Two walks are already planned.
Our first is a beautiful seven-mile out-and-back walk through a valley in Val Gardena. It gives us a chance to see how everyone walks—their pace, fitness, and confidence on the trail—and helps us choose the right walks for the days ahead.
But don’t mistake it for merely a warm-up. It’s a wonderful mountain walk in its own right, and more than a few guests have told us it was their favorite walk of the entire tour.
Another takes us through the Cinque Torri—Five Towers—area, where we’ll explore the trenches and front lines of World War I and watch the rock climbers.
Beyond those two walks, we don’t know exactly—not until we see you walk! If you’ve traveled with us before, we may already have a pretty good idea.
What we can tell you is that most of our remaining walks will be chosen from dozens of favorites in the spectacular, quieter corners of Alta Badia. We also have a handful of tried-and-true walks that work beautifully for almost every group.
The best ones for your particular group will depend on how everyone walks, the weather, current trail conditions, and where the crowds are.
The Dolomites have an extraordinary network of interconnected trails, cable cars and chairlifts—like a huge spider’s web. We can start on one trail, change direction at an intersection, take a lift higher into the mountains, follow another trail into a different valley, or modify the day as we go.
That’s one reason it’s nearly impossible—and rather pointless—for us to tell you months beforehand exactly which trails we’ll walk.
I’ll often decide that day’s walk in the morning. I’ll wake up, have a coffee, look at the mountains and the weather, think about the people I’m walking with, and decide what I believe is the Right Path for us that day.
Why say we’re going to walk a particular trail on Wednesday when the weather might be better in another valley—or when somewhere else may be more enjoyable for that particular group?
After 18 seasons in the Dolomites, Gary has plenty of choices up his sleeve.
The goal isn’t to follow an itinerary. It’s to choose the best walk for the people and the mountains on that particular day.