Passo San Pellegrino to Rifugio Passo San Nicolo
Monday, July 10
Late-night snacks
The following morning we quick-prepped and packed for our first day of exciting Dolomites adventuring. We were starting off at a relatively modest pass in the central Dolomites known as the Passo San Pellegrino (no relation to the famous sparkling water of the same name), roughly situation in the central-western part of the Dolomites. We were going to be doing a four-day traverse, starting from there and finishing in the nearby Val di Fassa. The first order of business was to complete the hour-long drive to the area and then do all of the back-and-forth of a car shuttle (between the start and end points).
Completing shuttle, Dolomites Day 1
As I've learned but do not give enough respect to, car shuttles always take longer than you think, and by the time Chris had his little rental Fiat screaming its way up to the Passo San Pellegrino for the final time, it was after 1pm. I estimated 12-14 ish kilometres for our first leg of hiking, and starting something of that length in mid-afternoon was not ideal. Doable, but not ideal.
Shortly after 2pm, we were off. Fortunately the day was picture-perfect beautiful, and spirits were high. We headed off from one of several public hiker parking lots near the pass, following a gravel service road that also doubled as the trail. What I did not do at the time was to give my map a good close check. If I had, I would have noticed that our desired trail veers off to the right only a few hundred metres from the trailhead. Instead, I blithely guided our group straight ahead on the easy gravel track, soon emerging into a beautiful meadow in a high alpine valley framed by high crags in the distance. Wonderful... except that we were now in the wrong valley.
Parking, Passo San Pellegrino
The Wrong but Beautiful Way
All was good as we chatted and enjoyed the walk up this scenic valley (known as the Valfredda Valley). Eventually we came to a group of small alpine cottages (which are quite common in the Dolomites). The access track wound through this little cottage-village, and as it did so, I began to realize that we were not where we should be (which was in the next valley to the west). It was too far (and mentally too painful) to consider going back nearly to the trailhead and selecting the right route, so instead we charted a line-of-sight route up the steep meadowside of the valley, angling towards the grassy crest that we could see above us, to the west. It would be unwanted extra elevation and loss, but we felt it was the best option at this point. I apologized for causing extra time, effort, and distance.
It took us a good forty-five minutes to climb up to the grassy crest separating the Valfredda from the valley to the west. We carefully crawled through the electrified cattle fence running along the top, and then started a steep grassy descent. We were now in the proper valley and could actually see the trail in the distance. Traversing along a steep slide-slope in thick grass was a bit harder than it looked, but soon we'd be back on track.
In another half-hour, we merged with the trail (trail 607) and were officially "on the right path". I apologized profusely for my bad guiding, which I'm sure had cost us at least an hour's worth of time, added unnecessary distance, and had sapped some of our day's total hiking energy.
It was nice to be back in a situation where we knew exactly where we were - no more guessing or route-finding. The next task was simple, although most assuredly strenuous: follow trail 607 up a remote alpine valley to a high pass at about 8800 feet (2680m).
The trail continued up-valley in a very smooth and pleasant set of switchbacks. There were increasingly grand views back south as we climbed, with ranks upon ranks of fantastic white ridges and crags stretching away into the haze. Katie was impressed with her first real broad view of the dramatic and craggy Dolomites.
We gradually transitioned out of the zone of grassy meadow, into the higher alpine. The trail continued its upward switchbacking, now cutting up and back and across barren scree slopes. Although the scree was loose, there was a good trailbed cut into the slopes and footing was good. It was now a steeper grade, and, combined with the thinner air at this altitude, we were all huffing and puffing to some degree, some of us more than others. Our pace slowed.
Soon we could see an unbroken stretch of sloping scree from our position all the way up to a gap in the wall of crags around us. That gap, hidden to us until now, was our pass (the Passo delle Cirele). It appeared both close and far at the same time, and was probably at least another thousand feet (300m) above our current point. I relayed this nugget of information to the others, who received it with resigned shrugs.
Much scree has been ascended
Slow but steady was the watchword of the final stretch of climbing to the pass. Evie (the youngest of the Hatko daughters) was starting to stop at un-announced intervals, slowing our progress somewhat. It took us a little over an hour to cover that last thousand feet. We had arrived at the Passo delle Cirele: a cool, misty landscape of rocks, pebbles and a few patches of snow.
Our pace was starting to become a little concerning: it was now just ten minutes before 7pm, and we had only come about halfway along our total estimated distance to our destination rifugio at Passo San Nicolo. We were seriously behind schedule.
Fortunately, the major climbing was over. After crossing a short patch of snow at the pass, we began a descent into the valley of the Cirelle, on an easy trail and down a moderate grade. The late-day light combined with some moody clouds to give us some spectacular high Dolomites views.
Down into the next Valley
Despite the late hour and our super-behind-schedule location, the descent down the Val de la Cirele was a very pleasant part of our day. The light, the ease of hiking, the fantastic rock formations, the herd of Ibex - all of it combined to create a memorable hour of mountain-walking.
Normally Italian mountain rifugios have a set dinner hour - usually starting at around 6:30 or 7pm. Given that it was 7pm right then, as we were hiking down this valley - clearly with at least a couple of hours left to go before reaching the rifugio - we were not going to make that dinner hour. I decided to call ahead and give the staff the heads up. This was also a good idea from a booking and a search-and-rescue perspective. We didn't want the staff to either give away our beds or to be calling for a search helicopter.
Fortunately there was enough cell signal in this remote valley that I was able to get through to the rifugio, and explained and apologized for our lateness. The person at the other end of the line was cheerful and thankful that I had informed them, and that we should not worry. I said we'd try to be there for 9-ish and they said that would be fine - they'd have dinner waiting for us. Such nice staff!
Katie Drinks in the Majesty
The good feels came to an end roughly when the sun slipped behind the peaks and the first touches of twilight descended over us. We probably still had close to three kilometres of hiking to go to get to the Rifugio Passo San Nicolo. Not far in the grand scheme of things, but when you are in the mountains as dark approaches, when you are looking to get to your place of refuge... well, it seems really far.
Everyone was getting tired - old and young alike. Evie was stopping more frequently, and not wanting to continue when asked to do so. The logical explanation of needing to continue to move so as to avoid having to spend the entire night out in the mountains was starting to fail. To top it off, we had a tough choice to make as to our route: continue along on our current trail until it connected with the main trail leading to our rifugio, but with some unpleasant elevation loss and gain, or take a higher route that was more direct but which required us to deal with some uncertain routefinding in the dark.
Getting Dark, Getting Tired
We ended up choosing the higher trail - (trail 609, if you want to know the specifics). As mentioned before, going with this trail meant less elevation loss to endure, but more uncertainty because of an ill-defined connector trail we were going to have to find and follow, in order to cut back over to trail 608 - the main trail leading to our rifugio. Headlights on well in advance of darkness, all was fairly straight-forward at first, but then a combination of failing light and fading trail meant that staying on-course became more challenging. I began thinking about the "fall of the safety dominoes" in my head, thinking that several safety dominoes had fallen thus far today and that we should take our situation seriously (and proceed very carefully). At one point I even contemplated calling for official rescue help, but after a short, serious sit-down with everybody we agreed that we had it in us to stick together, exercise caution, and get through the final kilometre or two of the journey to the rifugio. Things were definitely a little tense.
Junction in the night
I did not know exactly where the 609-to-608 connector trail was located. I could see it marked as a faint dotted line on my topo map, but that didn't translate very well to the the complete lack of landmarks here in the middle of an alpine meadow in the dark. It was imperative that we not miss the junction with this connector, lest we wander in high alpine terrain and possibly inadvertently run into technical obstacles. I asked the rest of the group to wait while I did a little bit of reconnaisance through this wide sloping meadow, and in the dark I couldn't make out much of anything that looked like a trail - I wandered around a bit and dead-ended atop some cliffs, which didn't make me feel too happy. I figured that in all likelihood we had not gone far enough, high enough, to have reached the connector trail. I returned to the group, losing my classic MEC nalgene water bottle in the soft, quiet grass on my way back. Damn it. I both managed to litter and lose a piece of nostalgic kit.
It was abundantly clear that we were going to blow way past our predicted 9pm arrival time. I once again called up the rifugio and [sheepishly] explained that (a) we were going to be quite a bit later than 9pm and (b) that no, we were not dead or hurt and that (c) yes, we had it all under control and that our ragtag crew was indeed going to manage to make it to the rifugio. Again, they were super gracious, only politely asking us if a simplified large group serving of pasta (rather than the normal individual multi-course offerings) would be ok. Absolutely, I responded.
A night-time downscramble
