Seiser Alm/Alpe di Suisi: infrastructure and amenities

This is Compatsch (it doesn't seem to have an Italian name, too) and it would be your base of operations if you came to the Seiser Alm/Alpe di Suisi to ski.

It's full of amenities like hotels, restaurants and bars, shops, and of course WC's. We only took advantage of the last item, after our Hexenbänke/Banche delle Streghe hike. But it's also a transportation hub; we opted to ride a bus up to the meadow, but there are alternative modes...

This is the Seiser Alm Bahn/Cabinovia Alpe di Suisi, which leaves from the little village of Seis/Suisi (a little ways up the road from Kastelruth/Castelrotto). 

If we had better understood the bus system, we might have opted to hop a bus for Seis/Suisi (free with the pass provided by the hotel) and then taken the gondola up to Compatsch. It and the shuttle bus from Kastelruth/Castelrotto cost the same, but we had misunderstood our host and thought the shuttle bus was covered by our pass. Alas, it's part of a separate system that's not included, and we were too flummoxed by this mix-up to just wait for the bus to Seis/Suisi instead. Oh, well, next time we'll know better and will ride the fun gondola.

The bus ride was nice, though, and afforded some great scenery, as well as a look at some of the areas' livestock on the move...

We did see lots of cows (with incredibly loud bells around their necks!) while we were hiking, but that's not the only domestic animal living on the meadow in summer...

And of course the Seiser Alm Bahn/Cabinovia Alpe di Suisi isn't the only lift. In fact, looking at Rick Steves' map in his Italy guidebook, I counted five. (The link isn't to this map, but rather to an interesting and informative article about the area.)

If you want to do much hiking, you almost have to take one of the area's lifts. The meadow (according to RS' article) is about 3 miles by seven, and that's a lot of real estate to cover. Its elevation is about 6,500'.

To get to our main hike's starting point, we rode the Puflatsch/Bullaccia lift. It was a smooth, scenic way to get up the mountain, with a nice WC at the top terminus, a must stop before starting any hike.

There was other useful infrastructure at the top, too, from a restaurant and a tubing slide (!) to this extremely helpful, and well-designed, guide to the surrounding mountains:

At the top of a hill near the trailhead, it gives you 360° of mountain identifications...

I love signs like these when you have mountain views! Knowing the names of the peaks, not to mention their heights, for some reason enhances my enjoyment of the mountain experience.

This display was almost too detailed, including the names of peaks far, far in the distance, that might have been visible on really clear days, but which we couldn't really make out.

Plus, it has the bonus feature of being not just bi- but multi-lingual! The photo I've included above was only one of many I took, and they seem to have all the permutations of German-Italian-Ladin names: some have only German, some only Italian, and some only Ladin (as best I could tell). Then some are German/Ladin, some German/Italian, and some Italian/Ladin.

I guess some of the peaks have special significance to people of one language group or another? I'd love to have the time to study the background for all this linguistic variation...doesn't that sound like fun?!

Safety tip explained on the sign at the right: you can't spend a long time studying this wonderful mountain map in all kinds of weather. Tall hilltop, surrounded by metal—not such a good idea in  a thunderstorm. (Although the platform does come with its own angel-topped lightning rod, if you'll look at the first picture above.)

We didn't ride any of the area's other lifts, but after our Hexenbänke/Banche delle Streghe hike, we weren't quite ready to leave this amazing place. 

So we took another trail that follows the Panorama lift. (We were perhaps drawn to this trail since one of our favorite lifts at our "home" ski area is also called Panorama; you can see some winter photos taken atop it here.) It leads away from Compatsch in a different direction and we wanted to see what kind of views we could get heading that way.

Needless to say, the views were fabulous. It got a little chilly as the clouds thickened while we were hiking, but it wasn't too cold to have a nice sample of the local brew (Forst) al fresco, at the pretty fancy Santner Hotel and Restaurant...

nice views of Schlern/Sciliar included in the price of the beer!

This is just one of many establishments scattered all over the meadow, providing a pretty sweet infrastructure for hikers and skiers. What an incredibly civilized way to hike!

I took the following photo near another "rest stop," a slightly more rustic Hütte on our longer hike. "X marks the spot" indeed! This magical meadow was one of the highlights (not just because of the elevation!) of our trip.