The Party Is in the Dolomites 🪐

The Party Is in the Dolomites 🪐

There are trips you plan months in advance, carefully studying routes, booking accommodation, and making lists of everything you need to bring. And then there are the other kind, the ones that begin long before you buy a ticket. They begin as an idea among friends, as a conversation over coffee and that familiar question that returns every year:

"Where are we going this year?"

That is how this story began.

I asked him how he had ended up on one of Europe’s best-known hiking routes in the first place.

"Well, somehow it became our little ritual. Every year, a few of us go on a trip that has very little to do with a classic holiday. After Switzerland and Madeira, this year we chose the Dolomites. Once we started looking into what was worth experiencing there, we very quickly found Alta Via 1. It is probably the best-known trek in the entire Dolomites, and it seemed to us that there is no better way to get to know a mountain than to live inside it for several days."

Their journey began long before the first step on the trail. They flew from Zagreb to Bergamo, continued to Milan where they spent the night with friends, and very early the next morning boarded a train towards Lago di Braies. As soon as they reached the shore of the lake that many consider the most beautiful in the Dolomites, they put on their backpacks and started walking.

"We did not complicate things. We arrived at the beginning of the trail and started immediately. I actually like that feeling when an adventure begins at once, without much waiting around."

Alta Via 1 in five days

Alta Via 1 is one of the best-known hut-to-hut routes in Europe. Instead of hotels and apartments, the days end in rifugios, mountain huts set high among the peaks. Most people complete this route in eight to ten days, but they decided to fit the whole story into five, which meant an average of around 27 kilometers of walking every day.

Their route led from Lago di Braies through Rifugio Lavarella, Rifugio Nuvolau, Rifugio Coldai, and Rifugio Carestiato, all the way to Belluno, the city at the very end of the trek.

"When you put it on paper like that, it sounds serious. Honestly, I did not think too much about the numbers before we set off. We were all focused on the adventure. It is only later, when the fatigue starts building day after day, that you realize how much ground you are actually covering."

In the end, the numbers showed around 125 kilometers, approximately 7,800 meters of ascent, and more than 8,000 meters of descent.

A different rhythm of life

I wanted to know what an ordinary day on a journey like that looks like.

"The best thing is that no two days are the same. You wake up in a mountain hut high in the mountains. While you drink your first coffee of the morning, there are no buildings in front of you, no cars, no traffic. Only peaks, rock, and an endless horizon. After breakfast, you pack your backpack, put on your hiking boots, and move on. Then you walk for hours. Sometimes through green pastures, sometimes across rocky mountain passes, sometimes beside a lake so clear it does not look real."

As I listened to him, I had the feeling that he was not only talking about the mountain. He was talking about a different rhythm of life in which your only responsibility is to reach the next hut.

"One day you walk through green valleys and flowering meadows, and only a few hours later you feel as if you are on another planet. Some sections look almost lunar. The rocks are enormous, irregular, and seem as though someone deliberately arranged them to impress everyone who passes through."

That is exactly what the Dolomites are known for. UNESCO added them to the World Heritage List in 2009, and many consider them the most beautiful mountains in Europe. The photographs are spectacular, but as Stefan says, only when you stand among those rocks do you understand how little a camera can actually convey.

"I do not think any photograph can convey what you see there. There are moments when you simply stop. Not because you are tired, but because you are trying to understand what you are looking at. The view feels unreal."

I asked whether anything had particularly surprised him.

"Honestly, how quickly you forget everyday life. Here, there is only one goal: reach the next hut. You do not have ten things in your head at once. You walk, talk to people, eat when you get hungry, and sleep when you get tired. After a few days, you realize how liberating that really is."

Evenings in the rifugios

Those huts give the whole journey its special character. At Lavarella, Nuvolau, Coldai, and Carestiato, dinner begins at a set time. There is no arriving late, no ordering at midnight, and no special requests. Everyone sits down at the table at around seven in the evening, eats the same meal, and shares the same stories from the trail.

"That may be the most beautiful part of the whole experience. You arrive after a full day of walking, take off your backpack, and sit on the terrace of the hut. You order a cold beer and a dinner that, in that moment, feels like the best meal you have ever eaten. Then you meet people from Germany, France, Canada, Japan... Everyone has come from a different part of the world, but that day they all have the same story."

When I asked which food had stayed most vividly in his memory, the answer came without hesitation.

"Tagliatelle with venison ragù. After so many kilometers and so much climbing, believe me, it tastes completely different from sitting in a restaurant in the city. Add a cold Coke or a beer, and you do not need much more to be happy."

It was not all romantic

Of course, it was not all romantic.

One day they were caught in hail, and there was mud, scree, long climbs, and moments when their legs grew heavy from the kilometers accumulated over the previous days.

"Towards the end of the day, there are moments when you wonder why you started at all. Especially when you see that another few hundred meters of climbing are still waiting for you. But the interesting thing is that the very next morning you wake up and cannot wait to continue. I suppose the mountain has that effect on people."

He emphasizes one thing in particular.

"Carry as little as possible. We probably overdid it too. After a few days, you realize that you did not need half the things in your backpack at all."

He also recommends booking the huts in advance, since reservations for the following season often open as early as the beginning of November, and downloading offline maps because it is not unusual to walk for hours without meeting anyone on the trail.

We usually find it somewhere in between

As we finish our conversation, it becomes clear to me that this story has very little to do with numbers. The point is not the 125 kilometers or the 7,800 meters of ascent. It is not even the fact that they completed the entire Alta Via 1 in five days.

The point is that a few friends decided to briefly escape everyday life, exchange screens for views of mountain peaks, meetings for conversations on the trail, and the rhythm of the city for one simple rule: every day, you only need to reach the next hut.

Perhaps that is exactly why this story found its place here.

Whether we are talking about marathons, the Camino, mountains, or a completely different journey, the most valuable thing is rarely found at the start or the finish.

We usually find it somewhere in between.

Exactly where, step by step, we move the boundaries we once believed existed.

And when we finished the conversation, he was already talking about the next adventure.

"This year we are planning the Tour du Mont Blanc. But that is a story for another time."

For now, let the Dolomites remain.