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Passo Sella & Selva, Italy August 2023

High Season in the Dolomites
The last 2 weeks of August in Italy, Ferragosto, are the peak of the summer high season, but we felt a smaller shift in the ambiance created by the changing clientele than we’d expected: the anticipated crescendo of visitors flattened. Interestingly, by the close of August, our Selva hostess said tourist numbers were significantly down in the area, well below last year, unlike elsewhere in Europe. Together, we could only surmise it was a rebound effect after the exceptionally busy season following Italy’s late reopening in 2022 due to covid.

Despite the overall lower tourist numbers, our village, Selva, received more than its usual share of the haughty, peak season crowd. Ortisei, the more popular and more prestigious village at the lower end of our valley, was normally where this set congregated, but a larger percentage of them drifted up valley to Selva this year than in the past.

Our Selva hostess invited us to the Ferragosto celebration at her hotel for the first time.

The high season shift resulted in a much larger percentage of Italian tourists in town and on the trails and of those, there were more people who were posing, who had a practiced blank look of superiority on their faces. Earlier in the season, the affects of the more diverse tourist crowds were largely devoid of posturing for others and instead reflected an inward focus: tired hikers dragging to their lodging; gleeful shoppers carrying their trophy, flat-wrapped strudel in the palm of their open hand; or young parents suddenly stopping in the middle of the path to tend to their baby or a too-big child in a stroller.

The number of cigarette butts on the village cobblestones shot up, as did the popularity of having 3 little dogs tangling their leashes and getting underfoot. The number of folks donning fashion-versions of traditional mountain attire, like Lederhosen, increased, as did fresh-out-of-the-box mountaineering boots for the men and platform sandals for the women. Mid-calf, brown suede fashion boots were suddenly being paraded as well as an unfamiliar abundance of white resort wear like you’d expect to see at the beach. The percentage of hikers ‘living close to the earth’ was markedly down in late August compared with the previous weeks and months in our village.

The distinctive default walking styles of the new mix of fellow tourists created challenges for us. Suddenly, we were navigating these trios of little dogs on leashes attached to oblivious owners, plus colliding with large clusters of non-hiker Italians swarming the lower approach trails. We often marveled that as few as 3 of these happy walkers could totally occupy a trail or road of any width but, if there were 5 or 6 in their group, it became baffling as to how to get around them on our way to the steep trails.

Some Italian walkers have a snail’s pace that appears to have been handed down through the generations, one that entails almost as much side-to-side movement as forward motion. As if on a cue unrecognized by us, one or more would suddenly stop in their tracks, pivot towards another, and continue the conversation oblivious to other walkers piling up behind them. A meandering small group could easily spread 10’ front to back and 6’ or more from side to side. One of these impromptu stops could move through the group like a wave until they all ground to a halt.

Lunch time at a mid-way Rifugio on a popular Passo Sella hike.

We were always amazed and frustrated by the confusion these unpredictable clusters made for us and others. The question “How do they get anywhere?” often passed through our lips but, of course, we were misguided. Clearly for them, unlike us, getting somewhere wasn’t the point, it was the congenial amble that was the objective. They didn’t work up a sweat or get out of breath and usually didn’t admire the scenery: it was classic Italian la passagiata: a stroll to reinforce a sense of belonging. We, however, were accustomed to the charming la passagiata tradition as being an evening event in a city’s pedestrian district and found it jarring to encounter their erratic behavior in the morning.

Unsolicited, both our Moldovan hostess and later, Bill’s via ferrata guide, commented upon how much more they preferred the winter clientele in the mountains to the the summer crowd. They both struggled to find the English words to explain the differences, but the theme was that the summer guests were more demanding, more presumptuous than the skiers, who were more outgoing, easier to get along with, and better natured. We felt privileged that they would share such opinions with us, and their labored descriptions of the seasonal differences among the guests made sense to us. Their impressions of the winter crowd were more like what we experienced and loved in our fellow tourists before the 2008 financial crisis when the vast majority of the summer season visitors were dedicated German and Austrian outdoors people.

Ten years of international bike touring left me with an obsession to note the country code on car license plates, a practice I hadn’t found a reason to stop. It was always fascinating to watch the shift in density of out-of-country plates while we migrated through a country, wherever we were. The uptick in tourism post-covid was of course bringing more visitors to the Dolomites from farther away. It was probably the first year I’d seen plates from Greece in the mountains; there were definitely more people in their own cars from the Scandinavian countries; and it was the first time I’d spotted plates from Monaco this far from their home.

We resorted to buying an air purifier to survive the toxic-air days in the mountains.

The prize, however, was spotting the tiny “BY” on 2 motorcycle plates while we and they were carving the tight corner on a switchback at a pass. I was clueless as to the country of origin and quickly looked again to be sure. Once off my bike and online, I had the answer: Belarus. Oh, the stories that they must have been able to tell from their grand tour! I also imagined they experienced some face-to-face push-back because of the tight Belarusian affiliation with Russia, especially since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Our Russian-speaking, Moldovan hostess had also mentioned that the influx of Russian guests several years ago had evaporated since the war, except for one diplomatic couple.

Bill’s mountain guide volunteered that the huge surge in popularity of easy-to-drive camping vans during covid was continuing on with the same enthusiasm, like we’d observed in the US, and it was creating a huge garbage problem on the mountain roads. In our opinion, Italians seemed to consider littering a birthright and the paucity of public toilets didn’t help matters. Apparently too many of these camping travelers readily dropped all of their leavings at their impromptu, roadside campsites. One strip of mini vans lined up on a 2-lane highway overnight near a scenic pass were about half Italian and a half a mix of other countries, especially Germany and Spain.

Going In Circles
Our summer in the Dolomites was defined by hiking in circles, but what lovely circles they were! The early season uptick in regional tourism deterred us from competing for space on the local buses for the half hour rides to other venues, so we looped around again and again locally. We happily converted the time we would have spent waiting for, and sitting in transportation, into more hours on the trails for our ambitious reconditioning programs.

Temporary waterfalls during a downpour at Passo Sella.

Some days, my loops were very tight, like doing 5 out-and-back walks with 2 of them being on the same path, to log conditioning miles while staying close to home should I have another sudden mobility shut-down. By the middle of August, I increased my permissible distance out from our home base from 1 hour to 2 hours. Increasing my range also allowed me to challenge my healing body with more elevation gain and have a welcome change in scenery. When we pushed ourselves to do 20-mile (32 km) hikes, which simulated Grand Canyon mileage challenges, we luxuriated in an hour of R&R with lunch in our apartment, which made the feat barely possible for me, though I always limped the last few miles.

Bill had no such need for safety nets, though he too enjoyed the hour break in the comfort of our cool tourist apartment on our longest days. Other days, he was untethered by me and made all-day loops to favorite peaks. I longed to accompany him on grander hikes and the newly opened via ferrata but I was committed to pushing my endurance without putting my still-recovering body in precarious situations, so we went our separate ways on most days like we’d been doing all year.

Playing the Edges
A favorite, borrowed, body-centric concept is “playing the edges”. It is when we are at our edge mentally or physically that we experience the most rapid growth but, with both, it’s important not to go over the edge, only up to it. Being at one’s edge can be a grand and sometimes exhilarating place, but going beyond the edge risks irreversible damage to the mind or the body. For decades, I’ve had enough self-awareness, reverence for safety, and good luck that my edges are places I can reliably explore, and I played there almost daily since I began reconditioning from my back injury in December.

Pushing ourselves to hike 50 miles (80 km) a week, instead of our usual 40 miles (64 km), to make up for lost training the first 3 months of the year, repeatedly pushed us both to our edges. In August, we accelerated our training intensity by increasing our longest weekly hike from 15 miles to 20 and then added a ‘next day’ hike of over 10 miles, which we increased by 2 miles each week for several weeks. The strategy was a calculated risk, one to put us on a growing edge each week. This particular training ritual was in preparation for the Rim-2-Rim-2-Rim event in the Grand Canyon in October. The hope was to flush out hidden problems while they were minor, and it worked.

Putting our new hooks to good use for drying our rain gear.

In mid-June, before we intensified our training, Bill had a glitch around his right knee when he initiated a steep ascent at his turn around point on an all-day hike alone. It was a tense few minutes while he stretched his inner thigh muscle and massaged around the knee joint until he could again weight-bear and proceeded to walk out without a further problem. Almost exactly 2 months later, on the last mile of completing 36 miles (58 km) in 2 days, he cut-short the cool down walk and limped home. After an hour of online reading and studying our 3D anatomy app, he concluded that precisely the same muscle, the Gracilis, was involved in both episodes. Bingo! A big payoff for working at his edge: he could no longer dodge that muscle’s complaint as a one-off but had to push it up to “Project Mode” to eliminate it as a future vulnerability.

A few miles earlier on the same 16-mile hike, I too found a ‘gift’ on my edge. My back and torso muscles had been complaining the last several miles but, unlike with Bill’s knee, I was able to press-on, hoping to learn precisely what the source of the problem was and how to tend to it while it was happening. What I learned that day on the last mile was that there was no fix, no intervention, other than rest. I had a half mile to go and had to urgently sit on a bench for 5 minutes; I couldn’t go on. My legs still had more miles in them, but presumably, my core muscles were shot.

Bill & his German companion on a guided via ferrata.

Reading online that evening didn’t shed any light on a specific muscle issue but during a short walk on the grit bike path the next morning, I couldn’t track a straight line. My tired core muscles could hardly hold me upright. I wobbled home and felt out of sorts all day. On my second recovery day, I felt exuberant and joyous for about 45 minutes of strolling and then my body was done; I was disproportionately tired and again struggled home. I had pushed myself to a new edge, an edge where I clearly needed to rest, and not just for an hour. I immediately changed my training schedule for the remainder of the week to allow for deeper rest and hoped it would be enough.

Recognizing the need for more rest didn’t however mean couch time. Since being recreational joggers in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, we’ve employed the theory of “relative rest” in which we do light exercise instead of being sedentary. The concept includes doing the same motions with less intensity and less duration, so the overworked muscles get stimulated, and the muscles clear post-exercise toxins rather than having their waste products pool. For me in Selva, that translated to a strolling pace on the relatively flat walking paths for up to 3 miles, both in the morning and afternoon.

Trophies
We each left the Dolomites with personal trophies. Bill’s trophy-find was recognizing and enjoying how his personal cosmology had evolved, centering around his relationship to time. Lifelong habits of procrastination had left him in a contentious relationship with time. Initiating action often resulted in colliding with distracting, undone tasks, which bogged him down.

This summer, he gradually migrated to a position in which he brought his image of the future to him, examined it, and made adjustments to what he was doing in the present to accommodate the future. Suddenly, the ease with which he moved forward into the world skyrocketed, as did his general contentment and clarity about his nexts steps to be taken. It was a change that had been in the works for months that suddenly snapped into place in late August.

My trophy for the summer was phenomenally improving my back/buttock function. Unfortunately, they didn’t arrive at “normal” and baffling, unidentified improvements still needed to be made but, given I could barely walk at the beginning of the New Year, I was thrilled. Over the summer, I pushed as hard as I dared while pursued ongoing rehab exercises and activities that transitioned into reconditioning in August.

The view from near the top of the new via ferrata.

For the first time ever, our EU rules-allowed 3 months overseas was entirely spent in the Dolomites, with 2 months being in Selva. Like we often do, our finale week was at 7,000’ Passo Sella in a pricy, casually elegant, small hotel we love. It’s our extravagance for the year. Ironically though, because of my food intolerances, we eat our own cold meals of dehydrated foods twice a day for the week. We sort of camp in a sweet hotel with a tiny mini frig in our room. It’s a silly compromise, but we’ll do it again because we love the location right at the pass.

Home, But Not for Long
Our visits home in September are always measured in days, not weeks. Getting the most out of the summer season in the Italian Dolomites and having a few weeks in the Grand Canyon before the N Rim closes to hikers in October, puts the squeeze on us.

Because of my orthopedic issues this summer, we largely hiked separately, and once at home, we also had different journeys. The day we left the Dolomites, my buttock/back issues abruptly intensified and severely impaired me for our 11-day stay at home. Once again, without knowing why, I was reduced to hobbling instead of walking.

My days in the NW were dominated by driving our monster truck in and out of Portland to 9 appointments while Bill’s days were home-centric. He updated our condo’s thermostat with a Google Nest we could control remotely; adjusted a pair of closet doors so they could actually be opened over the carpet installed 2 years ago; fixed shower faucet problems; arranged to have our door lock changed; and greeted a workman doing a building repair in the ceiling.

Whoosh! And then we were gone again, pulling our trailer after less than 2 weeks at home. It would be our familiar itinerary with 6 weeks in the Flagstaff/Grand Canyon area and 3 months in Palm Springs dominating the first 5 months of the get-away.