Sweet Refuge

GUIDO POMPANIN has an enviable office. Owner of the mountaintop guesthouse Rifugio Lagazuoi in Italy’s Dolomites, a mountain group in the northern Italian Alps, Pompanin wakes to panoramic views of some of the most distinctive peaks in the world. “People visit from all over,” he says in a soft, accented voice. “New Zealand, Canada, Asia — and they always say this is the particular view with all of the colors and the rocks.”

By “particular,” Pompanin means knock-your-socks-off gorgeous. Once part of an ancient seabed, the white and gray stone of the Dolomites was thrust skyward eons ago to create colossal rock formations in the shapes of fortresses, spires, and jagged teeth.

Pompanin’s father built Rifugio Lagazuoi in 1965, and Guido, now 50, spent his youth here climbing, skiing, and exploring tunnels dug into the mountains during World War I. Outside on the deck, with the sun rising in a cloudless sky, Pompanin swings an outstretched arm like a compass needle. To the southwest, the glacier-glossed Marmolada, the highest peak in the Dolomites, rises to 10,968 feet; west is the Swiss border, and beyond it the Alps; to the north are the mountains of Austria; and to the southeast rise the domino-like Cinque Torri (five towers). In the northeast sky looms the face of Tofana di Mezzo, its layered shelves sprinkled with snow, like frosting on a cake for a deity. “The ski route begins that way,” says Pompanin, pointing to the north.

In summer, this setting is a paradise for hikers and mountaineers. Come winter, it’s a seemingly endless web of ski slopes, tucked-away villages, and cozy guesthouses called rifugi (from the Italian for “refuge”). For many skiers, vacations are built around overnight stops at rifugi scattered throughout the mountains: All you need to bring is a change of clothes and toiletries. With simple but clean rooms (private or dormitory style), $2.50 showers, hot meals, and plenty of wine, rifugi are a cornerstone of a ski culture that can be summed up as ski in, stay a while and savor, then ski out.

In the Dolomites alone there are more than 100 such guesthouses. And one ski pass, the Dolomiti Superski, provides access to 745 miles of runs through a constellation of ski areas that altogether have 450 lifts. That’s more than any single lift ticket can offer anywhere on the globe, which means you could stay for weeks without ever taking the same run — and spend every night at a new rifugio.

The best place to start a Dolomite ski adventure is Cortina d’Ampezzo. Cortina is Italy’s most chic winter destination, but even so it’s a place where the the ski-boot crowd mixes easily with the well-heeled. Once an isolated village, Cortina was thrust upon the world stage in 1956 when it hosted the Winter Olympics. Today, the city provides easy access to a multitude of ski areas, two of them reached by precarious-looking funiculars running up and out of town, routes sure to ramp up the heart rate of the uninitiated.

Once you’re up above the valley, your options in the Dolomites are boundless. You could spend a week skiing two or three mountains right out of Cortina and be happy. But for many Europeans and visitors from farther afield, the experience is as much about journeying as it is about carving the slopes.

The most famous tour is the Sella Ronda, so named because it circles the Gruppo Sella, one of the crowning massifs of the region. The route goes through places with lyrical names like Sassolungo, Val Badia, Colfosco, and Selva and covers about 25 miles in all — a distance that’s readily achievable for intermediate-level skiers. Most people complete the circuit in a day or less, although it could just as easily be extended into a multi-day affair, depending on the number of side excursions spent exploring new slopes or enjoying cappuccinos at majestically scenic mountainside restaurants and rifugi.

Another tour option — one in which Rifugio Lagazuoi plays a central role both on the map and in history — is the Giro della Grande Guerra, or Great War Tour. When the Italians fought against the Austro- Hungarians between 1915 and 1917, the front line ran directly through this magnificent yet inhospitable landscape.

Mount Lagazuoi is the epitome of tranquillity nowadays, but a little more than 90 years ago, gunfire and explosions echoed through the valley as Austrians and Italians, hiding in tunnels and bunkers built into the top of the mountain, tried to dislodge each other from rocky fortresses. “At times,” says Pompanin, whose grandfather fought with the Austrians, “the Italians and Austrians were living just 100 meters apart.” (The 1919 Treaty of St. Germain bumped the border with Austria some 20 miles to the north, solidifying the Dolomites as undisputed Italian territory.)

The World War I tour circles the front line of the fighting. From Lagazuoi, the day begins by skiing a couple of hundred yards down to a wooden door, surrounded by stone, that leads to an improbable passageway on the edge of the mountain. “The commandos were hiding and sometimes living in there,” says Pompanin. “You can ski right up to the tunnels and go inside.” Light spilling in through gunner windows reveals how surprisingly spacious the tunnels are, which in turn make exploration easy, even in ski boots.

The mega-descent winds nearly 3,000 feet down from the top of Lagazuoi into the next valley, through a mythical landscape of razor-like pinnacles, rock walls, and ice falls. Near the bottom, the cliffencircled Rifugio Scotoni serves up apple strudel and shots of raspberry grappa with liquor-drenched berries.

From Scotoni it’s a short ski to the horses. That’s right — horses. Instead of skate-skiing about half a mile to the lift at Armentarola, you can pay $2.50 to a fellow and have his horses pull you, along with other skiers, the short distance across the valley. Some look a little worried as they hold on to knots on ropes that extend off the back of a coach, but in fact, the trip is entirely gentle — some people hold the rope with one hand while snapping photos with the other.

The next section of the Great War Tour ventures into a vast playground of mostly treeless ski runs that lead you southward toward Marmolada, the famed “Queen of the Dolomites.” A favorite stop is Rifugio Padon in the Padon Pass, where flags from around the world are whipped by the wind and the hilltop guesthouse bustles with sunkissed skiers enjoying spaghetti, polenta, schnitzel, and beer.

Those flags are a reminder that, while technically part of Italy, the close proximity of the Dolomites to Switzerland, Germany, and Austria make them home to a potpourri of traditions and languages. Many locals are fluent in Italian, German, and Ladin, the native tongue spoken in these parts before there was an Austria or Italy. Town names, maps, menus — it seems just about anything that’s written down is multilingual, bolstering the overall impression that this region is a nexus of cultures.

Finishing up the tour, ride the double chair up from Rifugio Fedare and ski down to Rifugio Scoiattoli for the night. Perched beside the imposing Cinque Torri, Scoiattoli’s legendary views include Mount Lagazuoi just to the northwest. The next morning, you could ski down and catch a bus back to Cortina, or head up to Lagazuoi again. From there, head toward Armentarola, but this time ski your way onto the Sella Ronda circuit.

And if you do get to Rifugio Lagazuoi, be sure to ask Guido Pompanin about the local history and some of his favorite ski runs. Standing out on the deck as the sun rises, he’ll be sure to point you in the right direction.

David Wolman has written for a variety of national magazines and newspapers, including Newsweek, Forbes, Business 2.0., and the Los Angeles Times. His latest book is Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling.