Day 9 – A Snowy Look At Lago di Braies

Jan 22, 2024

Today’s Adventure

Day 9 of our adventure in the Italian Dolomites dawned overcast and cold with temperatures forecast to stay in the 20’s. Cindy and I looked at our list of potential outings and decided that our best choice for the day would be a hike around Lago di Braies. This beautiful Alpine lake, known by the somewhat less romantic name ‘Pragser Wildsee’ in German, sits at the head of the Valle di Braies at 5,000 feet above sea level.

We’ve visited Lago di Braies twice before, once in January of 2020 and again in October of 2022. For that second visit we stayed overnight at the historic Hotel Lago di Braies so that we could experience both a sunset and a sunrise over the lake and the surrounding mountains.

The lake’s beauty has become a bit of problem in recent years as the location has been discovered by Instagram and other social media users, all taking the same photos over and over again. As a result the traffic and crowding can reach epic proportions on sunny summer days, so much so that as of last year officials are regulating the number of cars allowed in the valley at any given time.

Fortunately the colder weather, the overcast skies, and the non-weekend day meant that the lakeshore and the trails were not at all crowded (exactly as we had hoped) so we were able to enjoy our hike in reasonable solitude.

Our day started out with a quick bus ride to nearby Dobbiaco, a small town where we spent a couple of weeks back in 2020. We had a few minutes to kill before the bus to Lago di Braies, so we took a short stroll around the uniquely green and notably Baroque Parish Church of Dobbiaco. The cemetery there is home to a solemn memorial honoring the region’s dead from World War I and World War II.

The bus from Dobbiaco dropped us off at the Hotel Lago di Braies where we put on our ice cleats (definitely needed today!) and headed out across the hopefully well-frozen lake. Other people had gone before us based on the packed snow trail, so we felt safe getting this unique view of the lake.

On the far shore we headed up a side canyon to the Grünwald Hütte, a charming small mountain restaurant that we visited back in 2022. We knew that it would be closed for the winter due to its remote location but we also knew that this valley’s scenery was well worth the walk (even without a cold beer waiting at the far end).

We looped around the Grünwald Hütte, hiked back down to the lake, picked up the lakeshore trail, and made our way back to the hotel. We were considering catching a bus at this point but it was still fairly early and the weather was holding, so after locating a winter hiking trail we kept on walking towards San Vito.

At San Vito we stopped in the Eggerhof Speckstube for lunch. This is a family-run farm-to-table restaurant with the father waiting tables while the wife and daughter run the kitchen. Cindy ordered their Goulash with grilled polenta. Stuart decided to try their homemade Schlutzkrapfen, a traditional Tyrolean dish with spinach-filled ravioli in a brown butter sauce. Both of our lunches were quite good and really helped to warm us up after our morning’s outing.

After lunch we caught the next bus for Niederdorf where we transferred to a train for the final leg back to San Candido. Some of you may be wondering about train and bus tickets, but one of the great things about this region is that many hotels and apartments include an unlimited regional transit pass for free with your lodging rental.

All told we walked around 7 miles today with 663 feet of vertical in roughly three hours. The weather for tomorrow looks spectacular, so tentative plans are to hike across the Prato Piazza, a high meadow not far from Lago di Braies that offers amazing views of the surrounding mountains.

For Innichen’s main page click here.

For Seefeld’s main page click here.

For the entire trip’s main page click here.