Palaronda Trek

The day starts in the village where one of the first alpine schools of the Alps once opened its doors, and it does not stay gentle for long: path 701 climbs through pine forest to Colverde, and from there the walls of the Pala group close in. You reach the plateau in the open, rock on three sides, before the hut appears on its western edge. With energy to spare, the twenty-minute detour to Cima Rosetta is worth every step: from the cross on its summit the whole valley you just left lies below, and the high plateau stretches eastward, a stone landscape that at first glance seems impossible. Overnight at Rifugio Rosetta, where dinner is served while the evening light turns the towers pink.

The plateau day, with the strangest landscape of the trek. From the hut the path runs east over stone: fifty square kilometres of bare dolomite, waves of rock frozen solid, where nothing grows and the wind does as it pleases. Halfway you reach the Fradusta glacier, the dying remnant of an ice sheet that once covered the plateau, and whoever wants more can climb Cima Fradusta, just under three thousand metres, with a view across the entire Pale. The descent into the upper Val Pradidali is the switch to the other face of the mountains: suddenly grass, streams and pines again, and the hut sits against the towers at the head of the valley.

The descent day, with the biggest drop of the trek and the best theatre. The path leaves the hut over rock steps, then follows a panoramic ledge along pale stone faces where waterfalls appear after rain and the towers of Sass Maor and Cima Canali stand at eye level for a while. Little by little the valley opens: the woods of Val Canali take over, streams cross the path, and the air starts to smell of grass instead of stone. The Rifugio Treviso lies at the end on a green shelf, run by the same family for twenty years, and its terrace looks straight up at the wall of Cima Canali.

The closing day asks for one long climb, and pays it back twice. Through the wide Coro valley the path rises for hours on end, steadily, with the walls of the southern Pale sliding past, until the Passo Canali opens at the eastern edge of the plateau. From the pass the view runs all the way around: the whole circuit you walked, the deep valleys of Primiero below and, on clear days, the chain of the Marmolada in the distance. From here it is an easy walk across the plateau back to Rifugio Rosetta, and the cable car carries you down to San Martino, through the pine forest where it all began.