I have wanted to trek in the Dolomites for some time. We went at the end of July, which is high season. But if you want to be in the mountains with reliable-ish weather, it was a good time to go. Luckily, the Sierra Club offers a trip that fits the bill!! I don’t know if I am allowed to link to the trip description here but you can google it.

The trip started out of Madonna di Campiglio. You could fly into Venice or Milan and take the train to Trento and then take a bus to Madonna. We had toured Venice and northern Italy before so we decided to fly into Munich and drive down through Bavaria and Innsbruck. That took us about a week—I wanted to make sure we had recovered from jet lag before we started hiking. I posted that in this trip report: Bavaria and Tyrol Trip Report

Madonna di Campiglio is a nice small, laid back, ski town. It would be a great base for a week of day hiking in the area. It was so much cooler up in the mountains. We stayed 2 nights at the Savoia Palace. The rooms were a good size. The breakfast buffet was incredible. We ate dinner 2 nights at the hotel—it was part of our trekking package. The salad and dessert bars were amazing. The hotel was filled with vacationing Italians. All I can say is—if you saw something you wanted, grab it, because you couldn’t count on going back for seconds. The food was very good and the service was efficient.

We were able to park our car for the week in Car Park Spinale. It was only 80E for the week which was worth it.

Our trip took us through 3 main ecosystems—forest, alpine with grass/flowers, and bare rock. The rocks could be slippery on the trails so you had to be careful and the tree roots that were on the trails in the forest were really slick. You definitely had to pay attention to your feet. The views and scenery were “pinch me” gorgeous. It was just incredible. All of the rifugio staff spoke enough English to order food, get rooms, etc etc. We had great service everywhere we went. I don’t know the specific trails we took. We didn’t do anything labeled expert. There are very good maps available but I just followed the leader!!

Day One-Saturday
We were a group of 14—2 leaders and 12 participants. We had all met the night before at dinner and we went over logistics, etc. Our first day was going to be a day hike along the Giro Dei Cinque Laghi (Walk of Five Lakes) route. We walked 2 minutes from the hotel and took a ski lift up to the start. The hike was around 7 miles and was over 1,000 feet walking uphill and over 2,000 feet walking downhill. The trail was jam packed—it was a Saturday in high season. The route was beautiful! We saw some chamois on the rocks.
I will continue the trip report in the comments.

Days Two--Sunday
We started out by grabbing the bus in town to take us to Parco Naturale Adamello Brenta. We started through the forest and climbed the path through Cascate alte di Vallesinella. Those waterfalls were truly amazing. We stopped at Rifugio Casinei for lunch. We then climbed up to Rifugio Tuckett which is up high on the rocks-7,455 ft altitude. The trail was very busy because it was the weekend. The staff were all very friendly at this good sized place. There is an unheated drying room.

Day Three-Monday
The next day we picked our way along a rocky trail to the top of the Groste ski lift. From that high point, we descended along a trail with very few people that would take us to our next rifugio—Malga Spora at around 6,000 feet. This is a tiny place—only 20 beds. There is no internet or phone service and they can only take cash. They do have free, clean water. It’s a summer place where the family grazes its dairy cows in the meadow. The butter they serve is made on site and it is fantastic!!!!! We were able to dry our clothes out on a fence for a while before it rained.

Day Four-Tuesday
We had some really interesting forest hiking and then descended along a cool grotto trail—through some tunnels—to get to the next place--Rifugio Croz dell'Altissimo at 4,855 ft. This is fairly close to a road from town so some folks had hiked a short distance to get here. They only had an outdoors clothesline and it poured rain. Take your shower quick here because if it rains hard, it causes too much turbulence and stirs up sediment so they can’t run the showers.

Day Five-Wednesday
This was a tough day. We had a long haul to make it up to the pass at Rifugio Pedrotti. That is usually a good place to stay but they are renovating so you can eat there but you can’t sleep there. After lunch, we had to travel over some snow fields and scree without the best footing. I was ok in my boots but bringing some microspikes would have given us more security. Then we had to descend over some really scary places with sheer cliff drop offs. They had metal rungs as sort of a ladder but they were placed oddly and I was terrified I was going to slip. I really do not like heights but I have plenty of experience with sheer drop offs/exposure and this still was scary to me. They have cables to hang onto. After some more hiking along questionable scree trails, we arrived at Rifugio Brentai, around 7000 feet. This place has amazing views!! It is on the edge of the cliff. They have a heated drying room. Really nice staff here. And they had a sweet dog that loved getting pets.

Day Six-Thursday
This was an easy day. We hiked a few hours straight up to Rifugio Alimonta at 8,464 feet. We had lunch there. Some of us then hiked the glacier up to a pass while others just relaxed in the sun and let clothes dry on the rocks. You could have done this as a day hike from Brentai and stayed 2 nights at Brentai. But when we woke up the next day at Alimonta we were above the clouds—it was really cool!!!

Day Seven-Friday
This was a long day all down hill. From the rocks through the alpine zone and ending in the forest. There were some trails that were on the edge of cliffs—they were wide enough. But I was glad there were cables. We even hiked through some tunnels! We hiked back to Rifugio Casinei for lunch. Then we took a different route back down through the forest to where we could get the bus back to Madonna di Campiglio.

I thought we were supposed to get off the trail sooner and then we could get a head start on our Saturday drive by going 2 hours to Bolzano. Well, I wouldn’t do that again. The drive down to Bolzano was tough with Friday traffic and Bolzano was packed with people. We would have been better off staying the night in Madonna di C and decompressing there. They also have a spa/jacuzzi etc. at the Savoia Palace Hotel and a massage therapist. Lesson learned.

From Bolzano, we headed back to Munich and home—I covered that in the trip report I linked above. Here is some more info specific to rifugios and trekking.

Packing Logistics
You really do want to pack light. I brought too many extra clothes and regretted it. You really want to pack like you do for a backpacking trip. I wear a short sleeve shirt and zip off shorts to hike. I took one xtra of everything I had on (except for the shorts which I wore all week). I did bring an extra pair of hiking socks (so 3 in total) and a pair of compression socks to sleep in. You need those extra socks because it takes time for things to dry out with the humid/cooler air. Given that it was July, I should have ditched my long underwear top/bottoms and just brought leggings/light pants and a long sleeved shirt. I brought those extra and that’s what I wore around the rifugios in the late afternoons/evenings. I brought running shorts and a tank top to sleep in—the rifugio bedrooms are really warm. I pretty much just used my sleep sack—I never needed the blankets they provided. I also brought my own blow up pillow. I hate not getting a good pillow. Other people did fine with the pillows provided. One item I wish I had packed—a She Wee. So much of the hiking you do is above treeline and there is no where to hide. For guys, it was ok. For the ladies—a SheWee would have been amazing. Poles—yes, we all had trekking poles. I backpack with mine all the time and love them for hilly terrain. You can rent them in Madonna di C for about 5E a day if you don’t want to pack them.

Rifugio Logistics
Don’t count on internet and phone access at every place you go. Bring cash—one of the places we stayed could only take cash because they didn’t have internet. Bring a multi-device adapter. There were times when there was only one outlet in the room and 8 people in the room. Having an adapter with a brick that you could plug 5 phones into was very helpful. Plug in as soon as you get to your room. That way you are charged up early. Some places have only minimal power overnight because they use generators. I put my phone on airplane mode every night to save power. I have a blue tooth soft head band that I wear to sleep and then play a white noise app on my phone. That way I am the only person who hears the white noise.

Take a shower as soon as you get to the rifugio. You pay for them at the front desk—it was 5E when we went. That way you don’t have to wait in line (or you get less of a line). One tip is to change into your rain paints/jacket first –that way you just have 2 quick things to take off/put on before/after your shower. Then you don’t have a bunch of extra clothes in the teeny tiny shower stall. The showers all had decent water temperature and pressure. I brought a combo shampoo/conditioner that also served as body wash. I had time to wet down, soap up, and rinse off before the shower stopped. I brought plastic Birkenstocks as my hut shoes and they doubled as shower shoes too.

Water—all of the rifugios have signs saying the water is not potable because it is not “controlled”. But then everyone is brushing their teeth in the water. I just ended up drinking it. They have water you can buy in all of the rifugios—around 4E for 1.5 liters. I would have just taken some water purification tabs with me and used those to be safe. There are probably heavy metals in the water but I figured a week wasn’t going to really harm me. Your mileage may vary.

Food/Drink—the food is plentiful. I will say if you are a vegetarian, be prepared to eat sunnyside up eggs every night for dinner. The only vegetables were if you got vegetable soup. Otherwise, it’s pasta, kanudles, and meat. It was great food!!! I ate ALL the pasta  The breakfast had bread, cornflakes, yogurt, ham, and cheese. And coffee. Dinner was usually 6:00 or so to 8:00. We ate right at 6:00—most people did. Breakfast was usually 6:30-8:30. We usually ate around 7:15-7:30. The people who were doing the Via Ferrate routes were usually up and out early so we let them go through before we went to breakfast. We had pre-ordered “box lunches” from every rifugio. I don’t know if they do that for anybody or if we made a special arrangement for a group. Lunch was a roll with a slice of meat or cheese, an apple, and a cookie. No mustard or anything. The beer was very good—on tap—everywhere. The red wine—if you were not going to get a bottle—wasn’t so hot. My favorite was the Limonata—lemon soda that was so refreshing. If you stopped for a mid day break and wanted to sit at the tables, you need to buy something. So Limonata it is!

Drying Rooms—some places had a heated drying room, some were not heated. It usually rains every evening so you can’t count on leaving your clothes on an outside line to dry overnight. Just do the best you can hanging stuff off your bed and if you get somewhere early (like at 3 or 4) you can hang stuff to dry until it rains around 5 or 6. (the rain doesn’t last long)