Cascata Tervela

The Cascate Tervela (or Cascata di Tervela) was kind of an obscure waterfall by the town of Santa Cristina di Val Gardena. With hardly any signage informing visitors of its name nor where to park for a closer look, it almost seemed like this was a waterfall that was taken for granted. That said, lots of people would have at least seen or noticed this waterfall because you’d see it if you were driving east towards Val Gardena past the turnoff for Santa Cristina just before entering the tunnel!

As for experiencing this waterfall, I managed to do so by finding parking near the Monte Pana Cable Car Station (see directions below). Because I had an early start, I didn’t have trouble finding parking here, but given how few spaces there were, I could easily envision that parking would be hard to come by later in the day.

In any case, once I scored a parking spot, I then walked downhill on the street past the Monte Pana cable car station on the left and over a bridge above the Grodner Stream as I reached an intersection. I then followed the road uphill to my right as it climbed up towards a switchback. At that switchback, I left the road and followed what looked like someone’s driveway leading up to an accommodation. After passing beneath the accommodation, the trail continued as it hugged a ledge providing views back towards Santa Cristina and the surrounding Dolomite mountains.

Shortly after rounding a bend, I was face-to-face with the main drop of the Cascata Tervela, which probably dropped some 30m or so. The hiking trail continued to climb eventually towards Monte Pana, but I was content to get my views from the base of this waterfall, especially by the bridge fronting it.

Looking downstream from the bridge and the trail, I couldn’t help but notice that there was a lower drop that couldn’t be seen from up here. However, it would have been quite visible by people driving east on the SS242 Road down below.

After having my fill of this spot, I walked back to the car. The total time it took for me to do this short walk was on the order of 15-30 minutes.

While it was tempting to call the excursion done at this point, I did want to see what drivers would see. So in order to do that, I walked past my rental car and towards the roundabout at Via Dursan. Then, I followed this street west towards the uphill street called Via Paul.

It was along this narrow street that I manged to get a nice satisfying view of not only the Cascata Tervela with its lower drop (possibly making its total height about 50m or so) next to the road tunnel, but I was also about to see Monte Pana together with it. This was the spot where I took the picture you see at the very top of this page.

Adding this extra bit of walking probably added another 15-30 minutes to the overall excursion.