Wednesday 5 July 2023
Today’s hike was the best. Defying the weather forecasts once more, it was the sunniest yet and the clouds hadn’t even come over by the time we finished around 4pm (unluckily we couldn’t find any shady parking… so the car was a teensy bit hot by the time we got back). This hike was also much less busy than others, as we chose the Puez-Odle Group rather than the more popular mountains such as the Sella Group nearby.
Let me have a go at describing how the Dolomites work. Imagine a whole bunch of castles with towering outer walls and towers, and a bailey inside. These castles are the mountain “groups”. Between these castles are the huge valleys of the Dolomites, like Val Gardena or Val Badia, which is where all the towns and roads and villages are. The walls of the castles are thus the walls of the valleys, and they are gigantic rocky crags and scree slopes, and the towers along the castle walls are the actual peaks – the summits that get a height measurement and a flag. The famous peaks, such as Piz Boe, are simply the very highest towers in the castle walls. Inside the castle wall is the altiplano, still terribly high but actually a plateau which might have it’s own lakes, valleys, crags, etc.
Puez-Odle is a castle that happens to not have any single famously high peaks and thus, though epic and beautiful, isn’t quite as popular. The singular feature it does have is the Valle Lunga – an almost impossibly perfect U-shaped glacial valley that cuts right inside the group and through the altiplano. When you finally see it stretching away beneath you about two hours into the hike you can’t help being gob-smacked. Two hours later you’re walking along the bottom of this valley, on your way towards the end of the hike, and it is equally jaw-dropping from down there. The hike was 5-and-a-bit hours in total and we were absolutely knackered by the end of it. Tomorrow is absolutely going to be a do-nothing day. It was all lovely though; we got another look at marmots, we found eidelweiss growing in profusion and we saw a full-grown cow frolicking in the meadows like an absolute idiot with a bell around her neck.
Oh! And mention must be made of Rifugio Puez, our lunchtime stop in a lonely spot at the very top of the Valle Lunga. All these rifugios look different and this one is a smart modern-looking building with super-friendly-efficient staff. And they serve up a truly awesome venison juniper goulash, either with very nice polenta or utterly scrumptious speck-speckled wild herb dumplings. Best lunch of the whole trip, I reckon. And it’s not just the two hours of hiking beforehand saying that!
Before we set off on today’s hike we had thought about fitting in one more small hike tomorrow, on the way to our luxurious Relais & Chateau stop… but once we finally staggered back to the car after this mighty trek, we decided to head straight for the luxury! And maybe a foot massage?
Related Images: