After a fun night at Averau, we decided to start Day 5 with a hike up to Rifugio Nuvolau, which is the oldest rifugio on the Alta Via 1. You can see Nuvolau from Averau, so it’s only an extra 1km of hiking, though it does add an extra 175m of elevation gain. We left our packs at Averau and hiked up to the top to enjoy the view and a sweet treat. Nuvolau doesn’t have any road access, so while the other huts can get their supplies delivered by car, Nuvolau uses a cable system to haul supplies up and down the mountain. As a result, it’s a much smaller hut, so I didn’t mind that we stayed at Averau.

Since it was early morning, it wasn’t crowded at Nuvolau, but it was a weekend, so the rest of the trail was very busy. The main attraction in this area is Cinque Torri, which is a small collection of 5 peaks that seem to be popular among both day hikers and climbers. We were a little bit surprised by Cinque Torri, which we could see from the top of Nuvolau. It’s a cool collection of rock features, but it’s so small in comparison to Tre Cime, that it kind of failed to impress us. Which goes to show how quickly you can get used to the stunning scenery. Less than a week in the Dolomites, and we were already minimalizing the views!

As we hiked back down to Averau to pick up our bags, there were quite a few day hikers starting their hike. From Averau, you hike downhill for approximately 1.5km to get to Rifugio Scoiattoli. This rifugio is serviced by a gondola that goes back to the main highway, so this is how most of the day hikers were accessing the area. It’s a pretty concentrated area for attractions – in addition to Rifugio Scoiattoli, Averau, and Nuvolau, there’s also Rifugio Cinque Torri, which is located right underneath Cinque Torri (less than 1km from Scoiattoli). Combined with the nice weekend weather, the area was very crowded.

We opted not to spend very much time at Cinque Torri, instead we just watched some of the climbers for a bit before continuing on. The crowds almost immediately dissipated as we continued our hike towards our next rifugio: Rifugio Croda da Lago. At the time, I didn’t realize that we were actually diverging from the traditional Alta Via 1 trail at this point (as well as on the previous day). While we had accessed Averau through Passo Falzarego, the traditional trail actually continued through Forcella col dei Bos on the north side of the highway, eventually crossing back over and passing through Cinque Torri on the way to Averau. From Averau, the traditional trail then continued south through Passo Giau on onwards.

Rifugio Croda da Lago wasn’t on the traditional trail route, so it would have added distance for us to go through Passo Giau, so I don’t mind that we took a more direct route to get there. Over the years, the trail has developed lots of alternative sections. From what I understand – these trails are still considered the Alta Via 1, they’re just not the original route. All the trails in the region are beautiful, so I wouldn’t worry too much about following the traditional route.

One of the benefits of our route for Day 5 was that we finally got to do a bit of forest walking. It was another hot and sunny day, so it was nice to have a bit of shade for a change. Once we left Cinque Torri, the trail hikes east down to highway SP638. There weren’t a lot of people on the trail down to the highway, but there was a lot of cars parked on the road and more hikers on the trail towards Croda da Lago, so that seemed to be a popular trail for day hiking as well.

The trail is mostly through the woods – it’s a gentle uphill along the river for the first section, but then it gets steeper as you ascend to a viewpoint that looks out towards Cortina. We stopped for a few breaks along the way and I had a set back when I realized I had lost the mouthpiece to my water bladder somewhere along the trail. I backtracked one section of the trail to look for it, but I didn’t have any luck, so I had to switch to using a water bottle for the rest of the trip.

It was a hot climb up to the viewpoint, but then we had a nice meandering walk through a larch forest to get to Croda da Lago, which is located on Lago Federa. It’s a really pretty lake, surrounded by steep mountains on the west side, with the rifugio at the far south end. It was incredibly busy with day hikers when we arrived at the lake. Terrain-wise, it was a pretty reasonable day on the trail, as we’d only hiked 12km and 600m of elevation, so we arrived early in the afternoon.

Kristine was really keen to just get to the rifugio, but I wanted to go for a swim, so she continued on while I looked for somewhere to get in the water. The problem is that the lake is a bit swampy along the edges and it was really hard to find anywhere that looked appealing to walk in (even though the water itself looked very inviting). Eventually, I was able to bushwack down to a big rock that I could jump off, but I had to swim quickly because I was losing the sun behind the mountains and it cools off a lot once the sun goes down. I managed to slip in for a dip just before losing the light, but like many of the other lakes, it wasn’t the nicest swim as it had a very mucky bottom.

Croda da Lago was definitely not our favourite rifugio. In fact, the accommodations definitely went downhill after leaving Averau and we learned how spoiled we’d really been earlier in the trip. It was still much nicer than the camping I do in Canada, but apparently we’d quickly gotten used to the amenities and we were a bit bummed to lose them. We were in a 6 person dorm for the evening, but there ended up only being 3 of us for the night. It could have been great, but this was the first time we had an un-friendly dormmate and we were annoyed to discover that there were no chargers inside the bedrooms, nor were there free showers.

There was however, a sauna! I signed up for a spot before suppertime and enjoyed some relaxation time in the heat. I was a little bit unsure about the norms for sauna in Italy though. Most of my sauna experience was in Finland, which definitely loves sauna. I’d only done wet sauna in Finland and everyone at this sauna was doing dry sauna, which I didn’t really like. I’m not sure if this is standard for the area or if it was user error, as everyone in there was a tourist. There was a cold plunge pool outside as well, so I went back and forth between both.

Dinner was nice, but overall we noted that the owners of this rifugio just didn’t seem to care about the little details as much as the other rifugios. For example, in addition to not having chargers in the room or free showers, they skipped out on other amenities, like a boot room and drying racks, which meant if you have any wet gear, it’s going to stay wet (and smelly). Overall, the little things add up to detract from the overall experience, so it wasn’t our favourite hut, but I do feel a bit silly to be complaining about it.

Day 6 was a bit of a mixed bag. It was the last day of nice weather, but we had one of our longer days on the trail, needing to cover 17km and 800m of elevation. Like I mentioned in my last post, I was really feeling great on this hike and I was still enjoying the terrain, but I think Kristine started to hit a wall on Day 6. She did fine with the trail, but overall seemed ready to be done with the hike, which I can get when you’re 6 days in. We started with a hike up Forcella Ambrizzola, which was about 2km of uphill from the lake, but fortunately, not too steep. After that, we had a lot of downhill to get to Rifugio Citta di Fiume and Rifugio Staulanza, which is located at Passo Staulanza along the highway.

I really loved this section of trail. We were back in the alpine and wandered along wide trail through the mountains before heading back into the trees to get to Citta di Fiume. Kristine continued on ahead of me through this section, while I took a lot of photos along the way. We decided to skip Citta di Fiume and instead, continued hiking another few kilometres to get down to the highway. The big attraction along this part of the trail is Mount Pelmo, which is a huge monolith of a mountain that dominates the skyline. There’s a really cool section of the trail after Citta di Fiume where you hike across the base of Mount Pelmo, but we could also see all the way back to where we’d started the trail earlier that morning. It’s neat to be able to look back on how far you’ve come!

Passo Staulanza is really more of a roadside stop, so I’m glad we didn’t stay at that rifugio. I’d read somewhere online that Staulanza had the best hot chocolate, but I have no idea where I read it or how old the information was, because it didn’t seem to be a thing. It was the main reason we’d pushed through to Staulanza, so we decided to stop for lunch instead. We’d knocked out 10.5km of our 17km day, so we were feeling pretty good, although apprehensive about a big climb in the afternoon.

The first section of trail after Staulanza really sucks because you have to hike along the road for 1km and there’s no trail and very little shoulder, so make sure you hike on the opposite side of the road and exercise caution. Eventually you hit a junction and have to hike along an old dirt road to a cafe before you can meet up with the trail again. This is where the trail starts to go uphill again and there’s a lot of elevation gain before we arrived at our final destination at Refugio Coldai.

The hike up from the cafe is particularly steep, though it was the first section of trail where I was reminded that Fall would soon be here. Some of the trees and shrubs were starting to change colour and there was a beautiful view back toward Mount Pelmo. Eventually you crest the first hill and you have a small bit of downhill before the final push to Coldai. There’s a small lake next to the refugio, Lago di Coldai, that also seemed to be a popular day hiking destination, so there were a lot of people along the trail.

The last push to Coldai is pretty rough. It’s very steep, although it is possible to switchback up the mountain. Europeans really are built differently because even though the trail provided a rare opportunity to switchback (making the ascent easier), there was still so much erosion where people have created shortcuts to bypass the switchbacks and hike directly up the mountain. We didn’t take any of the shortcuts, as the switchbacks were still steep enough in my opinion!

The other thing that surprised me is the seeming lack of any kind of trail etiquette on crowded trails. At home, it’s pretty well accepted that when passing on narrow trails, you always give the right of way to the person hiking uphill, and when on flat terrain, you always give the right of way to the person with the bigger pack. Given that we were backpacking uphill, we should have always had the right of way, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that I don’t think a single one of the hundreds of day hikers I passed (who were coming down the trail) gave me the right of way. When you’re already struggling uphill, it gets really annoying when there’s a constant stream of people pushing their way past you. I’m not sure if this is just a cultural difference and I needed to get over it… I could overlook it on most sections of the trail, but it really bothered me at this point.

Eventually we made it to the top and discovered that Coldai had a similar approach to management as Croda da Lago, but I was more accepting of it because Coldai was a very remote hut. Similar to Nuvolau, it didn’t have any roads and was only serviced by a small cable trolley, so I was understand that it would be more challenging to provide services. We were again assigned to a 6-person dorm with only 3 people, but our dormmate was much more friendly. He was visiting from Germany to hike the via ferrata’s and we had a nice chat about our respective trips and the differences between hiking in Europe and Canada.

Suppertime was a bit later at Coldai and the weather was supposed to change the following day, so we decided to hike the 500m up to Lago di Coldai before dinner. It was such a great decision because the conditions at the lake were phenomenal! It was around 6pm, so almost all of the day hikers had left and the lake was pretty empty. You could tell the weather was starting to change for the first time in 6 days because the clouds started to roll in, which made for the most dramatic formations around the mountain peaks. The lake was really beautiful and it ended up being one of my favourite views of the entire trip, so of course, I had to go for one last swim!

We returned to the Rifugio feeling pretty satisfied with the views and the weather over the past week. We enjoyed dinner before heading to bed early before our last full day on the trail. We’d have to make some difficult decisions the following day about what to do about an incoming rainstorm, but more on that in my final post next week!