Alta Via 1 – Day 4
Hiking the Italian Dolomites
- Rifguio Lagazuoi to Rifugio Averau
- 4.7km
- 2 hours
- 6,238 steps
- 2,460 calories
- Ascent 741m
- Descent 1063m
- Max elevation 2736m
No views this morning. The weather on the mountain at Rifugio Lagazuoi was cold and rainy and the mountain views were a white out. Lucky today was a “rest” day, with a plan to take it easy with a short walk only 8km… although we ended up walking less than 5km.
There are 3 ways to get down the mountain from Lagazuoi: a steep walk, a near-vertical pitch dark WW1 tunnel requiring via ferrata equipment, or, a nice easy cable car. I wasn’t into via ferrata, the miserable weather didn’t make the walk appealing and besides… the cable car had kind of always been my plan. It opened at 9.30am so we sheltered in the rifugio then headed on down in the cable car with the other hikers who were also sensible decision-makers.
The poor weather continued so we wore our rain gear and set out for Rifugio Averau. The distance wasn’t far, and the plan for the day was to take a detour via Cinque Torri (Five Towers). A couple of kilometres in, we met 3 lovely sisters from Belgium. They said there was a thunderstorm warning for the early afternoon, so we decided not take the detour past Cinque Torri and headed straight for Averau.
We passed a herd of sheep and goats which were making the most adorable bleating sounds over their tinkling bells , followed some gravel paths and undulating rocky paths which are the standard in the Dolomites.
Eventually we came to Forcella Averau, our challenge for the morning and Steve’s moment of heroism. This Forcella is basically a rock fall of large boulders. At one point, I needed my hands to haul myself up a large boulder and the weight of my pack was throwing me off balance. Steve had clambered up in front of me, and I asked him to take my pack and put it on the ledge above. He took it, and I climbed up. When I looked up, Steve had mountain-goated his way up the next 50 metres – with my pack in his hand!! What a legend. Later that evening I bragged about this to a few people and some male hikers complained that he was making them look bad.
Sometimes hiking rewards you and sometimes it does not. We took a photo of ourselves at the top, with “the view” in the background. That’s hiking!
After the Forcella, we found ourselves working our way along (yet another) mountainside traverse with a narrow path and a steep drop away to one side when a thick fog rolled in. With low visibility, if you lost your footing no one would know you’d fallen into the misty abyss. Not gonna lie, I was a bit stressed and Steve kept disappearing into the mist in front of me. The rain had just started to pelt down when Averau came into view, and I was relieved to reach the warm comfort of this cosy rifugio.
We reached our destination about 11.30am, ate lunch and hunkered down for the afternoon reading and relaxing in our comfortable room while the nasty weather did its thing outside. Rifugio Averau makes great coffee! Our new friends Tanji and Kent joined us again for dinner, which was overseen by the Christmas demon Krampus.
Although we were bummed to miss Cinque Torri we could see it from our balcony, which was good enough for us in light of the poor weather. Is that an excuse to come back one day?
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