Mellow Expeditions - @aaron_pf

This week we spoke to @aaron_pf who told us about his spontaneous trip to Northern Italy. Nothing beats a spontaneous trip, especially to somewhere as scenic as Italy. Here’s what he had to say..

An impromptu trip using up the last of my holiday for the year was going to take me and @melad76m somewhere within the uk, but on first look at planning decided we’d get into europe.  After a bit of back and forth with multiple places and checking flight times it worked out that heading to bergamo was perfect with the time we had to work with. So the dolomites were on the cards, booked a hire car, and airbnb so we were set.

The first day we ended up leaving searching shops local to where we stayed in order to get charging adapters, then travelling up via trento for lunch to Gudon where we got settled in and began our plans for the following days hike. Day done.

Seceda. Underestimating the amounts of snow they had already had at the start of december, we set out on a hike. Getting the cable car up to the plateau and walking on from there, we soon realised that snowshoes (or better yet ski’s) would have been a wiser choice. But getting stuck in nonetheless, we moved on and worked our way down for some deserved apple strudel at Troier Hutte. Time to head back up to catch the cable car down, we chose a closed ski run to make our way up as the more compact snow allowed us to be faster. This lead us however to the edge of the main slope, again, compact snow, great. The slope angle in areas was pretty extreme, and quite a struggle, but we agreed still probably better than trying to work up through unknown depths of snow. Up in time to catch the sun setting over the rest of the alps on the horizon and it’s was back to plan for tomorrow.

Val Gardena. After some deliberation over Tre Cime and the thought of not doing the full circular justice, we opted for something closer to where we were staying. Catching the dantercepies cable car up the slopes a lot later than we’d have anticipated, we were excited for what we’d find. Planning a run to Jimmy Hutte for lunch then up to Furcela De Cir in hope of getting a view over to the other valley. Despite knowing better the conditions we would be hitting we still hadn’t left ourselves enough time to hit the top and get back for the last cable cars down. During our descent though, the sun set behind Sassolungo which dropped the valley into a level of darkness and increasingly bitter cold setting in fast, so a scurry back to the warm and we were down for some truffle pasta in the evening at Sal Feur.

Molveno. Our final day consisted of checking out and making our way back down towards Bergamo for the flight home. Making a full day of it we had a couple of ideas but having seen that the molveno cable only opened that day we thought we’d have to. Very glad we were when we arrived as the place was beautiful. Much easier on the legs our plan was too as we head up to the Rifugio La Montanara for a pit stop lunch, before getting off on our way for our second stop somewhere on the shore of lake garda.

Overall a well worthwhile trip, we timed everything we needed to almost to perfection although cost each of ourselves some more money with a couple of avoidable things. Definitely a place we both want to visit again when the time allows.