Al termine di una escursione ci siamo fermati al rifugio, ma praticamente non avevano quasi nulla da offrire che non fosse un caffè o una bibita. Siamo arrivati il 23 giugno, quindi in stagione estiva avviata. Peccato.
I do not recommend staying at Rifugio Palafavera in June as a part of an Alta Via hike. This is a Rifugio in name, but the experience is that of an off-season ski hotel. The positives are that you get a private room with a normal shower (no coins required). The negatives are that is almost empty, is run by a skeleton crew, has mediocre food, and has 0 mountain charm. The Palafavera area is made up of 60% RV park, 30% off-season ski lodge (“Rifugio”), and 10% loud motorcycles driving on the road that runs through the middle of it all. There is a massive empty parking lot in front of the Rifugio that seems designed for the winter parking demand from skiers, so this will be one of your main sights as you admire Mount Pelmo. Inside the Rifugio, they have a cute little reception area for check-in, but it felt almost abandoned as it was dark and there was no one there but us and the single employee. The employee did not speak any English, so while we got checked in, we couldn't ask any general follow-up questions and they didn't even try to tell us about the ski boot lockers you are supposed to use (we learned about them later from another employee that spoke very limited English). The whole hotel seemed to be operated by a skeleton crew of only 1 or 2 staff members on duty at a time. I guess this makes sense because there were hardly any guests there, only 3 other people besides us. The meal options were correspondingly very limited and seemed to be the items that required the least amount of fresh ingredients and effort, and who can blame them with so few guests? The staff explained that the full menu is available in the peak hiking season of July and August, so I guess that makes June the off-season of the off-season. (September probably isn't looking good either.) The many Alta Via 1 signs surrounding the hotel all mention that it is possible to hike up the ski slope behind the hotel or take the ski lift up to Rifugio Coldai. A staff member confirmed this and told us the price was €2.50 per person even though the ticket office never opened and the ski lift was non-operational with all of the cables, chairs, and other mechanical parts removed and laying on the ground. The Rifugio is stuck in ski season mode and not ready for hiking hours. Breakfast starts at 8:00 and only fully gets rolled out by 8:20, so you're guaranteed a very late start to hiking in the morning. In the evening, there was a bright light next to a window that only had sheer curtains that stayed on well past 10pm, so I had to use a sleeping mask because the light shone directly on my pillow. There were also a lot of loud locals that drove up the whole evening until about 23:00 to visit the cafe, making it difficult to air our room out, so we had to wear earplugs to bed as well. Rifugio Palafavera is missing the authentic Rifugio charm that you can experience at all the other Rifugios in the area. Inside, it feels like an imitation Rifugio, a sort of kitschy “mountain chalet” themed hotel that could just as easily exist along a highway in the Midwestern US. FYI: The wifi was weirdly non-functional. There appeared to be 4 wifi networks in the hotel. We never found network 1 and network 2 was the only one visible in our room. However, the signal strength was terrible and it was almost non-functionally slow and dropped out periodically, so we stuck with mobile data in the room. In the hallway, we could see network 3, but it had no internet at all. Network 4 was also available in the hallway and was a normal internet connection that allowed for general purpose browsing. Service: 2