On my second day in Ortisei, I decided to hike the Alpe di Siusi, another very popular hiking area in Val Gardena. I would say it’s the second most popular area after Seceda. I debated whether I should do either hike, since they’re both so popular, I thought they might be overrated. I did Seceda on my first day and absolutely loved it, so I decided to just stick with the popular hikes and do Alpe di Siusi on my second day.

The weather was pretty hit and miss on the day I hiked the Alpe di Siusi, so I didn’t enjoy it as much as Seceda. It’s a beautiful area, but I did find it to be a little underwhelming compared to some of the other scenery I saw on this trip. I’m sure this was just a result of hiking fatigue or the poor weather or that it Fall and the meadows were a little past their prime. It was also towards the end of my trip and I think I was just over it at that point.

The Alpe di Siusi is essentially a high altitude plateau. If you’re visiting from Ortisei, you can take the Mont Seuc gondola right out of town. Ortisei is in the valley, so you ascend to the top and then you can spend the rest of the day walking around the plateau. However, the vibe is different from Seceda. Seceda is only accessible by cable car or foot, whereas the Alpe di Siusi plateau is accessible by car if you’re coming from the Seiser Arm. So you will see cars and buses driving around while you’re hiking. There’s also tons of hotels and restaurants up there, so it feels more like a walk than a hike. It’s not uncommon to explore the area by bike if you’re coming from Seiser Arm.

But I was coming from Ortisei, so I ended up planning out a 12.5km loop around the area. I’ve shared a map of my route below. My recommendation is to plan your route before you go because it’s not intuitive where to go otherwise. There’s no obvious hiking trail and a lot of my walk was on the roads. If you don’t plan in advance, it can be a little bit confusing about where to explore.

I did a counterclockwise loop from the gondola to Saltria, stopping for lunch at Rauchutte. Again, I started my walk early in the morning to get the first gondola and there was no one around when I started hiking. It was raining when I started my walk, but the weather improved throughout the day, so starting later might have been a little more beneficial as I found the hike out of Saltria to be much more scenic than my morning walk because the sun brightened everything.

If I’m being honest, the most challenging part of this trail for me was finding somewhere to pee. There are quite a few hotels around, but my timing wasn’t great and there’s really no privacy to pee in the bushes along the trail, so plan accordingly. There were lots of horses and cows in the meadows out of Saltria, which made for a scenic afternoon.

Similar to Seceda, there is a lot of elevation gain hiding on this hike. You start from the highest point and hike all the way down to Saltria, so it was a more tiring walk on the way back to the gondola. I covered 400m of elevation gain over 12.5km (compared to 500m over 10km at Seceda), so it was still an easier trail.

While I didn’t enjoy Alpe di Siusi as much as I thought I would, I wouldn’t count this walk out. I think my experience was likely due to a combination of poor weather and fatigue. I hiked for around 4 hours, including my lunch break and then I took the gondola back down to Ortisei. There’s a big climb up to the gondola at the end of the day, so make sure you save a bit of energy for the end. Overall, it’s still a very beautiful area, but given the choice between Seceda and Alpe di Siusi, I would prioritize Seceda.