MAKING TRACKS : SKIING THE DOLOMITES

It is the village that comes to mind whenever one dreams of an Alpine hideaway ---- Cortin d’Ampezzo, where rocky peaks are lost in the folds of clouds and heavy snows, draw skiers from every corner of the world. ----Jerry Hulse, Times Travel Editor We pushed off over the lip and flew down through a foot of powder. Silent geysers of snow erupted in our wake. Ahead lay trees and giant boulders, scattered haphazardly over the upper slope at Cinque Torri.

We weaved and sliced, making our own trails through the crevasses between the rocks. And then shot over lips, unable to see what lay ahead on the other side, sometimes taking a couple of feet of air before landing softly in the fresh snow.

In surveying the slope from the chairlift, we could see that no cliffs posed danger, and so skied confidently. To be sure, we had an occasional wipeout when we caught an edge carving a turn or when the tips plowed under after an unexpected jump, but the headfirst tumble in the soft white stuff was like diving into a haystack.

We shook the snow out of the amber goggles, then out of our shirts and pulled it out of our loose fitting warm-up pants. But inevitably some snow melted to run down a leg.

Cinque Torri, named after five rock towers that preside over the area like sentinels, is west of Cortina. It’s a 30-minute bus ride up a tortuous, narrow road from the center of town.

Tucked into the northeast corner of Italy in the heart of the Dolomite Mountains (named after French geologist Deodat de Dolomieu who discovered the mineral that gives the mountains their orange color and curious erosional qualities), Cortina d’Ampezzo offers phenomenal skiing. It’s in a natural snow bowl surrounded by towering mountain peaks. The mountains with their pinnacles and spires seem almost a papier-mache backdrop to the set of a Hollywood movie.

Four distinct ski areas provide a variety of skiing for all abilities. Most runs qualify as intermediate. From the center of town you can carry your skis to a cable car that rises from the southeast corner to the Faloria area. Ski trails link through a lofty pass to the Cristallo area in the northeast.

Or sling your skis over your shoulder for the walk to another cable car to the Tofana Mountain region on the northwest. Or ride the bus to Cinque Torri.

Cortina, an old market town and now a village with verve, caters to Italy’s pampered and indulgent class. At 4:30 p.m. the streets pulse with promenaders. Most of the women sport long fur coats--silver fox, mink, sable and even a scattering of prohibitively expensive leopard--both the yellow with black spots of Africa and the rare white-and-black spots of the Indian subcontinent.

Corso Italia, Cortina’s main street, offers good shopping but not good buys. Pricey shops vend leather pants, cobra skin purses, fur stoles and lacquered wood boxes with pearl inlays.

After skiing, the bar of the Post Hotel rates as the ideal drop-in. Dark oak panels grace the walls and ceiling, and a 200-year-old, four-foot-tall, brightly painted grandfather clock sits in one corner. Old pewter plates and steins decorate the walls.

Crowded With Royalty

It’s crowded with titled royalty, scions of Italian industry and arts, and others who live to pursue pleasure.

The bartenders move efficiently and concoct Mimosas with only top-shelf French champagne and fresh juice from either blood-red oranges or tangerines. Waiters bustle around replacing plates of homemade potato chips. The delicious Mimosas seduce many patrons into lingering over seconds and thirds.

Just a block away under the old Cortina church hides the Enoteca, a snug little wine bar where, instead of the aristocracy, you rub elbows with Cortina residents. People crowd along the bar and jostle for seats along the wall. Wood-paneled walls and a multitude of wine bottles on shelves behind the bar create an atmosphere for apres-ski rejuvenation.

A pair of tramways and then a chairlift whisks skiers up a vertical mile to just underneath the triple peaks of Tofana Mountain. There you face a choice: Ignore the “No off- piste skiing; Avalanche danger!” sign and search out deep powder in the snowfield, or ski down the gentle, packed-powder piste (ski run). Although it’s foolish and can be dangerous, no one really cares if you ski off- piste in the Alps. It’s your neck.

Three of us headed off to tackle the giant snowfield about half a mile wide and a couple of miles long, broken by occasional cliffs and rocky outcroppings. Only half a dozen tracks weaved down.

Below us lay the Ampezzo Valley. A panorama of hazy mountain peaks--whitecaps on the sea--extended to the horizon. My pulse quickened. We pushed off.

Skiing in Powder

Despite the steepness, skiing through the foot of powder was easy. Relax, shift your weight and step, like walking. Steer with the downhill ski. Nice, quick, tight-laced turns. The snow holds you under control.

Feel the flight, the warmth of the sun and the cool breeze through an open parka. The quiet swish of the snow as it shoots up from the skis against your legs, your stomach and even little bursts into your face. A rooster tail tags at your heels.

Down, down, my ears clogged with the drop in altitude. After half a mile of carving snow, we stopped for a breath and a laugh. The sun, the fresh powder, the high altitude and the falcon-like descent all mingled into a heady experience.

Down, and back up again for a couple more quick runs. Confidence took over, and on our third run I steered away from my companions to test an untouched patch. Suddenly bare brown rocks stuck up through the snow just 40 feet in front of me, and the slope disappeared. Obviously, a cliff.

I planted my pole to cut left. A quick jerk spilled me. The pole had caught on a rock and snapped in half. I tumbled into the powder but stopped short of the cliff. Shaken, I knew it was time for lunch.

Following some gently winding trails to the lower ski area, we discovered El Camineto, certainly Cortina’s best mountainside refugio .

Long Lunch Break

The Italians are fair-weather skiers. They hit the slopes late in the morning and break for a long lunch at noon. We stuck our skis into the snowbank in front of the restaurant. Languid customers had filled up the outside deck, and bronzed, oiled women soaked up the sun.

We’d skied hard through the morning, so we’d earned a bottle of champagne with the appetizer. The waiters hustled out the first course of antipasti assortiti , tidbits of assorted veggies and meats, and then pasta. The sun beat down. Voices of the patrons murmured around us. Aromas of roasted meats and spaghetti mixed with the breeze.

Skiers wended down the slope in front of us, and the bare rocky peaks rose behind them. We stretched and began appreciating lunch Italian-style.

For the main course I chose capriolo in salmi , mountain goat in sauce, and my two friends had entrecote ai ferri , veal chops. Swiftly, the waiter brought out a caraffa vini rossi della casa , a surprisingly smooth red house wine.

At this point Senore Bocus Ferruccio, the proprietor, introduced himself. His grandfather had opened the family’s first restaurant. His father upped the number to 11, they were divided among several kids, and now Ferruccio owns three.

“Let me share some of my reservio primo ,” offered our host as we slurped on gelato con cioccolato caldo , hot fudge sundaes. Ferruccio brought out an unlabeled green bottle with wine freshly drawn from a cask in the cellar and the cork hand-stuck in the top.

A Golden Nectar

Carefully, he poured a clear, slightly sparkling golden nectar. He called it Moscato d’Asti and said it came from his own vineyard with an annual production of fewer than 1,000 bottles.

This ambrosia tingled, hinting of Alpine flowers. We gazed at the scenery. Peaks too jagged for the snow to cling to surround Cortina like brooding gods that contemplate the frivolous vitality of the village below. They change shades of orange with the angle of the sun.

With the check (slightly over $100 for the three of us, including tip) the waiter served small glasses of grappa with raisins at the bottom. Grappa serves the Dolomitic Italians as does schnapps the Austrians, aquavit the Swedes and slivovitz the Yugoslavs.

“Tutte bene, senore?” asked the waiter as we stood. Two hours after sitting down we returned to the slopes, maybe with less grace but adequate nerve. And we particularly admired the many pretty female skiers who wore fresh flowers and bows in their long brown hair.

Standing out as a special ski tour in the Dolomites, the Sella Ronda links half a dozen villages with a series of lifts and trails around a giant monolith known as the Sella.

To reach it, we took the 9 a.m. bus up from Cortina to the Falzarego Pass, skied down and then hopped a series of lifts connecting the towns of Armentarola, San Cassiano and Corvara. We joined the Ronda at noon.

Cloaked in Fog

On the first half of the trip we were cloaked in fog. We felt our way with maps and intuition. At Pordoi Pass we broke lunch out of our packs-- speck, a delicious native smoked ham like prosciutto, salami, Gorgonzola, a mild blue cheese, bread and orange juice.

Then coming down from Pordoi on a winding switchback, we broke out of the clouds into a Brigadoon village, Plan de Gralba, with a collection of little houses and a church. We schussed farther down the valley to another hamlet, Selva Val Gardena, with sheer cliffs rising on each side.

Now the fog was lifting and we’d catch glimpses of the Sella, always on our right, a towering rock cathedral of changing colors with striking minarets and dark chasms. But we couldn’t linger. Time was running out. The last bus back to Cortina left Corvara at 3:50.

The journey turned into mad dashes for lifts and straight schusses down goat paths and across cow pastures.

We made the bus with eight minutes to spare. Later that evening we confronted the skeptics who believed we could never have found our way in such foul weather.

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For help in planning a trip to Cortina, contact the Italian Government Travel Office, 360 Post St., Suite 801, San Francisco 94108, or Ruggero Sanaris, directori, Azienda Autonoma Soggiorno E Turismo, 32043 Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Or for package trips to the Dolomites, call the airlines. Alitalia offers an especially good booklet called “Intermezzo: Ski in Italy.”

Cortina offers a good variety of hotels, including the five-star Cristallo and Miramonti. The Cristallo is an older, sedate, somewhat stuffy edifice near the middle of town; the Miramonti a modern, sumptuous place on the outskirts. It’s self-sufficient, with recreation and entertainment and quite a walk from the center. The Cristallo runs $850 per person per week in the high season with breakfast and dinner, and the Miramonti, $900.

The Hotel de la Poste with extensive dark oak paneling and the distinguished Savoia rate as the leading four-star hotels in town, costing about $790 and $825. The Ampezzo, a large, baroque, three-star hotel, costs $475.

Our favorite is the neat little Majoni, $500. A perfectly maintained old building in the traditional Alpine architecture, the Majoni radiates the fundamental character of the region.

On a budget, you might try the Royal, a modest but quite adequate place in the middle of town that costs $220 a week with continental breakfast.