Tre Cime di Lavaredo Day Trip From Cortina

Getting there is the hard part

Everything about this day is decided before you start walking. The toll road up from Misurina takes €30 per car and closes when the nine-hundred-space lot at Rifugio Auronzo is full — which, on a July or August morning, has meant before half past eight for three seasons now.

You've got three options: leave Cortina by seven, take the Cortina Express shuttle, or walk up from Lago di Antorno and add six hundred metres of forest before the good bit starts. I've done all three. The first two are better.

The loop in numbers

Just under ten kilometres, about 410 metres of cumulative climb, three and a half to four and a half hours depending on how often you stop. It's a walk, not a climb — but at 2,300 metres with wind coming over the saddles, it feels longer than the profile suggests.

Anti-clockwise, and why

Take it anti-clockwise. From Auronzo the path contours easily to Rifugio Lavaredo, then climbs to the Forcella Lavaredo saddle where the north faces finally swing into view. Doing it this way, the mountain reveals itself; go the other way and you see the best of it in the first twenty minutes and spend the rest walking away.

From the saddle it's an easy traverse to Locatelli, then a long, exposed circuit round the back of the group with the Cadini spires appearing to the south. The descent below the saddle is loose in one short section — the only part where I'd want poles.

The north faces

Rifugio Locatelli is the frame you came for, and yes, there will be forty people making it at the same time. Walk five minutes past the hut onto the small rise beyond and the crowd thins immediately. The light on the north walls is best mid-to-late afternoon, which conveniently is when the morning coach traffic has gone home.

Wind, weather and the last shuttle

The plateau is exposed and windy even in August; I've been cold up there in shorts weather down in Cortina. The road opens roughly from late May to late October depending on snow, and the last shuttle down leaves Auronzo at 18:15 in season.

There's no shelter on the far side of the loop between Locatelli and Auronzo. If a storm is building, cut back over Forcella Lavaredo rather than committing to the full circuit.

The day I got the timing right

The best version of this day I've had started late, not early: I left Cortina at two, parked at four when the lot had emptied out, and walked the loop in evening light with maybe thirty people on the whole circuit. Sunset on the north walls, headtorch for the last twenty minutes, home by nine. Not for everyone, but it beat every morning attempt.

Working around the crowd

The three peaks from Locatelli is the picture, and it's been taken a million times. What hasn't is the Cadini group from the southern arc of the loop in low sun — most people have already left by then. Bring something long; the classic Cadini viewpoint compresses beautifully.

Doing less, or doing it differently

If the full loop is too much, the out-and-back to Rifugio Lavaredo is two and a half kilometres each way, almost flat, and still gives you the peaks head-on. Sleeping at Locatelli is the other move — book on refuges.io months ahead, and you get the walls to yourself at dawn.

Why the north walls are the real prize

The Tre Cime's south sides, visible from the toll road, are relatively gentle scree slopes; it's the sheer 500-metre north faces, hidden from the car park and only revealed at Forcella Lavaredo, that made this massif famous among 1930s alpinists and still define the postcard view from Locatelli.