Day 40 - Pieve di Cadore to Misurina - Oh The Places You'll Go - 2025

May 20, 2025

Day 40 - Pieve di Cadore to Misurina

Levi’s Birthday!

Another short post for a short day.

Our original plan, launched way back in February, was to cycle up to Lake Misurina, the closest ‘launch pad’ for the iconic Tre Cime hikes, and take a day off to do just that.

Several other CB’ers have done the same, notably Susan Carpenter in September 2021, and that inspired us to try to do the same.

Misurina sits at an elevation of 1775 m and the main trails around the Tre Cime are around 2200 -2400 m. We live in a mountain town so we knew we were going to be pushing the seasonal envelope. Note that Susan’s post is from September, prime hiking month, whereas our post would be from May - often prime ‘post-holing’ month. When we were planning this back in the winter, this region of the Alps was having a low snow pack winter. That changed in April and it’s been snowing quite a bit at altitude (i.e above 2000 m) and raining below that. Web cams are showing snow at the Tre cime trail head and it was raining hard this evening at Misurina, with temperatures in single digits. The forecast for tomorrow is more or less the same.

So, barring a miracle, our original plan will be a complete wash out. Notwithstanding that, today’s ride up to Misurina was quite nice. The first 20 km’s out of Pieve di Cadore was on a mixture of bike trails and quite side roads (all good) and the slightly too busy SS51 highway. Once we reached Auronzo di Cadore on Lago di Santa Catarina and the SR48 highway, the traffic dropped right off and it was a very good ride for the remaining ~30 km’s to Misurina. The views were limited, given the low cloud cover, but there were glimpses of what this place would be like on a bluebird day. Unfortunately, that wasn’t today (or likely to be tomorrow either).Oh, there was also that little bit of 990 m of climbing to be done too.

Fortunately the rain held off until we were literally wheeling our bikes into the underground parking garage of the only hotel currently open at the lake - the Grand Hotel Misurina. Wes Anderson might have had this place in mind when he directed ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, more on this later.

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Leaving Pieve di Cadore. Nice place plastered VERY high up on a mountainside!

Our apartment was just behind the church steeple

They still have a little bit of real estate to develop above that large yellow building

Quite cool …. Tubes that are focused on different peaks, however some pruning needs to be done on a few downstream bushes.

Quite a big dam just below Pieve di Cadore.

…. And she’s off. Notwithstanding the considerable net elevation gain we would have over the day, we started with a nice several km long downhill!

Just some old stuff on the side streets of even older villages

Leaving Auronzo Di Cadore and starting the long climb. First real glimpses of the heart of the Dolomites … and the ominous dark clouds.

About 1/3 of the way up the climb. Narrow valley, big peaks and still dark clouds

Looking back, some peaks peeking out from the clouds … and snow around the 2000 m mark.

Now about 2/3 up the climb (distance wise … not elevation) and the cloud ceiling has lifted a bit giving us a better view of the impressive mountains

Impressive views even with the low clouds

Now the fun starts, This was after 20 of the 25 km’s we had to climb, but 400 m of the 990 m of elevation gain was left to do in the last 5 km!

Climbing done, now it’s just a km to the end of the lake and our hotel. No rain so far!!!

Lake Misurina from our hotel room. Pretty and pretty small, only about 650 m in length. Fairly quiet on a rainy day in May

Bikes stowed in the ski room in the underground parking garage. It started raining as we wheeled them in.

SOTD

Give me One Reason by Tracy Chapman

‘Give me one reason to stay here and I’ll turn right back around’

Tomorrow’s forecast is more of the same and given the snow cover where we wanted to hike, spending another day here just isn’t in the cards. A not insignificant factor is that the hotel is not that great a place to hang out. It’s just ok to sleep and eat, but we can’t see a reason to stay here one more day so we’re bugging out to Brunico tomorrow - two Messner museums to see there, and a little bit more to do in the town when it’s raining.

Good night from Misurina. Shame about the weather.

Today's ride: 46 km (29 miles)
Total: 1,941 km (1,205 miles)

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Karin KaarsooAndrew seems to like Brunico. The pizza maybe?
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3 weeks ago

Karin KaarsooTo Karin KaarsooOr just a nice day trip from Obertilliach maybe.
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3 weeks ago

Kirsten KaarsooTo Karin KaarsooI know he liked the pizza to Toblach. We had a detour around there today.
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3 weeks ago

Kirsten KaarsooTo Karin KaarsooBrunico also has two Messner museums which we are going to check out in the next couple days.
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3 weeks ago

Glenna JefferiesThis area looks fantastic, we might have to look into it for a future October trip :).
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3 weeks ago

Kirsten KaarsooTo Glenna JefferiesI think you would really enjoy it. There are so many rides around. We were here in the fall 2019 and the colours were outstanding.
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3 weeks ago