Destination: Italy : Inn-to-inn trekking in the Dolomite Alps, near the Austrian border, gives rise to an eclectic itinerary of rugged walks and gourmet meals

We were sitting in the Piazza Walther, eating pasta with beer. Our waiter greeted us with buon giorno while the busboy wished us a guten tag. Welcome to the town of Bolzano in the Alto Adige, Italy’s northernmost province. Bolzano is situated at the foot of the Dolomites, the Eastern Italian Alps, which rise from the Venetian Plain about 100 miles north of Venice, and separate Italy from Austria. We were in Italy, but not the Italy of terra cotta tile roofs or ocher stucco walls.

The notion of a Mediterranean Italy is so ingrained, it was hard at first to grasp this place, its gloomy arched portals leading out to pale blue and yellow stucco walls embroidered with lacy rococo arabesques. But border cultures have their own seductions, and it would become apparent in no time that this blend of Italian and Austrian was no different, with food, language and custom all its own.

Even the mountains are a fusion of rock found nowhere else in Europe. Spectral battlements in the morning mist, fluted crowns reflecting pink by the late afternoon, they combine gray dolomitic limestone (named for its 18th-Century French discoverer, Deodat de Dolomieu) and dark brown volcanic rock in the plateaus. They tend to erase any lingering nostalgia for the Italy of the south. The mountains, I reminded myself, were the main reason we had come here to a place we had barely heard of to join 15 strangers on a weeklong hiking trip.

Other aspects of the trip had some importance. We were going with Butterfield & Robinson, the Toronto-based touring company well known to a certain brand of sybarites who enjoy the idea of several hours of biking or walking in between sustained bouts of eating and drinking. From a previous biking trip with B&R;, to Provence, we knew they also understood how to make group travel appeal to group-travelphobes. There was no artificial intimacy force-fed by relentlessly chipper guides. We suffered through no singing of “Auld Lang Syne.” Instead, the guides had encouraged people to get up when they pleased and go at their own pace.

Ranging in age from 45 to 65, we were business and professional people from Minnesota, Kentucky, Florida, Texas and California. We were not all made for each other, but we managed a shipboard camaraderie. After meeting over drinks on the veranda of a Bolzano hotel, we boarded a bus for the two-hour ride to the mountain hamlet of Corvara in Badia. Sloping down a broad, green valley bracketed by huge mountains, Corvara was typical of towns we would see. Each had a doll-sized stucco church with slender onion-domed campanile, houses of whitewashed stucco and unpainted wood, and window boxes full of neatly pruned red and pink hanging geraniums. Ski chalets and quaint woodcarvers’ shops were everywhere--Gepetto and Pinocchio could have stepped out of any of them.

We would spend two nights at a local hotel, take an exploratory day hike and then move on, by foot, to our next destination. The pattern would be repeated at each of our four hotels with one exception. We spent just one night at a rough hewn rifugio high in the mountains, where some of us, or at least my husband, could happily have spent the summer.

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Our first night in Corvara was a festive one, begun with a hearty, eclectic meal of South Tyrolean and North Italian cuisine--risotto followed by pigs’ knuckles topped off by the boiled custard and meringue desert known as floating island. Much beer and wine. Toward the end of the evening, Signor Costa, the hotel owner, and his sons regaled us with local songs--yodeled with virtuoso vocal agility in Ladin, a Latin-derived Romansch language still preferred in much of the region to the Italian and German also spoken by most natives. Their accompaniment was a Spike Jones-like instrument called a violina del diavolo , or devil’s violin; a stringed post with knots carved into gnarled faces, and an attached tambourine.

The first full-day hike turned out to be a thriller. After the threat of rain and fog caused our two leaders to scrap the planned itinerary, a local mountain guide was recruited to take us on what was supposed to be an easier route. Maurizio, the guide, proved to be the soul of Alpine cheer and competence, even if his idea of easy was open to question.

After a chairlift ride and a short climb through a piney thicket, we were out on the vast, open Pralongia plateau, surrounded in the far distance by a seemingly unbroken wall of chiseled gray cliffs. By mid-afternoon, the group was strung out in an ever-lengthening line of trekkers along a narrow path at the base of two craggy peaks. We made our way across the skirt with teetering, deliberate steps over wobbly boulders and scree, always looking over the immense valley miles below. Rounding the end of the massif, we descended into trees and meadows, then climbed again. A trickling waterfall was our staircase, leading up to a wide marsh and the end of the trail. Just as daylight was fading, we watched rain clouds gather over the ghost of a World War I barracks at Valparola, the scene of some of the fiercest fighting between the Italians and Austrians.

Back at our hotel, another sumptuous dinner--quail, venison and apple crisp with honey ice cream--did not allay altogether the anxiety of the day’s trek. Our sub-group of eight had been exhilarated by the adventure. Others had been a little frightened. In particular, other members of the group had not enjoyed negotiating a hand-over-hand ascent of a waterfall, even a miniature one, in semi-darkness. We were about to become two groups, and while our two handlers weren’t keen on the idea of leading a divided expedition, they rose graciously to the challenge.

The two guides also made sure there was time for a little independent exploration of the towns where we stayed. You didn’t have to go far to find a lot. One morning, I slipped next door to the hotel to explore a small, white church I had barely noticed almost hidden behind a high wall. Although I wasn’t expecting a treasure in such a remote and unassuming place, I had learned not to trust the perfunctory treatment given these towns in even the best guidebooks. While in Bolzano, we had stumbled onto the Gothic parish church, and were surprised to find a wealth of late medieval and early Renaissance altarpieces. In addition to altarpieces, the 15th-Century church in Corvara was surrounded by a military cemetery with a forest of crosses formed out of wrought iron into twining tendrils over every grave, whose plots were well-tended flower beds ablaze with color.

The next day, an easy morning walk took us along another part of the Pralongia plateau, with the chalky mountains always looming on the horizon, and then down into a field dotted with dark log cabins. Called baitas , these cabins serve to provide minimal shelter, normally for ski outings, and a shamefully picturesque setting for a walk. We were looking for the baita with the terrace and smoking grill.

Spread out in front of the baita was an hors d’oeuvres table laden with regional specialties, including various cheeses and sandwiches made with speck, a ham similar to prosciutto, but thicker and saltier--Austrian in name and flavor.

To balance the northern food, our aperitif was the more Italian Tirola, a mixture of white wine and Campari. Then we sat down at picnic tables on the deck for the main meal and watched as enormous vats of risotto with porcini, just in season, were stirred patiently, then ladled steaming, into big, white bowls. That tour de force was followed by barbecued chicken, sausages and ribs, then apple fritters fried before our eyes in another vat and chased down by grappa and coffee.

On our third day out, a three-hour morning hike led us to a high, wind-swept plateau that is the site of the pilgrimage shrine of Santa Croce, a simple 16th-Century church with interior frescoes and a wall of flickering votive candles. At intervals along the misty forested path to the church, each of the 14 Stations of the Cross is commemorated in a vitrine, a small case mounted on a stake, with a scene inside, either carved or painted in differing folk styles. Making their way down from the shrine were solemn processions of pilgrims praying aloud as they passed. Like noisy tourists barging in on a high Mass, we were awed and silenced.

Our planned route from San Cassiano to the Rifugio Fanes, at 6,798 feet the highest, most remote spot on our itinerary, circumnavigated the massif called Sasso della Croce, making use of the van to get to a chairlift, then to the trail. Our group of eight, fueled the night before by the local wine and an inspirational slide show on mountaineering, decided to tackle a more challenging route. The guides submitted our plan to Maurizio, who assured them that while strenuous, the trek was manageable. Starting early the next morning from the chairlift, at 6,072 feet, we ambled through farmland and cow pastures, lulled into a relaxed state of confidence while stopping for lunch in a rolling meadow dotted with purple gentian. But soon the woods gave way to a scrubby stretch that opened into the immense and barren Passo San Antonio above the tree line. Hardly visible high above was a saddle atop a loose, gravelly trail that clung for a very long time to the side of a precipitous drop-off, then accelerated its angle toward the vertical as it snaked up to the summit, at 8,138 feet.

A couple of hours later, when, one by one, we had all peered over the other side, all the strain and struggle fell away as we took in the rocky meadows below punctuated by miniature turquoise lakes and ancient low stone walls defining the ridges, our rifugio barely in sight miles away. We made a grand gesture of drinking the searing cold and sweet water of a clear stream (when was the last time it was safe to drink from a stream in the New World?), as we reached the last meadow to be traversed. Marching to the deck of the rifugio as the sun was beginning to set, we were greeted with cheers and champagne toasts by the others, who had passed the binoculars to monitor our entire descent.

A rustic rifugio is exactly where one should stay after such a day. Its unpainted wood and stone structure, beds with down comforters flanking a window and framing a view of our trail, communal showers way down the hall, and boisterous dining room filled with the singing of local revelers, seemed the only fitting end.

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In contrast to the relentless thrills and strain of the previous days, the walk down from Fanes to the chic ski town of Cortina d’Ampezzo through the Parco Naturale provided the week’s most docile beauty of lakes, pale ice-blue rivers, tranquil woods and dappled sunlight. We stayed in the quietly elegant Hotel de la Poste in this larger, more cosmopolitan town (pop. 8,500) in which it was easy to fall into the local pattern, ordering gin and tonics at sunset on the tiny outdoor terrace in front of the hotel, from which we watched life go by around the piazza .

The final dinner is a company ritual. Ours was a sumptuous debauchery consisting of a succession of dishes of escalating richness--ravioli, tagliatelle, duck with chanterelles, pancetta and liver, beef and polenta and countless regional wines.

Ski pins were handed out as awards in several categories for special distinctions--stupid trail decisions, for example--and toasts offered with high spirits and heartfelt appreciation. The most hard-boiled member of the group--a grouchy, debonair and funny former investment banker--gave a touching one to the making of friends. We were only minutes away from “Auld Lang Syne.”

GUIDEBOOK / Dolomite Directions

Getting there: Milan is the closest international airport with good rail connections. Alitalia (nonstop) and American (change in Chicago), United (change in Washington, D.C.) and Delta (connecting in JFK) offer service from LAX to Milan; lowest round-trip restricted fare is about $940. From Milan, take the airport shuttle to the Milan downtown train station for a 3 1/2-hour ride to Bolzano.

Outfitters: The following companies are among those offering guided walking or hiking trips through the Dolomites; booking ahead is preferable because trips tend to fill early; prices quoted are 1995 rates (not including airfare):

Butterfield & Robinson ($2,895/8 days, 5 departures), 70 Bond Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5B 1X3; telephone (800) 678-1147, fax (416) 864-0541.

Sierra Club Outing Department ($2,495 or $2,205, depending on group size/12 days, one departure), 730 Polk Street, San Francisco 94109; tel. (415) 923-5522.

Mountain Travel-Sobek ($1,695/10 days, 2 departures), 6420 Fairmont Ave., El Cerrito, Calif. 94530; tel. (800) 227-2384, (510) 527-8100; fax (510) 525-7710.

REI Adventures ($1,395/9 days, some nights camping, 2 summer departures), tel. (800) 622-2236.

For more information: The Italian Government Tourist Board, 12400 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 550, Los Angeles 90025; tel. (310) 820-0098. For train information: Italian State Railways (CIT), 6033 W. Century Blvd., Suite 980, Los Angeles 90045; tel. (800) 248-7245. When requesting train schedules, ask for IC or EC trains, which are the most comfortable. Specify 1st or 2nd class, smoking or nonsmoking cars.