Welcome back to my trail report series on the week I spent hiking the Alta Via 1 in the Italian Dolomites. Last week I posted about the start of the trail and the first 20km of hiking between Lago di Braies and Rifugio Fanes. On Day 3, we left Fanes in the early morning to start our hike up to the top of Forcella dl Lech, one of the largest passes on the trail. This section of trail can sometimes be difficult to access if there’s poor weather due to exposure, but we had great condition and no concerns as we made our approach!

This was probably my favourite day on the trail. We were among the last hikers to leave the rifugio in the morning, but we only had 10km and 500m of elevation gain ahead of us, so we were feeling positive. It was quite chilly when we started off, but we started off with a short, but steep, climb up to the alpine plateau, which really warmed us up. The sun came out soon after and there were lots of horses grazing in the meadows, so Kristine spent some time with them, while I continued on to a small lake called Lago di Lemo. There’s no big lakes on the Alta Via 1, aside from Lago di Braies, so the opportunities for swimming were limited, but I was determined to swim in as many as possible.

There was no one around, so I hurried off to the lake and was able to get in a quick skinny dip before any other hikers showed up. A lot of the “lakes” are really just tarns, so some are quite shallow or don’t have the best water quality, but this one was really nice. We’d barely started hiking though, so we didn’t linger and continued on to a small cafe located in the valley. We debated stopping for a snack, but it was still quite early and neither of us were hungry, so we continued on through the valley.

There were lots of cows hanging out in the meadows, which Kristine loved, but we kept our distance because one of the mama’s was getting a bit worked up over her calf running off without her. For the most part, the livestock is harmless, but you should still respect them and maintain a safe distance. A man was trampled to death by a cow on a nearby hike previous to our trip, so accidents do happen.

Once we reached the end of the valley, the trail started to get a lot more crowded. The Pass is a popular day hike that can be done from the small town of Sciare, so we encountered a lot more hikers. When you reach the end of the valley, the trail starts to climb and you gain 400m of elevation over ~2.5km. At first it’s a more gentle ascent, but it gets steeper as you go. While we were hiking through the valley, we spotted the pass off in the distance and joked about what a brutal hike that would be. Then we started hiking up the mountainside and quickly realized it’s where we were headed!

Honestly, I loved this part of the hike. It was tiring, but the views were phenomenal! In my opinion, the trail up to the top of the pass had some of the best views of the trip. Plus, we really lucked out with the weather and it was a gorgeous sunny day. It made it a bit hot for hiking, but there was a nice breeze from the ridge. We stopped partway up for a snack and to enjoy the view, then continued on for another section of trail before stopping for lunch. I’d been planning to eat my sandwich at the top of the pass, but I got pretty hungry as we hiked and decided to just enjoy the view and eat it on the side of the mountain. There are no bad decisions on when to stop because the entire trail is stunning!

The last push to the top is quite steep and has lots of loose rock, but eventually you reach the gap in the mountain that forms the pass. The trail down the other side appears to disappear into nothing, so we hung out for a little bit, but didn’t stay too long because it was cold and windy at the top.

All I can really say about this pass is – thank goodness we were hiking this trail south! While the hike up the pass felt steep, it’s really nothing compared to the hike down. The downhill portion of the hike is almost vertical through engineered switchbacks that were built up into staircases at some point in the region’s history. I’d guess during one of the world wars, as there was lots of war infrastructure and tunnel systems around this part of the trail.

The backside of the pass involves hiking down 300m over less than a kilometre, making it twice as steep as the hike up. I was worried about my knees, which are sensitive to downhill, but the elevation loss is over such a short period of time, that they held up pretty well. Though we caught up with our American friend from Fanes and she was definitely struggling.

The views across to the other side of the trail were just as stunning as the hike up in the morning. From the pass, you can see straight across to Rifugio Lagazuoi, which is one of the most iconic Rifugios on the trail. We weren’t lucky enough to score reservations at Lagazuoi, which was disappointing, but a bit of a relief when we realized we didn’t have to hike up the other side that day.

The real reward of this part of the trail was that there’s another small lake at the base of the pass. Kristine doesn’t like cold water, so she didn’t participate in any of my swims, but there was no way I was hiking down that pass, staring at the lake the entire time, without swimming in it at the bottom! Especially because it was so warm in the afternoon. It was a really small water body and it wasn’t very deep, but it was still refreshing.

It was after my swim that we realized our next hut, Rifugio Scotoni, required hiking downhill another 150m. It doesn’t sound like a lot of elevation after everything else we’d already done, but it was disappointing because it was located off the trail, so we were going to have to start the next morning with a 150m climb uphill, before doing another 550m of uphill to Lagazuoi. At first, we were a bit disappointed with Rifugio Scotoni, mostly because we had wanted to be staying at the iconic Lagazuoi hut, but it grew on us. It was much less busy than Lagazuoi, and it had alpacas, which Kristine quickly befriended.

We were assigned a 4-bed dorm, which we shared with two German guys. We enjoyed the afternoon hanging out at the bar and soaking in the sun, although the experience was slightly ruined by a very loud French group, who we avoided all evening because one of the guys was wearing a shirt that said “51st State”, with the American flag inside a maple leaf. So we stewed and gave them mean glares like the non-confrontational Canadians we are (well, I am, Kristine can be pretty confrontational, lol, but there were at least 8 people in the group, so we were too intimidated to say anything).

It was super hot in the room overnight, so we didn’t sleep well, though it was freezing when we set off the next morning. We trudged our way back up the 150m to the trail junction, which Kristine was really not feeling, but the hike across the alpine to Lagazuoi was more enjoyable than expected. We were able to keep to the shade for a while, which was nice, because once the sun hits you, it’s really hot.

It was Day 4 for us and we’d yet to experience any bad weather, so we considered ourselves extremely lucky. In the summer, it’s very common for it to be hot in the morning, but then have a rainstorm roll in in the afternoon. We didn’t experience that at all. In fact, it was nice for 6 days straight, so I would say that from my experience, late September isn’t the worst time to visit.

It’s a little under 3km from the Scotoni junction to the Lagazuoi junction. Rifugio Lagazuoi is located off the main trail as well, so you don’t actually have to hike up there if you’re not staying at the hut. It’s another ~150m of gain over a little more than 1km, so you are adding a fair bit of elevation gain to hike to the top. I was determined to do it, with or without Kristine. Honestly, I thought she was going to skip it because she doesn’t like hiking uphill in the heat (who does?), but she was having a good morning, so she decided to hike up there with me. It helped that the sun was behind the mountain, so the hike up was mostly in the shade.

I’m really glad we did because there is so much history along the side of the mountain in this area. There’s all kinds of defensive infrastructure from the war, including a very extensive tunnel network. The tunnels are easy to visit on the way up to Lagazuoi, so we took our time and dipped in and out of the tunnels, which run along the ridge. So you can hike in from one side of the mountain, and then look out through windows down onto the other side of the mountain. It’s very cool!

You can take a gondola from the base all the way up to the top of Lagazoui, so there were a lot of people around when we reached the top at lunchtime. We stopped for a sweet treat and a drink and I finally tried kaiserschmarrn, which is a big German pancake. It looks a bit like a funnel cake, and it’s basically just scrambled pancakes covered in applesauce and icing sugar. It’s pretty tasty, but honestly, it could have used a bit of maple syrup (lol, I know). It was a cloudless day and the views from the top of the peak are absolutely stunning, so we enjoyed the experience, but were a bit apprehensive about our remaining mileage for the day.

We still only had 12km of hiking on day 4, but unlike the two previous days, we also had over 1000m of elevation gain. When we left Lagazuoi, we had to immediately hike down 600m to the highway, just to hike back up 350m on the other side of the road. I can’t lie, the hike downhill was rough. One of the biggest differences I noticed between Italian and Canadian trails was ease of terrain. Canadian trails usually try and take the path of least resistance to the top. If that involves switchbacking back and forth across the mountain, no problem. In Italy, switchbacks only seem to be used when absolutely necessary, like when coming down Forcella dl Lech, which is too steep for anything but switchbacks. The hike down Lagazuoi was brutal, mostly because the trail went straight down the mountain. It’s all lose rock and it’s hard to maintain your speed on the way down. It’s exhausting on the knees and our legs were like jelly by the time we finally made it to the bottom. It didn’t take too long because of the direct route, but no part of it was fun.

This area is called Passo Falzarego and we made a beeline to the local tourist shop and cafe for a bathroom break and another sweet treat. Kristine didn’t eat at the top of Lagazuoi, so she had her dessert, while I had a popsicle to cool down. It was pretty much just us and a bunch of biker dudes on the side of the highway, so we had a good laugh at ourselves while perched on the curb with burly men walking all around us.

We had ~4km of hiking left for the afternoon and we ended up splitting up for part of it. Kristine wanted to go direct to our hut at Rifugio Averau, but I was keen to fit in another swim, which involved a small detour. It was very hot, so Kristine continued on the main road, while I diverted to Lago di Limedes. From afar, this lake looks really cute, but it was probably one of the worst swims I had on the trail. At this point, I was trying to maintain a trend of swimming every day, so I wasn’t picky. Even up close, the lake looks nice, but it’s tiny and once you start to wade into it, you notice that it’s completely filled with slimy green algae that just floats around in the shallows. It was the warmest water of the trip, but I could easily understand why I was the only one swimming.

Kristine had a bit of a diabetic crash out while we were apart, so I ended up catching up to her again where she took a break to eat some sugar. Before you get to Averau, you have to hike to the top of Forcella Averau, which has more technical section that involves climbing up a chimney before you reach the top. Kristine was cursing at the chimney, but we both had to admit that the views were pretty stellar once we reached the top! You cross over the back of Mount Averau and then arrive at the Rifugio, which is nestled in the pass at the base of Mount Nuvolao.

Rifugio Nuvolao is the other iconic hut on the Alta Via 1. It’s the oldest hut on the trail and it’s serviced only by a cable car, so it’s pretty small. We didn’t score reservations at Nuvolao either because Mac’s Adventure Travels really let us down on the bookings, but I didn’t mind like I did with Scotoni, because the views from Averau were breathtaking! Overall, day 4 was my second favourite day on the trail (after day 3), but Rifugio Averau was my favourite hut of the trip.

This was the first day that we weren’t the first people to arrive to our dorm room – instead we were the last to arrive in our room of 6. It was one of the smallest rooms we stayed in, but our dormmates were all very nice and we be-friended two hikers from Singapore. We also had a balcony with an amazing view, which we marred by hanging all our sweaty clothes from it.

We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting out on the patio with a couple of beers, enjoying the view. As the sun went down, we got the most stunning sunset, which we enjoyed over supper. In my opinion, Averau had the best food on the trail and I couldn’t resist breaking my one-drink rule with a second glass of wine.

We sat next to a large group of older men, who were giggling over a photo of a phallic shaped rock that some other hikers had sent them. We saw it from across the table and started giggling too, much to their chagrin because they thought they’d offended our “young” sensibilities. We all ended up having a good laugh over it and learned that a bunch of them had recently travelled to Newfoundland, so we swapped a few stories.

We took in the stars while burning off a bit of energy after dinner to conclude what was really a perfect day on the trail. At this point, I felt like I was hitting my stride on the trail and I was honestly loving every second of it. It was unlike any trail I’ve ever hiked and the luxury of being able to hike with a light pack, eat a full meal every night, have a shower, and sleep in a real bed, were all such treats. More of the second half of the trail coming next week!