Our First Dolomites Ski Trip: Sellaronda, the Horse "Lift" and Other Surprises (Part 2)

After months of planning, we finally made it to the Dolomites. Part 1 covers all the planning and logistics: where we stayed, how we got there without a car, local buses, lift tickets, rentals and what the snow and weather were like during our late-February trip.

This post is about what happened once we actually got on the mountain: the lifts, the food, skiing the Sellaronda and figuring out how to find the horse tow!

Slope ratings + maps

Slope ratings are different from the U.S., and I wouldn’t call them very consistent:

• 🔵 Blue → beginner
• 🔴 Red → intermediate
• ⚫ Black → advanced/expert

Just like in the U.S., it depends on the ski area. Some are more mellow, so their reds and blacks feel easier. But we also came across blues and reds that felt like they could have been rated black—or even double black—on the East Coast. So yes, it’s a bit all over the place.

Sometimes run numbers come with letters, like 19a and 19b—and the runs may or may not end in the same place.

There were signs almost everywhere, and the Sellaronda was especially well marked. But it was still easy to get lost. Sometimes the name on the lift sign, the printed map and the actual trail sign didn’t match.

Our hourly map check

The joke of the trip was that we were always looking at a map. We had one big Dolomiti Superski map plus a separate map for every ski area. The maps show the peaks, but the perspective is different from the trail maps we’re used to in the U.S. Just looking at them, it wasn’t always obvious that some areas were lower than others—or how you were actually supposed to get from one to the next. We definitely spent a lot of time figuring it out.

The lifts will surprise you!

Most of the lifts were newer and more high-tech than what we’re used to in the U.S. Six-person chairs, heated seats and protective bubbles were everywhere. When we skied Deer Valley earlier that year, they had just introduced one of these heated “car seat” lifts like it was a marvel. In the Dolomites, they seemed to be everywhere. We only got stuck on a gondola once!

Left: a six-person “car seat” lift in Alta Badia. Right: a round gondola in Siusi.

There were also all kinds of lifts we hadn’t seen before. One was a tiny two-person chairlift that started at ground level in the middle of town, carried people both up and down and required you to take off your skis and hold them. There were lines with gondola cabins and chairs attached to the same cable, and lifts that went up, down and then up again. It was wild.

A tiny two-person lift from a parking lot in the middle of Santa Cristina up to Monte Pana. Skis off! (Taken after 5 p.m. on the last lift of the day while trying to hold my phone and not drop my skis—which would have been a disaster)

But the coolest “lift” was actually powered by horses. It’s definitely more of a tourist attraction, but if you’re skiing Alta Badia and are a confident intermediate or above, it’s a very fun little adventure. Full directions below, because getting there was an adventure of its own.

Food!! + après-ski

Nobody here is paying $60 for a cold burger, fries and a beer. The mountain huts serve actual meals at real tables, and Italians take their lunch breaks seriously. We once pulled out snacks on a gondola, and the people around us were genuinely surprised.

The food is a mix of Austrian and Italian influences, so you’ll find schnitzel, sausages and hearty Tyrolean dishes alongside pizza and pasta. We didn’t have a single disappointing meal! A large entrée was often around €15, which felt WAY cheaper than eating at an American ski resort. There were cafés and restaurants in every village and all over the mountain, from casual huts to more upscale options.

A few favorites:

• Best lunch view: Rifugio Col Rodella above Campitello di Fassa. The panoramic view is breathtaking!

• Detour worth making: Rifugio Friedrich August and its yak farm—just leave yourself enough time if you’re trying to finish the Sellaronda.

• Drink of the trip: Bombardino, a warm alcoholic eggnog topped with whipped cream. We bought cute little bottles as gifts for friends!
  

Après depends a lot on the town. Alpe di Siusi was fairly calm on the mountain, although there were a few bars and clubs at the base. Val Gardena and Val di Fassa had DJs, go-go dancers and drunk people attempting to ski down a men’s downhill race course (it was the only way down!). If you’re into electronic music and parties, it’s really fun!

Sellaronda: is it actually beginner-friendly?

One of the main reasons we chose the Dolomites was to ski the Sellaronda. Surprisingly, there aren’t that many helpful videos about it on YouTube—and they all seem to contradict each other. Some say it’s easy and beginner-friendly. Others say it’s pretty challenging.

Since we had a mixed-level group, two of us—one expert skier and one expert snowboarder—decided to do a test run first. If it seemed manageable, we would come back with the beginners.

The official recommendation is to allow around six hours, start before 10 a.m. and reach the final pass by 3:30 p.m. That day, we had a lazy start around 10 but still decided to do it. We naively assumed we could do it faster. It was beginner-friendly, right?!

Because Alpe di Siusi isn’t directly on the Sellaronda, we first had to take our usual 20-minute gondola, ski across our entire resort using four to six lifts, catch a bus to Monte Pana and then take another three or four lifts to Ciampinoi. By the time we actually reached the Sellaronda, it was around noon.

We needed to complete the entire loop and still make it back to the bus stop for the last bus at 4:20. But we were overly confident in our abilities, had sandwiches in our pockets and weren’t planning to stop for lunch. Four hours? We could do it.

The Sellaronda follows blue and red runs and can be skied clockwise by following the orange signs or counterclockwise by following the green ones. We had heard that green was slightly easier, but we ended up near an orange sign and just went with it.

It was a beautiful, warm and sunny day—which meant the snow had already turned into deep, sticky slush by noon. The slopes were covered in giant moguls and packed with a mix of less-confident skiers getting stuck and advanced skiers ripping down the slopes. We were constantly trying to find the next lift, navigate some confusing forks and avoid people stuck in the moguls.

We were still making good time. We completed half the loop in about two hours, ate our sandwiches on the lifts and stopped only once for the bathroom.

The runs generally weren’t too steep, but some of the reds closer to Arabba felt more like American blacks. Halfway through, we both agreed that our beginners would not enjoy this. Even if you’re comfortable on the terrain, you still need enough stamina to ski for hours without many breaks.

Then one of us caught an edge in the sticky slush and had a bad fall—a sprained MCL, as we found out later. We were now moving more slowly, but getting home by bus from the middle of the circuit seemed nearly impossible, so we kept going.

We made it back to Val Gardena a little after 4 p.m., but there wasn’t enough time to take the remaining lifts to our bus stop. Instead of one quick bus home, we had to take two or three connecting buses. It was a long day!

Somewhere around Ciampinoi, before what we thought was our last run.

Two other advanced skiers from our group did the green route the next day. They started earlier and took a bus directly to a gondola on the Sellaronda, so their day went much more smoothly—but they also agreed that the loop was pretty challenging.

Later in the week, we brought our beginners from Val Gardena into Alta Badia and skied only a small section of the route. That was much more manageable, and they still got the fun of skiing into another resort.

How to find the Lagazuoi horse tow (not where we thought it was)

Another very fun thing you can do in Alta Badia is the horse tow. A horse pulls a sleigh with long ropes attached behind it, and around 20 skiers grab on and get pulled across the snow. During our trip, it cost €5 and was cash only.

What we didn’t understand was how to reach it.

We saw a horse symbol on the Alta Badia map, so we took a bunch of lifts until we reached that spot. It actually took much longer than expected! There was a small restaurant, a parking lot and some horses nearby, but no obvious place to join the tow.

On the way to the horse tow.

While we were standing there trying to figure it out, a man explained—in broken English and mostly Italian hand gestures—that we first needed to take a paid shuttle. We gave him around €8 each, and he loaded us onto a large bus with 30 or 40 other people.

The bus started driving up. And up. And farther and farther away from the ski resort. We were getting nervous: “Where are we going???” At that point, it didn’t matter—we were already on the bus.

Fifteen (!) minutes later, it dropped us at the bottom of a terrifying cliff with a huge cable car going up it. We still didn’t really know where we were or how this was going to lead us back to the horses.

We started asking other passengers and finally understood the route: the cable car takes you to the top of Lagazuoi, then you ski the long red Armentarola run back toward Alta Badia. An older man assured us that it wasn’t too difficult, but warned us to pay attention at a fork—turn the wrong way and you can end up in a completely different area.

Two beginners were too scared to ski it and decided to take the cable car back down. It took some convincing before the attendant agreed to let them ride it down.I decided to give it a try—we had already spent half the day trying to get to the horses!

The entrance to the Armentarola piste—more than five miles of skiing ahead.

The run itself wasn’t crazy steep, but it was narrow and skied out in places. It was also beautiful, with huge cliffs and a frozen waterfall along the way. Near the end, the terrain flattens out and that’s where the horses finally appear to pull you back toward the Armentarola lift.

So the horse tow isn’t really a standalone lift. It’s the finale of the larger Lagazuoi ski tour. It was much more of an adventure than we expected—and definitely worth doing if you’re a confident intermediate or above.

A few more things we didn’t expect

• Way fewer snowboarders! We saw some, of course, but the two snowboarders in our group definitely stood out.

• It’s less “slow down” and more “go as fast as you can.” Speed traps are a thing! We saw lots of dedicated areas where you could ski through and see how fast you were going. The racing culture is real. We also noticed far fewer slow-down signs than we’re used to seeing in the U.S.

• Ski patrol and boundaries were much less visible. We didn’t see ski patrol on the mountain at all, and there weren’t as many ropes or obvious boundary markers as we’re used to. Anything outside the marked piste is considered off-piste. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s forbidden, but it is uncontrolled terrain and you ski it at your own risk.

• Yes, the lift lines really are crazy. People will step on your skis and fill every possible gap. You have to be proactive! With a group, it was often easier to split up and meet at the top than try to board the same lift.

• Downhill skiing isn’t the only thing happening on the mountain. We crossed paths with snowshoers, winter hikers, cross-country skiers and sledders. Sometimes their trails intersect with the ski runs, so keep an eye out.

Where are we going next?

We’re already planning our next European ski trip—most likely Chamonix or Zermatt! If you might be interested, join the trip interest list. We’ll send you the details once they’re ready—no commitment yet.