I first visited the Italian Dolomites with my friend Ed in 2003. We were on a typical rock climbing trip – living cheaply, camping out and hitching lifts to the mountains.
Ever since that trip I’ve wanted to go back, the climbing and mountains are spectacular.
Over ten years later, I’m sat in the passenger seat of Ian’s van on the way back to Chamonix after a week of ski touring from hut to hut around the Dolomites. Quite a contrast to the last trip, comfy huts, good food, wine and deep snow everywhere.
In Cortina this winter they’ve had the biggest snow fall for 300 years. The roofs in town are groaning under the weight and rope access workers had plenty of employment clearing the snow off the buildings.
So rather than the thin cover we’ve had in Chamonix this season, in the area surrounding Cortina we had the opposite problem, finding routes that were feasible given the large quantities of snow in the warm temperatures of the past week.
Our itinerary involved a warm up day off the lifts before traversing between three huts, taking in a couple of ski peaks along the way. As is always the case with this type of trip we were trying to stay pretty flexible, as we had to deal with some fairly unsettled weather, with snowfall and very poor visibility affecting us during the week.
There was also some quite complicated terrain to cross between some of the huts, more reminiscent of north wales rather than the usual big alpine valleys. Lumps, bumps and mini valleys everywhere made route finding and navigation hard in the flat light. The most useful bit of kit in those conditions wasn’t the GPS, it was the four meters of cord tied to the bottom of my ski pole that I could flick around to gauge the angle of the slope and to find the edge of any ridge we were traversing!
After a day breaking trail and navigation we were always rewarded by staying in some of the best huts in the alps. Forget the usual alpine refuge, think alpine hotel instead. Duvets, showers, a bar, WiFi. The list goes on! We were hut bound for a few hours one day but it wasn’t exactly a hardship we had Olympics on the telly with coffees and cake on the table!
We were also pretty well balanced in terms of conditions, some challenging weather and snow off set by fresh tracks on big slopes in some amazing hero snow after a cold night. Big grins all round.
I’ll let the photos tell the full story, but needless to say I’ve spied many a peak that needs to be skied and the huts really are first class, more like hotels than your traditional refuge. Time to get the map out and start trip planning…
Some great terrain through the trees between huts
Fresh tracks anyone?
Blue skies on the final day of the tour
Flat light made route finding hard work on some days.
Deep snow off the ski’s!
An overnight freeze gave us perfect hero powder the next day.
Dodgy weather!
