Tre Cime

Exploring the Dolomites National Park

ByMark Upfield

Hey all and welcome to the first blog post on my new and improved website. I have kept the site as simple as possible and will be keeping you updated on my travels and whats going on via this blog section. So here goes on explaining how I found the Dolomites National Park in Italy.

Myself and Ben Holland decided a while ago that we would like to explore the mountains a little so when my girlfriend and family chipped in for flights and the whole trip I couldn’t resist but to start planning an adventure. On arrival we picked up our little hire car, when I say little I mean a 1.1 litre, not to great for mountain roads but they had changed what we had ordered so we just went with it. The language barrier was hard, some towns we entered spoke German and others Italian, this did make for interesting food though as we never really knew what we had just ordered. The drive from Venice Marco Polo up into the National Park is truly breath taking, I really could have stopped everyone 20 miles to capture some images, but we stuck to our game plan and headed for the area around Tre Cime di Lavaredo.

We arrived at our accommodation around 2pm so plenty of daylight still to play with, however, after another language barrier issue with our hosts the light was fading fast. We darted out the door as soon as our bags were out of the car and headed to Lago di Braise, for those who don’t know this lake has been photographed by millions of people but we had heard its a must see destination. I’m so glad we rushed there as I have never laid my eyes on a lake so beautiful in my life, the reflections looked stunning in the cold but still air.

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The Following morning we met us with Father Christmas (Jeff Bartlett), let me explain quickly. I received a text off him the night before saying he had a green and red jacket and he wasn’t lying… It was the loudest coat I have ever seen and made him look like a Canadian St Nicholas. True to the Canadian style thought he was the friendliest person around the who Lago di Braise for sunrise, making friends with everyone.

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After a beautiful sunrise we headed to the mighty mountain range of Tre Cime di Lavaredo and what a site. The mountain pass was one of the best drives we had witnessed so far and made all the more interesting with our 1.1 car. Anyone planning on driving up to the top car park please get a car with a bit of power (we struggled). With the smell of a burnt out clutch we reached our destination and started our hike. After a couple of hours of aimlessly exploring we headed back to an angle we had earlier found for sunset, then sat and waited.

The sun dropped out of the sky but in doing this caused a massive amount of cloud inversion, not an issue we thought as the scene was starting to glow. After 10 minutes of shooting I realised I could barely see the other two and we had near white out conditions. The temperature dropped and it became increasingly harder to see more than 5 steps ahead of us.

Myself and Ben headed for the nearest building we knew was there and lost Jeff in the process, not fun in these conditions. We finally made it and waited for his return. What was 10 minutes seemed ages when our newly found friend didn’t appear and with no real phone signal we started to wonder when we would see him again! But then he appeared still looking like Father Christmas and walking on the trail towards our location, we exchanged conversation and about how crazy quick the weather turned then headed to the cars.

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The Next day was waterfall day as it was pouring in rain and nothing else was really worth shooting. We headed for Cascate di Riva which was only about a 40 minute drive from our accommodation. After a further hour of driving around the mountain pass we finally found the car park (learn basic Italian and German words before visiting here) and headed for our hike. It was raining stupidly hard at this point and made for walking the slippery trails interesting. The falls looked incredible and the rain had caused a lovely mist just as I had hoped for. After a couple of hours shooting we headed back to the car and found a coffee shop to exchange notes and see what images we had all captured.

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Below are a mix of images just captured on the road when stopping to shoot. Feel free to share this post around, we are just putting together a tour here for the first week of April 2017 if interested pop me an e-mail via the contact form. Please also feel free to comment below to let me know you have read this and how you found it.

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