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Earlier this month I completed the Alta Via 1 in the Dolomites of Northern Italy — a 75 mile trek with over 24,000 feet in elevation gain (and even more in elevation loss) I’ve wanted to do for years. I did it with my brother, who shares the predilection/gene/whatever you want to call it for outdoor ridiculousness, and we managed to get in only one fight (and it was only after I teased him about having dirtier clothes than I did, like a classic older sister).

I’ve done my share of backpacking but trekking the Dolomities does not require lugging all of your survival items on your back. Like so many other places in continental Europe, there’s a robust hut system — more than 1000, I’m not kidding — that offer a wide range of lodging, food, and material comforts. I took a shower every night; I had a big lager after that shower, and then a three-course Italian dinner. For lunch, I ate big Italian sandwiches; my brother, adventurer that he is, once ate a massive plate of gnocchi. For snacks, we usually had whatever special baked good they had made that morning (cakes! tartes! pastries!) or a massive Ritter bar.

You can hike as much or as little as you want and there will be a hut (or refugio, in Italian) to serve your needs — which means that you can get away with carrying very little on your back, which makes all that elevation gain and loss much easier.

I’ve previously hiked the Haute Route in Switzerland (Chamonix to Zermatt, 132 miles) and have hiked extensively in the Cascades of Washington and Oregon and all over NW Wyoming and Montana, including many, many trips to Glacier as both a child and an adult. I can say with confidence that the Dolomites offer the most continuously astonishing landscape I’ve ever seen. It’s like Glacier x Yosemite x the Tetons x the Sisters. It’s fucking wild. And it’s also incredibly accessible, with many different ways to enter and enjoy — and, with the exception of two spots, very un-touristed. This is where Italians and Germans and Austrians go to hang out in the mountains, and there are so many public and semi-private apparatuses in place that make it affordable and (relatively) easy.

Not to do the entire Alta Via, per se, but to hike up to a hut, have lunch or dinner, stay the night, and come home. Almost every village in the Dolomites has a hut (or multiple!) in very close proximity where they can do this, and the proof was in the number of families (many with young children) on the trails and in the huts. Which isn’t to suggest that the train itself is easy: it isn’t. Most of these trails are centuries old; they were used by game and prehistoric hunters and local farmers and waves of soldiers fighting for and against all matter of causes — a solid portion of the refugio system (and the cable cars that service many of them) were put in place during World War I, and the crumbling artifacts of that war surround you during various stages of the hike.

All of which is to say: the trails go straight up and straight down. The few times I encountered the switchback-style of climb I’ve become accustomed to out here in the West, the guideback was careful to call it a donkey trail. But you just go the pace that works for you and rely heavily on hiking poles — which, again, is why I saw everyone from five-year-olds to 75-year-olds navigating the trails.

I didn’t plan on doing a write-up of this trip, but I had enough requests for specifics that it felt useful to put it all in one place — and what is a newsletter for if not to talk at length about your trek sock decisions? As always, absolutely understand if this is not your shit — on Wednesday, we’ll have a more classic Culture Study piece. And if it is, and you want a lot more info on logistics, hut conditions, what I put in that ten pound pack, and what I’d do differently — dive in, the water is fine (and glacial).

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