After an amazing first year of trips we want to take time to look back at a few of our favorite adventures. Here are Set Forth’s hiking highlights from 2024!

Hiking Highlight #1: A Dreamy Dolomites Honeymoon

Over the summer, Cannon and Ally reached out to Set Forth Adventures with a specific request: they were putting together a 2.5 week honeymoon in Italy in October and they specifically wanted some help planning days 3 to 7 of the trip, when they hoped to hike in the Italian Dolomites. Set Forth jumped in and, with plenty of input from the happy couple, planned a shoulder-season-sojourn to Val Gardena.

Their time in the Dolomites featured the perfect hotel (Charme Hotel Uhrerhof — the ideal balance of modern comfort and traditional charm), daily hikes designed around great visiting viewpoints and enjoying delicious lunches at alpine rifugios, and just enough snow to create some gorgeous photos (but not enough to ruin the trip!). We were stoked to be a small part of Cannon and Ally’s one-of-a-kind honeymoon and we wish them the very best in their future together.

Hiking Highlight #2: Mont Blanc Off the Beaten Path

When Alex and Sara reached out to Set Forth in February they had a serious trip-planning-puzzle on their hands: they wanted to plan a hiking trip for themselves and some friends and family from Courmayeur (where Sara’s family has roots) halfway around Mont Blanc, to Chamonix. The problem? Their route traced a portion of the ultra-popular Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB) hiking trail, and therefore all of the refuges along the way were already fully-booked for the summer ahead — they had nowhere to sleep!

Working closely with Sara and Alex, Set Forth devised a custom route that incorporated portions of the TMB along with some less-trafficked paths, and stopped off each night at authentic alpine accommodations away from the TMB crowds. After their trip, Sara, Alex, and their crew reported that the accommodations were fantastic, the views were stunning, and a couple of the less-popular trails were a touch more challenging than expected — all-in-all an incredible trip and a true adventure!

Hiking Highlight #3: Trekking Norway’s Lofoten Islands

In May, Set Forth spent a few weeks working with fellow Dartmouth Alum Mel and Maddie as they ironed out the details of an upcoming trip to Norway. Mel and Maddie had already done a bunch of research and had a solid vision for their trip — they just need some help locking in the details and making concrete plans for the portion of their trip they hoped to spend hiking on the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway. Together, we learned a LOT about Norway’s government-sponsored system of hiking huts, navigated the intricacies of booking those huts via a website written mostly in Norwegian, and ultimately put together a custom itinerary for a fantastic week of hiking through truly breathtaking landscapes. Based on their post-trip report (and their stunning photos, of course!), the trip was a great success — including the hut-overnights we worked so hard to figure out!