A hike that’s not for the faint of heart, a week of adventure in Italy’s Dolomites is humbling and awe-inspiring

Post Magazine spends a week on the supposedly easiest route through the Dolomites – one with some dizzying drops but which offers some of their finest scenery

Hiking through these mountains we see the ‘kind of beauty that is almost painful to behold, that makes the heart soar but the breath catch’

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A view of Rifugio Coldai, a refuge for hikers in the Dolomites of northern Italy. A hike through the Dolomites involves some dizzying drops, but the reward is views of staggering beauty. Photo: Victoria Burrows

Published: 1:15pm, 27 Apr 2024

The valley plunges before us, lush and speckled with wild flowers. Far below, we can see our rifugio (refuge), a few stone shepherd huts on a grassy ledge above a cliff.

The floor of the valley is somewhere beneath, out of sight.

Across the gorge, a steep mountain rises, with chalky boulders showing between copses of conifers. Wisps of cloud stream from rocks at the summit, white against the blue sky.

It is the kind of beauty that is almost painful to behold, that makes the heart soar but the breath catch. Perhaps it is because time here is etched in aeons and the magnificence forces us to confront our insignificance.

We see giant layers of rock folded over on themselves, bent by immense forces in the Earth’s crust. Photo: Victoria Burrows

Over five days of hiking through the Dolomites of northern Italy, we have seen giant layers of rock folded over on themselves, bent by immense forces in the Earth’s crust.

The Alps were formed when the continental plates of Europe and Africa collided; the mountains we are walking through, part of the Southern Limestone Alps, were the coral reefs of a tropical sea millions of years ago.