From dusk till dawn in Trentino
In Spring 2017 we were invited to go and explore Trentino, Italy together with Samuel and Hildengunn for a nice ski and adventure trip. None of us had ever been in that area, so it was really nice to go and have this opportunity.
Our first destination was Cavalese. My arrival there was a few hours earlier, so I was able to go and do some sightseeing around in this gorgeous village. Almost every town around here are surrounded by mountains, which makes it very very nice. Later that evening when Samuel arrived, we were taken to a nice pizzeria in the centre. Italian food and the eating culture is just marvelous. We got to enjoy that since day one. Although we actually knew that already! On our first dinner I even got to try an amazing Michelin restaurant dish due to my allergies as they brought my food from the next door Michelin restaurant.
As we were in the alps and it was still winter time, so what would an evening be without a spa. Luckily all the hotels we were at had their own spas. Going to a spa became our daily routine. No wonder since it felt amazing after our long days of adventuring and we were here to enjoy the full experience anyways.
We didn’t come here just to enjoy the amazing food and other nice city activities. There are mountains and ski hills everywhere, so we needed get some action on the slopes for sure. Our first full day we went to a ski hill called Bellamonte, where we enjoyed the slopes and to make it even a better experience we had a local lunch up on the hill. Funny thing is that it was a buffet and me and Samuel ate way too much as the food was amazing, so our snowboarding was over for the day. As we were returning our rental equipment we saw that there was an amazing looking luge run. They also had luges for rent, so we needed to go and give it a try! I think we’ve never laughed so much that we were laughing while riding.
Hildengunn finally joined us for the rest of the trip and we got to go for a nice hike in Val Di Fassa, where we moved from Cavalese. We took a lift up to the ski hill and made our way to a nice mountain hut by walking. The weather was amazing and it was a perfect time to enjoy a nice cup of coffee. We were really slow as we were taking photos on the way once in a while. We tried to be fast as we wanted to take a gondola to an amazing lookout place before it closed for the day. We made it just in time and got some nice photos from the amazing mountain top.
We had few days of nice guided snowshoe/mountain adventures. The first hike was to visit Malga Canvere where on the way our guide showed us all these interesting things about the local nature and surroundings. The area there is just amazing and the weather was incredible that day! Our other hike in San Martino wasn’t as lucky as we experienced a huge snowstorm. Despite the weather we still had fun and made the most out of it! Later in San Martino we took a cable car to Altopiano delle Pale di San Martino which would’ve offered an amazing view over the valley. This time we were not that lucky, but I guess we need to come back for that!
Our week went by so fast. We definitely got to see a lot, but there’s so many places I really want to see and experience again.
We highly recommend making your way there and experience the Italian side of the Alps.
Our trip was made together with:
https://trentinolife.visittrentino.info/en/winter-l1
Destinations:
http://www.visitfiemme.it/en/winter
Hiking the W-Trek in Torres del Paine, Patagonia
Traveling to South America had been a dream of mine for many many years. A little bit over a year ago me and my trusted adventure friends Hannes, Eeva and Daniel got serious about this idea to go and hike the W-trek in Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia. It took quite a while to actually get things sorted out and decide a good time to go. We needed to get our busy schedules match and pick a good time so the fall colors would be in full action.
Getting there is not the easiest thing in the world and our last minute rental car cancellation due to no border crossing with this company gave us few extra bumps for the preparation. Me and Eeva flew from Finland and met up with Daniel in Madrid airport to catch the flight together to Santiago and then Punta Arenas. Flights went well and we arrived in Chile and took a bus to our first accommodation in Puerto Natales after about a 3 hour bus ride. Hannes was waiting us there as he had been traveling around the area for a week after his trip to the Antarctica.
We had few days to prepare before heading to the national park and we needed to gather all the food and other missing equipment, which turned out to be a quite challenging task as it was Easter. Luckily at the end we had all things collected and were able to head out for our 6 days adventure in the park.
The trek was super nice with amazing views that kept you going although the hike was quite hard from time to time. We were camping the whole trip in our tents so we were carrying all the camp gear needed and food for the whole time. We got were really lucky with the weather and it only rained a little bit twice or so. We actually ended up sleeping one night in a cabin on the way as the wind got over 40m/s for the night. I'm very sure our nice Fjällräven Dome tent could've taken the beating, but sleep quality would've suffered for sure and Daniel's tent couldn't take it as he had some competitor tent in use... HAHA! But yeah, this kind of hiking is not the best place to have lack of sleep, so we made a common decision to spend the night in a nice and warm cabin.
The hike went well until the last two days as my knee was kind of feeling it and it got really painful to make the last part of the hike. Eeva had also been having issues with her back. We made our way to the Dome Hotel where we had a nice relaxing night with hot showers before heading out from the park.
After hiking in Torres del Paine, it was time to pick up a rental car from Puerto Natales and drive up to El Chalten in Argentina for some hiking around Mt. Fitz Roy. We were still kind of feeling the hike from Chile and couldn't do all the hikes we had planned. We were happy to make it to the Cerro Torre for a night hike dispite the painful trekking.
Enjoy the photos below!
