Autumn hut-hopping in Italy’s Ampezzo Dolomites
Choosing autumn to trek Italy’s spectacular Ampezzo Dolomites National Park will yield the region’s famed mountain-top sunsets, alpine farms and rifugio culture but – as Ben Kelly discovers – without the crowds.
I’m standing alone on a ledge high in the Italian Dolomites, a few metres from a vertiginous drop to a valley floor far below. With the sun slowly dipping below the jagged horizon, the frigid alpine air is turning my fingers numb and I can no longer feel the buttons of my camera.
“Dinner’s ready,” comes a shout to call me back inside the nearby mountain hut, Rifugio Son Forca (pictured above), perched at an elevation of 2235 metres on the side of Monte Cristallo.
The warm window glow and promise of a hearty meal beckon, having built up an appetite hiking more than 15 kilometres through the Ampezzo Dolomites National Park to get here. But a spectacular show is about to begin and it’s something I’ve come across the world to see: The enrosadira.
Enrosadira, or alpenglow, is the natural phenomenon of the Dolomites reflecting the fiery colours of sunrise and sunset. The word comes from Ladin, a tiny language that evolved in this pocket of northern Italy more than 2000 years ago. Ladin culture, language and food are still very much alive in these mountains and valleys; even the trail signs are marked in both Ladin and Italian.
“Thank you,” I shout back to the hut worker, but stay rooted to my spot, not wanting to miss the final rays of light hitting the rocky spires on the horizon. It feels as if I’m standing at the edge of the world, and yet this perch among the clouds is just a valley away from the famous ski village of Cortina d’Ampezzo – a two-hour drive north of Venice.
Suddenly, as if a mountain god has hit a giant switch, the panoramic scene is painted with a band of vibrant colours, illuminating the mountains and wispy clouds that encircle the highest peaks. I take a few photos and then lower my camera to absorb the moment, all to myself.
The enrosadira effect is mythically captured in a Ladin legend – it is the flowers of a king’s rose garden that shine in the evening sun. Supposedly, dragons once lived here, and it’s easy to imagine them gliding from one Tolkienesque peak to the next.
Satisfied, I trudge back to the warm hut, where I take a seat at the dinner table with my hiking guide Walter Sartori. In front of me is a local beer and a plate of casunziei – a traditional Ladin dish of stuffed pasta. At the end of a full day of hiking mountains, it’s heaven.
Avoid the crowds by walking in the spring or autumn.
The joys of late-season hiking
Planning your own hut-to-hut trek through the Dolomites can be logistically daunting for your first time, but luckily I have Walter leading me on a three-day hike through the Ampezzo Dolomites National Park.
Our lodging at Rifugio Son Forca is the second and final night of our three-day journey, which starts and ends in the village of Cortina d’Ampezzo. It’s a perfect taste of multiday trekking, with the luxuries of good coffee, hearty food and warm showers. One can organise a similar itinerary on their own by emailing each hut to reserve accommodation. But the expert knowledge of an alpine guide comes in handy.
“This is my office,” says Walter, gesturing to the landscape outside the window. “One day I might have a hike, the next a climb or a via ferrata, and then I am a ski instructor in the winter season.”
On his jacket is the insignia of the Squirrels of Cortina, a community of mountaineers who, over the past century, have achieved incredible alpine feats.
There are almost a dozen rifugios in the Ampezzo Dolomites and while there are great day-hikes accessible from Cortina d’Ampezzo, multiday hikes are special. Some huts offer million-dollar views for less than €100 ($A175) a night, and there is nothing like waking up to a sunrise at 2500 metres.
While droves of hikers from all over the world come to trek Italy’s famous Alta Via routes, the Ampezzo region can be less of a magnet.
“In summer, the Ampezzo national park is not as crowded as other places in the Dolomites. It’s not so famous for trekkers, but this doesn’t mean it’s not as good or as important,” says Walter.
Rifugio accommodation does book out here in summer, but it’s mid-September – the final week of the season – and Rifugio Son Forca is quiet. In a few days it will close, reopening in December for winter skiing.
It’s easy to picture the expansive al fresco terrace bustling with mountain-goers. Tonight, however, the staff easily outnumber the guests and as soon as the guests are served, the workers sit down to eat at their own table, pass plates of food, chat and laugh together like a big family.
The rifugio’s carved wooden interiors are cutely adorned in decorations that make you feel as though you’re in Austria or Switzerland, rather than Italy. This region belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire for 400 years, until it was annexed by Italy during World War I, and its heritage is particularly evident in the mountain huts. It’s hard to fathom, but even higher up on Monte Cristallo, there are battlements, ladders and steel cables installed by the troops that dug into the mountain during the war.
Walter and I discuss our day’s adventure while devouring three courses of home-style mountain food.
To reach our lodging, we completed a several-hour hike with over 1200 metres in elevation gain, finishing with a quad-burning grind up a dry ski slope.
We walked on gravel mountain trails and over rivers, through pine forests blanketed in snow, into dry riverbeds and through alpine fields where we stopped to spot marmots peeping out of their burrows.
All the while, monolithic massifs hulk in the distance, providing jaw-dropping scenery to take one’s mind off sections of steep incline. These include the Dolomites’ highest peak, the Marmolada.
We come across few hikers on the trail, but plenty of trees.
We are often without phone signal – nothing to interrupt the gentle soundtrack of birdsong, the rustle of breeze through the mountain pines and the crunch of the trail underfoot. For the entire second half of this day’s hike, we meet only one other person.
I admire the ski paraphernalia on the walls of Rifugio Son Forca. The hut has been managed for more than 50 years by the Siorpaes family. National skier and coach Roberto Siorpaes took over the business in 1961 and today the hut is run by Roberto’s daughter and her husband. It is also accessible by ski lift.
The bedrooms sleep between two and eight, but there are so few guests tonight that Walter and I can pick rooms each to ourselves. As I retire to my room, I admire paintings by artist Giulio Siorpaes whose watercolour mountain scenes hang in every room. Perhaps I will dream of dragons.
A taste of alpine farm life
My adventure with Walter begins the day prior in Cortina, the site of busy construction work in readiness for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
I first pick up a rental hiking pack, boots and poles from Snow Service Cortina. A driver drops me and Walter at a trailhead just outside the village and we’re left to our own two feet for about the next 48 hours.
I need only carry essentials such as sunscreen, layers, snacks and a water bottle. Along the route, there are many opportunities to fill up water bottles in gloriously fresh mountain streams and man-made timber fountains.
Our first day is a leisurely stroll of eight kilometres, climbing 600 metres of elevation, to reach the quaint alpine farm of Malga Ra Stua. Clanking with cow bells, Ra Stua is a working farm that offers warm hospitality, accommodation and home-style local cuisine. It is one of the area’s gems with decades of history.
On our walk, we visit the spectacular Fanes Falls, the largest waterfall of the Dolomites. Walter kits me out in a helmet and harness to complete a via ferrata – a mountain route equipped with anchors and steel cables – during which we walk behind the heavy cascade of water.
Walter tells me that Fanes Falls is an “easy” via ferrata, so I am surprised by the dexterity required to step down steel rungs embedded into rock, slippery from the falls’ mist. Walter places Fanes Falls among the Dolomites’ most important attractions, but today we share this entire gorge with only a handful of other hikers.
Making friends with fellow hikers is part of the experience.
A reward for braving the cool September conditions
The name Fanes comes from a rich mythological tale, The Kingdom of Fanes. Legend goes that the Fanes people were the founding population of the valleys and remain hidden in the mountains to this day, awaiting the rebirth of their kingdom. It is easy to see why the mighty Fanes Falls imbues this sense of power.
After the falls, we continue through woodland trails, at one point crossing into a dry riverbed, more rivers and small waterfalls, and it’s not long before we reach Malga Ra Stua. The friendly staff show us our comfortable room of bunk beds. We have the half-board option, which includes dinner and breakfast.
“Ra Stua farm is the starting point for a lot of hiking in the natural park, particularly one-day hikes; it’s an important place for Cortina and for the community,” says Walter.
The hut isn’t busy this late in the season. The rooms are cosy, bathrooms clean, and the staff are friendly – even offering us a nightcap of the hut’s home-made liqueur. Warmed by the fireplace in the timber-clad dining room, Walter and I wile away the afternoon over a beer. Through the windows, cattle can be seen meandering about and drinking from a stream, clangs of their bells carrying loudly.
Malga Ra Stua Refuge is a quintessential Dolomites mountain cabin and farm.
The menu includes canederli (speck dumplings), local cold cuts and cheeses and mouth-watering desserts to refill the calories after a long hike, all homemade using local products.
I open the curtains in the morning for a bucolic view of the morning sun hitting the broad monolithic wall that lines the valley. We fuel up with breakfast and cappuccino for our biggest hiking day, ready to reach the lofty heights of Rifugio Son Forca, and eager to witness the enrosadira.
The alpine fields of Cortina
On the final morning of our hike, I look out my bedroom window at Rifugio Son Forca to see the morning glow awakening the mountains. I again go to my mountain ledge and enjoy the sunrise – one more enrosadira.
It’s all downhill on our final day’s hike to return to Cortina d’Ampezzo. It’s a clearer day, and the sun is glorious. I quickly de-layer beanie, gloves and puffer jacket, while Walter rolls up his pants to knee-high. I’m glad for my rental hiking poles on this steep descent.
We emerge through a narrow gap in the rock to be faced with one of the greatest views of the trip: A sweeping vista across the village and its surrounding mountains, which include the Marmolada, Sorapiss, Lagazuoi, and Tofane mountain groups, some of which were used in Sylvester Stallone’s Cliffhanger. A man-made switchback trail starts our final descent through lush alpine farms and verdant grasslands popping with violet wildflowers.
Once back at my rental car in the village, I say goodbye to Walter, and I decide I have time to make the 45-minute drive to the region’s No.1 attraction: Tre Cime di Lavaredo. During the peak of the summer season, Tre Cime attracts more than 10,000 people per day.
However, I’ve arrived at the busiest time of day and a long line of tourists waits for the next bus up the mountain road, which is closed to cars. There are far more people here than I have seen for three days.
I don’t have the time to join them, but I’m not disappointed. It simply reinforces how special it was to experience the mountain trails with few interruptions other than the wash of the rocky creeks, the clanking of cow bells, and the rustle of the alpine pines.
The writer was a guest of the Tourism Board of Cortina d’Ampezzo
