Tommy Nagle’s article on hiking and climbing a Via Ferrata in the Dolomite Mountains can be viewed here.
I’m getting ahead of myself, but I can’t help it. Sometimes it’s hard to truly get an idea of scale with such huge vistas.
‘Puez-Odle’ is the natural park in which our first hike took place, named after the striking peaks of the Puez and Odle massifs. At 8am on our second day, we left behind Ortisei’s shops full of ski boots and decorative beer steins, taking two cable cars up to the starting point 2,111 metres higher than the canals of Venice.
When we stepped out of the cable car, it became apparent that everyone said the same thing.
Wow.
The funny thing about this part of Italy is that it’s not very Italian. It’s a melting pot of cultures, with Austrian and Ladin (sort of neo-latin) influences. Yup, I didn’t know about that either. In a nutshell, we found ourselves saying “Guten morgen” more often than “Buongiorno”. I turned it into a game, trying to guess what language the approaching hikers would most likely speak.
The tour we booked was through DolomiteMountains.com.
They did an awesome job of organising everything for us. We could do everything at our own pace, change the itinerary to suit us, it all ran like clockwork. I’d totally recommend them.
http://www.tommynagle.com/iron-roads?slow=1
Interested in taking an adventure of your own? Check out our trips here !
