This is my confession.
Although mountains have been part of my life since I was a child, I started hiking on a regular basis regularly two years ago. I fell in love with mountains five years ago but before Stefano came into my life, I had no one to share my love with except my dad.

So what else could a bookworm like me do if not dive into a book and start traveling with imagination?

What books to read to hike around the mountains of Friuli Venezia Giulia

If you want to hike in Friuli-Venezia Giulia and you understand written Italian, there’s only one book series/website that you should take into consideration: Sentieri Natura.

Grazie Ivo Pecile and Sandra Tubaro

Spouses Ivo Pecile and Sandra Tubaro started the website Sentieri e Natura in 2000. As of today www.sentierinatura.it is still the hiking and trekking point of reference for mountain lovers of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
Moreover, on the website, one can find technical and naturalistic information on almost every trail in the region. Oftentimes, other hikers often leave comments to describe trails. That’s where most of our inspiration comes from. That’s where we discovered two of the autumn hikes that I covered on the blog (Rifugio Floreanini Cimenti and Casera Monte Buoi).

The Sentieri Nautura book series 

Of course, I didn’t know all that five years ago. I didn’t have their website pinned among my favorites.

What I did, as usual when I want to learn something new, was scanning the bookstore in search of my first step into the mountaineering world. That’s when the Sentieri Natura book series came to me with a helping hand. The series features a total of 12 books, each dedicated to a specific topic. From flowers to forests, from silence to memory.

I decided to start from somewhere closer to my heart like… mountain huts.

“I sentieri dei Rifugi” (The Mountain Hut’s trails) was a Christmas gift from my dad and I studied it for months, daydreaming about the hikes that I wanted to do. I checked the few mountain refuges I had already visited and put a dot and a post-it near the ones that I wanted to visit.

Before meeting Stefano, I used to take the book out of the shelf every once in a while, and study it. When I finally met someone with the same passion, I presented him with a long list of places that I wanted to visit. Weekend after weekend, I started checking more and more huts.

After three years, there are still plenty of post-its in my book. For every mountain hut, Ivo and Sandra described more challenging itineraries that use refuges as a starting point. And are exactly those itineraries that are my new goal. Alongside mountain huts, I recently bought another book in the series “I sentieri della memoria” (The Memory’s trails). This latter book focuses on trails that feature war relics. After last year’s trip to Pal Piccolo, I just couldn’t miss it.

Why you should buy or visit Sentieri Natura?

Because it is a complete guide to Friuli-Venezia Giulia Mountain world. Trails are well explained and categorized by difficulty levels so that you can start according to your experience.
I would suggest starting from “I sentieri dei rifugi” because if you’re new to hikes I think it’s (mentally) better to have a mountain hut as a base camp or as a goal. Also, most of the mountain huts offer incredibly good food.

Although it is true that hiking is not possible now, it is also true that this is the right time to start studying routes, trails, and itineraries and take advantage of every possible opportunity when possible.