as the Val Fiscalina in Italian). We found our trailhead just as we reached the edge of town. Trail 1A was, for the most part, a farm and forest access road with a fairly steep initial climb. That climb was made worthwhile by some nice keyhole views back towards Sesto.

It wasn’t long before the trail branched left into the woods and wandered through the trees. It then broke out into a series of open pastures and merged with a groomed winter hiking and cross-country skiing trail. This section of the hike had lovely views across Moos and towards the snow-capped mountains beyond. We also ran into a little local traffic – a beautiful white draft horse pulling an open sleigh, complete with canine escort.

After the trail went back into the woods it dropped down towards the valley floor and led us into a parking lot at the end of the road heading into the Val Fiscalina (a.k.a. Fischleintal) from Moos. There are several hotels and restaurants in this area so we kept right on moving to get away from the build-up, such as it was.

From this point we were on a winter hiking trail, in this case a single lane road that’s intentionally been covered in snow and periodically groomed for hiking and snowshoeing. Off to our left across the valley floor was another trail that was groomed specifically for cross-country skiers, so that kept the two distinct types of traffic well separated.

The foot traffic was picking up as it wasn’t long before the noon hour. We were a bit concerned about the number of people on the trail, most of them likely heading towards the Talschlusshütte (https://www.talschlusshuette.com/en/), our lunch destination. This is the one and only hutte in the area so it seemed obvious that the more people we passed the better our chances would be of scoring a nice table on the sun terrace.

We may be old but we still managed to pass thirty people in a fairly short distance and were rewarded with the last two open spots on the terrace. Not long after we arrived there was a waiting list for tables both inside and out so we were right to pour on the steam. It wasn’t our first time at this rodeo!

We made our first visit to the Talschlusshütte back in late September of 2022 so we were familiar with their menu. Cindy ordered their shepherd’s macaroni while Stuart ordered the Wiener Schnitzel. Both of our choices were excellent as expected.

The weather was beautiful for our outside lunch – in the mid-30s with abundant sun on the terrace to keep us warm. That held true until just after we finished when the sun quite literally set behind the steep canyon walls – at 12:45 PM! It suddenly become noticeably colder on the terrace so we paid our tab and headed out on the trail.

We were soon back into the sunshine and quite comfortable, but we had to wonder about the folks still heading up the trail hoping for lunch in the sunshine – our old buddy al fresco had certainly left the building and indoor dining would be their only real option.

When we got back to the built-up area it became obvious that a little dessert was in order so we sat down at a table on the sun terrace of the Fischleinbodenhütte. This hütte’s location further down the valley meant that they enjoyed sunshine much later into the day. Our sunglasses and SPF30 were still very much needed. We ordered some Pear Williams (a type of brandy) and split a warm slice of apfelstrudel with vanilla sauce as we discussed our plans for the following day.

Our dessert complete we decided that the extra mileage associated with hiking back to Moos wasn’t really something that we wanted to undertake. We boarded a bus at the convenient stop in front of the Hotel Dolomitenhof and let Südtirolmobil drive us back to Innichen.

This hike covered just under five miles and around 700 feet of vertical. It was a very light day for us, but we knew that the next day was going to be a monster so it was all part of the plan.

For Innichen’s main page click here.

For Castelrotto’s main page click here.

For the entire trip’s main page click here.