Elevation Gained: 250m
Time to Destination: 3 hours
After wrapping up our week at Sonklarhof, we all said goodbye and the four of us made our way to the Dolomites for our four day, three night hut hike. The first challenge, finding parking for our car for those three nights and the start of the hike. Thankfully Martin had done some research and found a bus to take us up to the starting point of the hike. Unfortunately, the parking options near the bus stop apparently fill up before 10am on Sundays and we got there at 1pm. While a little stressful, we had one thing in our favor that gave me confidence that it would all work out: Money. We had plenty of money to solve the problem, which is true to Breuer form in these situations.
Just a few minutes further down the road was Lake Misurina where we were able to find parking at a hotel for a reasonable price and Martin and I were able to relive a moment from our honeymoon.. Which was an unexpected surprise. Turns out Misurina is where I thought the church tower in the middle of the lake was (for reference, I was completely wrong, the correct lake is Lake Resia).. So we went out of our way for nothing. We ended up buying some really nice chamomile hand lotion at the Spar to salvage the drive.
This time around, we bought sandwiches at the Spar to get us through the first day of hiking before we got to the hut later that afternoon.
Fully stocked with water, food and excitement, we headed back to the bus stop and waited a few minutes for the bus to take us up to Refugio Auronzo - the starting point of our hike.
Getting off of the bus was a little disorienting. There were people on the bus heading up just for a few pictures, there were people who were there for just a day hike and then there was us: fully packed and ready for a four day adventure. One of our fellow bus riders seemed confused and even quipped “do you think you have enough supplies?” To which we replied “hopefully we have enough for the four days.” He seemed more than a bit surprised by our response to his snarky remark… he didn’t realize that you could actually spend multiple days out there and had assumed we were just out for a day hike. His snark and surprise quickly turned into awe and possibly a bit of jealousy.
After getting off the bus and finally navigating our way to the trail Alva noted she was hungry and Oskar said he had to go pee. All of which I replied “Guys, we haven’t even left the parking lot”... Which happened to get a few laughs from some hikers who were taking off their shoes at their car and getting ready to drive back down the mountain.
And then we were finally off. We went across a mountain, down a steep ravine, up the other side and finally made it to the hut just before the rains started. It was busier and larger than expected and the hut was packed, but we made it through the first day!
We enjoyed dinner that night with two women from Canada and a family from Belgium (who we saw earlier that day on the trail) and the kids got their first hut hike experience with a co-ed room that slept 16 others in metal bunk beds with just enough space to squeeze between to get into bed.
We were in bed shortly after dinner since we had an early start the next day. Robert, our guide, was meeting us at 8am to guide us up, through and over Paternkofel.
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