A good sleep last night so that is a much better start to the day. The weather forecast for the Alta Badia region was low temperatures and good chance of rain during the early afternoon. Plan is to walk to San Cassiano's chairlift Piz Sorega and then take the chairlift up and hike from there. We leave our apartment sometime after 09:30. We are both wearing our rain gear. In my case that means water proof jacket, pants, gloves and hiking boots. Plus, I have our backpack.
Getting on the lift at the bottom. About 22 Euros for both of us for a return ticket. Weird for me to get on a ski lift without my snowboard.
Picture from our lift. You can see the clouds and not much sun as we are going up to an elevation of 2003 metres.
Online picture
Hiking trail map that we use to navigate in Alta Badia region. Lower left is "Piz Sorega" which is where the lift drops us. We will hike to Las Vegas and then take trail #21A to Bioch. From Bioch we will take trail #23 to Pralongià located at 2157 metres (highest point in this ski area).
This is not an illusion! This part of the mountain area is Las Vegas. You can see the white globes on the grass which I guess is their homage to Las Vegas, Nevada? :-)
We start our hike around 10:20 and it is what you could describe as undulating. It is the road used by the mountain dwellers to get up and down the mountain. It is not a hiking trail, but a gravel type road. There are some occasions where we need to get off the 'trail' as there is a vehicle coming our way. There is some light rain as we near Bioch Rifugio and with a light wind it can be chilly. When we get there we decide to keep hiking in order to make it to Pralongià Rifugio which is the highest in elevation. There are a few fellow hikers, but not very many at this time in the morning.
Lots of grass/greenery as this is of course a skiing area. Some trees, but no alpacas? Overcast with some clouds that are so close you can almost reach up and touch them. Too bad with the cloud cover as it totally compromises any views/scenery of the Dolomite peaks that surround us. Even with some uphill grinds it is no way as harsh as yesterday's climb.
Another excellent aspect of these hiking areas is the signage provided just off the trail. It tells you what peaks are in the distance, towns in the valley and other interesting facts.
Looking back towards Bioch which we had hiked from. Check out the cloud cover!
We arrive at Pralongià Rifugio at 11:30. We are considering continuing our hike to a farther Rifugio but as we are discussing this it begins to get very cold and windy. Yikes!! Easy decision now as we enter the Rifugio for an early lunch and get warmed up.
Pralongià Rifugio (online pic)
Menu title page. Check out the additional language at the very top. It is the local language Ladin (ethnic group). The next three languages are Italian, German and then English. This even beats Switzerland for multi-languages.
Menu as you will note provides a number of languages for each selection.
Lana's dish of "Salsiccia con Palate Fritte O Crauti" which is a grilled sausage with fries. She finds the sausage to be too salty so I basically eat it. The fries are very good. On the recommendation of our server Lana orders a hot drink "Apfel Ingwer und Minze" which is hot apple cider, ginger and mint. Yummy!
Randy's dish of "Tris Di Canederli Altoatesini" which are three different dumplings local to Alta Badia. On the left side is speck dumpling, on the bottom is pressed spinach dumpling and in the top right is a chanterelle (mushroom) dumpling. It is always a treat to sample local cuisine and this was a great choice. Lana loves each of the dumplings so we trade her sausage to me and she finishes two of the three dumplings. Funny but Lana found this dish on the menu and recommended I have it as it is more local food and it was delicious. In addition, I order a 1/4 litre of Kerner white wine from a local producer and it was so tasty. Good idea for purchase in a wine tasting.
Although we both were fairly full from the lunch we had to order the "Birnenstrudel" which is a warm pear strudel in filo pastry with a vanilla custard. While it looks beautiful and sounds delicious it did not leave a good impression. Lana says "null-acht-funfsehn" which is a German colloquial term for below average/nothing to get excited about. Been in the fridge too long (?) and the pears were not very flavourful.
As we sat down at our table near the window it began to snow! It came down lightly for at least 45 minutes. Nothing left on the ground. Free wifi provided! As usual, the food came very quickly after we ordered and it was hot and delicious. Why is it in Europe you can get your order so quickly, but in North America it can take forever? Also, in the middle of nowhere the food is so good. My view is the Europeans have valued good food, wine and friends forever and this would make sense. In our North American culture it is only recently that these values have taken hold.
They say "timing is everything". After we sat down within five to ten minutes the restaurant dramatically filled up. Where did all these hikers come from as we hadn't seen them earlier on the trail? There are about three other trails that converge on this Rifugio. Another thing is our server spoke all four languages fluently. Very impressive.
We relaxed and enjoyed our food. It wasn't until just before 13:00 that we were out of the restaurant and starting our hike. One of the great things with the signposts for the trails are they estimate the duration of each leg of the specific route number. While it is not snowing there is a breeze and it is pretty cold. We decide to shorten the remaining hike. Plan is to head for Saraghes Rifugio at 1837 metres so mostly downhill and then take a trail to the top of the chairlift.
Lots of greenery and trees on this part of the mountain.
There are a number of these log houses located on the mountain. We walked to this place and looked inside the glass door and it looked pretty nice. People must own these for a getaway? You can drive your car to most of them.
We do find trail #22 to Saraghes, but when we get there we have a problem. There is no trail connecting it to the top of the chairlift. The map indicates a trail, but it does not exist. So now either walk back up the trail to connect somewhere or head straight down to where we started. We decide to walk down trail #22 to the bottom of the chairlift and then walk to our apartment. We realize that what is depicted on the maps doesn't exactly line up with where the actual trails are on the hill--good grief!!! Mostly downhill hiking the rest of the way. Weather warms up when the sun makes an appearance as we are closer to the bottom. Walking through San Cassiano the sun is more bright and the temperatures warmer. We return to our apartment at 15:10.
Lana checks her cellphone and it confirms we put in 24,000 steps and just over 17 kms of hiking/walking. I figure in terms of walking and hiking we put in about 3 1/2 hours. Lots of fresh air and some scenery. We won't be using our rental car today so another plus to the day.
We figure it is time to do a load of laundry. The apartment building has a room with a washer and dryer. Four (4) Euro each for the wash and dryer. We need 8 Euros in coins. We have 6 Euros. Fortunately Egon is around and has change for a 5 Euro bill. While the washer is cleaning our clothes we FaceTime with our friend Philipp in Wiesbaden. Lana has lucked out as they are showing a Star Wars film on our Satellite tv in German and another German cooking show.
Lana here--on another note, it's the tail-end of mushroom reason here in Europe!! Lots of chanterelles and porcini mushroom dishes on the menu's in restaurants. I love mushrooms--Randy not so much--so I'm thrilled to take advantage of what's left of this year's harvest.
We decided to have a quiet night at home. We finished off our pizza from last night and Lana made her Mache salad. We drank some of the bottle of Muller Thurgeau to pair with our make-do dinner. I had a good chat with our host Egon. It has been another good day for both of us. Lana says her "legs are shot." :-)
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