Tre Cime di Lavaredo is the postcard the entire Dolomites gets sold on. Three vast stone towers standing shoulder-to-shoulder, impossibly photogenic, impossibly famous. And because they are that famous, the standard way of visiting has been sanded down into something close to a queue with a view.
You parking at Rifugio Auronzo (at €40 a car), or you book a seat on the bus. Either way, slots open just 30 days ahead and sell out fast in peak season. We tried and failed to bag a morning bus or parking slot during our time in Cortina, so bank on planning the entire trip around one booking and hoping the weather gods smile on you on the day. And if you do manage it? You’ll be shuffling round the well-trodden loop with several hundred people doing precisely the same thing at precisely the same pace. It is beautiful. It is also, by Dolomites standards, a bit of a conga line.
There is another way to do it though. It costs €15, involves no bus and no toll road, takes in three stretches of via ferrata instead of one flat path, and gives you the mountains almost to yourself along with a full day of WW1 history most visitors never realise is up there.
It’s a long, hard day. But, it was one of the best days we have had in the Dolomites, and we would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
Skip the Toll Road, Park at Misurina
We left the car at Lake Misurina, which costs a very reasonable €15 for the day, and walked along to Via Monte Piano to start the climb up towards the towers. No booking, no plate registration, no €40. That single decision sets the tone for the whole route: while everyone else is being delivered to the top by road, you are walking in under your own steam, and you feel it in the best possible way. Fair warning, this is where the day’s total of just under 26 km starts adding up, so start early and mean it.
A word of honesty before you feel too smug about avoiding the crowds: the stretch between Auronzo and the start of Via Ferrata De Luca is its own lemming line, because the vast majority of people walk from the bus stop or car park to Rifugio Lavaredo and back, say they’ve ‘done’ Tre Cime, and go home. Your reward for carrying on past them is that they don’t.
Ferrata One: Sentiero Bonacossa
The first stretch of via ferrata for the day comes on the way up towards the Cadini di Misurina, and it is the A graded Sentiero Bonacossa. Full kit is required, and so, we’d add, is a decent helping of nerve. The odd thing about Bonacossa is that some of the unclipped sections are sketchier than the parts where you are actually clipped in, which is not the arrangement your brain would choose given the option. But the reward at the top is immediate and slightly smug: a view better than the one everyone is queuing for at THE Instagram spot, and a WW1 tunnel to explore before most people have even parked.
A Radler at Auronzo
After taking a few photos and marvelling at Cadini di Misurina, we reached the first refuge, Rifugio Auronzo. After around three hours of hiking and climbing, we stopped for the only sensible option: a refreshing Radler and a hot dog each. This is the point where the crowds are thickest, because this is where the road delivers everyone, and it is oddly satisfying to arrive here on foot and then keep walking straight through and out the other side. Beyond Rifugio Lavaredo, the tourist numbers start to thin with every step.
The De Luca Trail: Passportenkopf and Monte Paterno
Beyond Lavaredo, we picked up the De Luca trail, which runs above the main tourist path and immediately feels like a different mountain. Its first section, the Passportensteig, climbs to the peak of Passportenkopf at 2585m, where there are military ruins to explore. From there the trail carries on north and up towards the higher summit of Monte Paterno, or Paternkofel, at 2744m. This is where the day peaks in more than one sense. The upper section, the Via Ferrata De Luca-Innerkofler, not only serves up one of the best views of the three chimneys you will find anywhere on the tourist trail, it also gives you access to the extraordinary WW1 tunnels hidden inside the peak itself.
A word of proper warning here. As well as the full kit you need for the ferrata (and there were a few foolish souls attempting this stretch with no kit at all, which is not a thing to copy), you need a torch. The tunnels are pitch black, no drama, no exceptions, and a phone light will only allow you to see a little. Bring an actual head torch and the mountain rewards you with one of the most atmospheric half hours in the Dolomites: walking the same passages soldiers dug and held over a century ago, with the towers framed in the tunnel mouths.
Finishing at Locatelli
You finish, in the loosest sense of the word, at Rifugio Locatelli, which sits directly opposite the classic view of the three peaks. If you are anything like us, you finish it properly with another Radler and a Bretzel, earned several times over by this point. From Locatelli you can either retrace your steps to Auronzo or complete the full loop past the Langalm restaurant before dropping back down to Lake Misurina and the car.
All told, we covered just under 26 km in around 11 hours. We hit no queues, we left the chatter behind somewhere around the second refuge, and we came away feeling like we had actually met Tre Cime rather than filed past it, WW1 history and all.
Should You Actually Do This?
Honestly? Only if you are equipped and experienced enough to enjoy it rather than endure it. This is not the flat photo loop, and it should not be attempted as though it were. Three A graded via ferrata sections back to back make for a big, committing day, with real exposure and sections where your nerve matters as much as your kit. You need a full via ferrata set (harness, lanyard, helmet), a head torch, proper footwear, food, water, and weather that is on your side. You need a head for heights that does not desert you halfway up something unclipped. Get any of that wrong and this becomes a very long day for the wrong reasons.
But get it right, and this is the Tre Cime worth writing home about. Same iconic towers, none of the queues, and a whole layer of history the coach crowd rolls straight past. The famous loop shows you the postcard. This shows you the mountain.
On the map
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