We had breakfast, which gave us false hope and a relief of the bacherlor’s cooking the night before by being decent, with service that was fast enough that we could make it out to the bus stop for our hike of the day. When the bus arrived, we were surprised at the crowd and worried that we might not have seats, but the bus squeezed us all aboard and as far as I can remember not more than a handful of people had to stand.
The road up to the hike itself is an experience. It climbed a solid 12-15% grade to the lake we’d been to the day before before settling down and weaving around the mountain side of the National Park. With each corner, the views would improve, gaining us more and more visibility. There was a noticeable haze in the air. “That’s from the wild fires in Canada, going all the way across the Atlantic,” Arturo told us.
When we got off the bus we could see that this was a major attraction --- the parking lot was full (and there were lots of signs at the bottom of the road telling people that a permit was required to park at the top and that those permits were all sold out!), and the crowds were incredible even though we were on the first bus of the day! “The bus only started running last week!” remarked Mark Brody.
Well, nobody goes to Europe expecting a wilderness experience for their hikes, so we braced ourselves and walked along the designated trail. “This is like nothing I’ve seen before,” said Arturo. Coming from him this was unusual, as Arturo was an avid hiker and much better traveled than I was. The landscape of the Dolomites is unusual above the treeline, with lots of rocks, but not made out of granite like the Sierra and the rest of the Alps, giving it the unique shapes --- mountains shoointg uptowards the sky in spikes as the harder wearing rocks stand distinct from the surrounding areas which were subject to normal rates of wear.
The circumnavigation of the three peaks took us to various world war 1 monuments and gun emplacements. Arturo knew a lot of the history, and gave us a running exposition. While the crowds did eventually thin out, the hike was so easy that never did it thin to the point where you didn’t have to wait to take a photo without other people in it. Nevertheless, I was glad to finally do this hike, years after Lukas Panitz recommended it to me in 2021.
I had thought that we might want to hike back down instead of taking the bus back, but by the time we were done, we were all strangely tired, and with Bowen limping we decided to take the bus back.
I will stop bragging about how bad the meal at Miralago was now. The after dinner walk around the lake was great, and with rain coming we hoped the haze from the Canadian fires would be washed away.
Arturo went to talk to the various campground on Stephan’s behalf. Despite our advice to the contrary, his father had decided to rent an RV for the trip. I had warned that the roads we chose were unlikely to have fun driving on the RV, but he was not confident of his ability to get the Misurina on an ebikes, and obviously the RV was much cheaper to stay in than the hotels we were staying, and they wouldn’t be subject to Miralago food.
The closest campground wouldn’t take reservations but told Arturo that if they made it to them by 9:00am the next morning there would be space. We would be gone by the time they arrived, since we had previous plans. Stephan had done a lot of hiking in the Dolomites so he did not feel obligated to join us for our hikes.
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