Hiking around Monte Faloria

The idea for today is to do a bit of warm up and say hi to the region again. :-)

We walking in town, past the gondola station, along a rails-to-trails conversion for a while, and then up, up on some road, past the golf course, further on the road, past a restaurant, and then onto the trail. This piece of the Alt Via Dolimiti 3 takes us around the corner and then efficiently up, up, up through the Val Orita. We stop towards the top to have a food break and enjoy the views before finishing the last bit of ascent and emerging next to the radio towers above the Rif. Faloria. Here we continue along the ridge and up a bit more, past the Rif. Tondi, then further along the ridge and down to the Forcella Faloria. From the ridge we have a great view of the crazy looking path which leads across the scree towards the Ponta Negra. There are a number of folks traversing this, but it's not on the program for today (need more time in the area before doing something like that).

Instead we stay on the Alta Via 3 and continue to traverse the slope towards the Forcella Marculoira, taking a food break along the way and enjoying the views (it's so nice to be in the Dolomites!). When we hit the spot we turned down last year, we descend to the next trail down and then follow that back to the gondola station at Rif. Faloria. From here we follow the scenic path with 5 benches around to the "Cliffhanger Hut". This is at the top of the trail which leads us down, down, down, into the valley. The first bit of this is unpleasantly steep, but we get used to it and/or it gets a bit less steep and we can enjoy the efficient descent. Once lower and back in the woods we turn off onto another trail which takes us to a road which takes us back to the rails-to-trails conversion which we follow back to the gondola station.

A nice start and warm up for what's to come in the days ahead!

Stats: 7:00, 19.4 km, ~1500m up and down