Ski the Italian Dolomites on a hut-to-hut mountain safari

Rifugio Lagazuoi crowns the mountain. The hut’s darkish timber body stands out towards the pale rock and white snow that had drifted down in a single day. This isn’t simply any mountain. Here within the Dolomites are echoes of endurance; of the boys who fought right here in 1915, throughout the ‘White War’ between Italy and Austria-Hungary, when as much as 12 metres of snow fell, and much harsher circumstances prevailed. Throughout that winter, troopers traversed breakneck ridges, tunnelling into them to detonate explosives, reshaping the mountain — a high-altitude frontline.

It’s early January and exceptionally chilly, intensified by the bone-chilling historical past. I double up my thermals earlier than snowboarding into the Hidden Valley which descends from the hut, down the northwest aspect of two,835m Lagazuoi peak. “You’re standing where people lived, fought and died,” says Tim Hudson, a silver-haired Yorkshireman who co-founded specialist ski firm Inspired Italy. We’ve paused on the aspect of the slope, not in remembrance or ritual, however merely to hear. Tim needs us to note the silence. This is huge, empty terrain.

I’m on a six-day hut-to-hut ski safari via the Dolomites, in northeast Italy. But this isn’t a ski touring journey the place you’d want particular gear and off-piste experience; it’s a wholly piste-accessed journey throughout the lift-accessible Dolomiti Superski space, overnighting in a community of rifugi — wood-built mountain huts. Our 22-litre backpacks maintain little greater than spare layers and nightwear. With rifugi offering toiletries and bedding, we’re free to ski with the lightest of bags. Facilities range from hut to hut, some providing fundamental shared rooms, others outfitted extra like a mountain resort. But all are staffed all through the ski season, and you may rely on a sizzling bathe, breakfast and a night meal.

Our week had begun within the hamlet of Bulla, above the central Val Gardena village of Ortisei within the coronary heart of the Dolomites. Dinner on the primary night time, at Mea Via Slow Farm Hotel, had introduced a feast of roast pork with buckwheat and cauliflower cream, accompanied by südtiroler blauburgunder, a pinot noir from simply down the valley. Once the desk was cleared, Tim had unfold out a map of the Dolomiti Superski space that seemed as complicated because the London Underground and coated roughly thrice its distance: 1,200km of pisted runs. “Don’t come to the Dolomites with a resort mentality,” he’d mentioned, noting the immense terrain. “You’ll miss so much.”

Home comforts

After a day’s warm-up snowboarding on the close by slopes above Val Gardena, a helicopter carried us over the Alpe di Siusi, revealing watersheds, valleys and outdated borders between Austria and Italy. Within two days, we had crossed three provinces and two areas, bringing a shifting mixture of German, Italian and Ladin, a language with roots thought to predate each the others within the space.

From the excessive mountain cross of Passo San Pellegrino, which bridges Italy’s Trentino and Veneto areas, we skied down into the Dolomites hamlet of Falcade. Here we met Gianluca — a driver and head of the native civil defence — who transferred us 20 minutes by highway to Alleghe, a village beneath the Civetta ski space. As we approached, Gianluca slowed to level out Lake Alleghe, shaped 250 years in the past by a landslide that buried seven native villages. On sure days, he instructed us, you’ll be able to nonetheless hear church bells from beneath the water.

I get pleasure from lengthy, quiet, scenic runs within the sunshine beneath Civetta, whose identify means ‘little owl’. This remoted mountain rises sheer above the treeline, a block of pale gray and ochre dolomite rock. Off to the north, reached by ski lifts, lies Rifugio Lagazuoi. At 2,752 metres, it’s the very best rifugio within the Dolomites accessible on skis. Climbing the 30 steps to the doorway, I breathe laborious within the skinny air at this altitude. Inside, the pine-clad bar is stacked with espresso cups and wine glasses. I order a cioccolata calda that’s so thick and velvety it’s extra like custard than a sizzling chocolate. Dinner is tagliatelle with chunky venison ragù, adopted by kaiserschmarrn — shredded Tyrolean pancakes dusted with icing sugar. I eat as clouds swallow the mountains outdoors.

By morning, the terrace doorways open onto peak after peak, catching the primary gentle. Over breakfast, we’re given a heat welcome from Guido Pompanin, whose father constructed the rifugio within the early Sixties. Tall and evenly weathered, with vibrant blue eyes and salt-and-pepper hair, Guido has been working right here for 48 years.

“My father used to say our family were five people against the Dolomites,” he says. “Five pioneers who hauled materials up by foot, built a cable car and believed the valleys could one day be connected. The idea was considered eccentric at the time.” Guido tells us his father, who was “a good climber”, started coming here with an old Austrian soldier. Struck by the panorama, in 1960 he decided to leave his job in Cortina and build a life here. By 1963, the cable car was taking shape, a first piste was being planned and, with it, a bigger idea: “They had in their mind to connect the valleys.”

Over subsequent years, the beginning of what is now Dolomiti Superski — one of the world’s largest ski areas — began to take shape. Today it takes in 12 distinct ski resorts, but it began with small developments like Guido’s. The family were initially granted permission for just one piste. “There were no snow groomers,” he says. “The piste was shaped by people skiing over the snow again and again.”

Leaving Guido’s domain, we ski back down into the Hidden Valley, passing two white alpacas grazing outside the Rifugio Scotoni. At the valley floor, we’re met by a horse-drawn sleigh whose trailing rope allows skiers to be pulled across the flat stretch towards the hamlet of Armentarola. I hop inside and rest my legs, as the snow starts to fall.

After a creamy Bombardino, a hot egg liqueur spiked with brandy and topped with cream, in Armentarola, we ski into the Alta Badia region, in the heart of the Dolomites, to take a series of lifts up towards Marmolada. Known as the ‘Queen of the Dolomites’, this peak is formed of limestone rather than dolomitic rock. “Like a slice of brown bread between two slices of white,” says Tim noting the geological colour distinction. The mountain’s glacier comes into view as the cable car climbs above the surrounding ridgelines — a vast sweep of white running down from the summit of Punta Rocca, the valleys below lost in cloud.

At the platform, Tim uses the skyline to retrace where we’ve skied this week. In the foreground is our first rifugio, Cima Uomo, then the ‘rounded mass’ of Tofana peak with the white ridge of Lagazuoi beneath it. To the north, clouds drift across the Badia Valley. And just visible to the left are the slopes of Alpe di Siusi, where we finished our first day’s skiing.

Unique peaks

But there’s plenty of piste left. From here, we descend La Bellunese, the longest run in the Dolomites at 12km, taking in a slice of glacier at the top. It’s firm and fast, and my speed builds quickly. The following morning, we break a ski safari’s golden rule and do it again, Tim’s way; very first thing, so it’s quiet and we have the glacier to ourselves.

From Marmolada, we join the Sella Ronda, a circuit of pistes around the Sella massif, skiing it clockwise to reach our final rifugio, Ütia Col Pradat at 2,038m. A warming fire smoulders outside, and the air is scented with smoking wood. Draped in sheepskins, we sit around the flames as the Sella turns from chalk to rose to deepening blue. Inside, pine ceilings and a wine cellar set into brick arches are a refined counterpoint to the simplicity of Rifugio Lagazuoi. Dinner is clear broth with a single dumpling, followed by venison with citrus and fennel, then by pasta with burrata.

The final morning dawns clear, with blue skies and soft clouds catching on mountain ridges. We move back toward Val Gardena and ski Saslong, a slope favoured by the men’s World Cup downhill contests. It’s broad and rolling, with terrain that compresses and releases, shifting our speeds like a fairground ride. Back in Bulla, we watch the sun drop below the horizon. The rock pales, then turns the distinctive rosy pink and deep, burning red of a textbook Dolomites sunset. One face appears to catch fire, while another falls into shadow.

“It still amazes me that this landscape was once under the sea,” says Tim. The Dolomites, a range formed millions of years ago in a continental collision that uprooted a coral reef between Africa and Europe, comprises a unique geology that reflects more light than regular limestone. Tim worries about coming ecological transformations; that climate change will mean the glacier and surrounding peaks may not be skiable within 10 years. Of the fewer than 20 rifugi currently open to host skiers overnight, Inspired Italy uses 13. Two less than last year, thanks to closures.

“You’re skiing in the scenery, not on it,” his partner, Louise Anderton had told me before I travelled. And by the end of the week, I see she’s right. I feel I have moved through something, valley to valley, hut to hut — through shifts in language and rock type and culture — and the map that once looked impossibly complex has become familiar.