Sixteen days in the Dolomites. Technically sixteen nights. We spent four nights, from July 10th to July 14th in San Martino di Castrozza. Our day time activities were pretty much the same as before. Hiking, cable cars and amazing views. Since our hotel was in town we were able to walk to the Colverde/Rosetta cable car station which was the top recommendation of the AI for this region.
Reminder, our four bases:
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO
SAN VIGILIO DI MAREBBE
SAN MARTINO DI CASTROZZA
SANTA CRISTINA / VAL GARDENA
In San Martino di Castrozza, for the first time, our hotel was located in town, and not on the edge. We stayed at the Grand Hotel Des Alpes, a historic property with an excellent restaurant. Some of my favorite meals were here.
Rosetta Cable Car
Hike: Cima Rosetta via Rifugio Pedrotti
1.4mi Length
554ft Elevation
Chat GPT suggested visiting the rifugio and hiking along the ridge. There are a number of trails in the area. We were starting to wear out a bit and most of the trails here are not only high altitude but also technical, requiring real mountaineering skills so we decided to do a short hike just to take in the scenery. The trail we found was perfect since it took you to the high point above the cable car station where Bar Ristorante Arrivo Funivia Rosetta is located. Then we walked across the plateau a short distance to Rifugio Rosetta which gives new views and a different perspective on the area.
The trail requires two cable cars. The first one takes you from the town starting at Colverde station up to Funivia Rosetta a Monte. The next is the Rosetta cable car which takes you nearly straight up and ends at the beginning of the trail.
The views are amazing and it was definitely worthy of being the top pick for this area. Once you leave the cable car station the landscape looks like another planet. It’s almost completely rocky but wildflowers were growing everywhere from between the rocks. It was surreal and breathtaking.
Hike: Pian dei Casoni – Venegia Valley
View on AllTrails
8.4mi Length
1,824ft Elevation
This extremely popular trail starts from a very busy parking area. Chrissy and I made the mistake of having a late start this morning and didn’t get to the parking area until after 9:30 and it was packed. We ended up leaving and parking down the road at a lumber depot that was about a half mile away. We later realized that there is another parking area farther into the trail that might not have been full yet. But it was very busy.
Once we got on the trail it was equally busy. Traffic thinned a bit once we got a few miles in but it’s a popular trail especially during the peak summer season. The trail is open to hikers, cyclists and equestrians and we saw all of the above on the trail.
Views of the mountains from near Ristorante Rifugio Capanna Cervino were the most impressive part of the hike. The rifugio was packed but we had carried our own lunch with us and just ate sitting on the grass enjoying the views.
The route that we took was from the AllTrails map that I linked to and in a very rare instance, we got to a spot the map didn’t make sense. It suggested a connection that was not there. So we ended up taking a different path on the way out. It was a little bit sketchy and felt like we were hiking down a waterfall but eventually we reconnected with the original route.
Alpe Tognola
On our third full day with our top picks already being explored we were mostly content, and it was a cloudy overcast day anyway. In the afternoon we decided to take the Tognola cable car up to Alpe Tognola. Views were interspersed with clouds and we didn’t really have anything planned. We just hung out in the small park at the top of the cable car station for a while and later went back down. There’s a kids play area up there with a slide and some other activities too. Probably great for a family. There were some trails up there too but we didn’t really plan to do any and the visibility was quite low anyhow. At this point we were really saving up our energy for the next location, the extremely popular Val Gardena.
