About Alta Via 2

We made this hike in July, we got all kinds of weather and often on the same day. Sun, fog, rain, wind… it only snowed once. We were away 14 days but you can do it in much shorter time.

Alta via duo

Alta Via 2 starts at Bressanone and ends at Feltre. We didn’t do the last two stages since we ran out of time, we had reasons to take some longer breaks during the hike. Our hike ended at Passo Cereda. Alta Via 2 is beautiful and in some places very spectacular. It’s the hardest hike I’ve done so far and to be honest, if I had read the guidebook and maps properly before I went on this trip I probably wouldn’t have gone. But fortunately I didn’t. Instead I surpassed myself big time, and I loved it!

I (Ýrr) went on this trip with my Icelandic friend Heiða. The guidebook says that everyone can do this hike but you should be en good shape and not suffer from vertigo. Well because of an accident Heiða was not in good shape and I suffer from vertigo. But we did it! Heiða (who has worked as a mountain guide in Iceland) really helped me through the steep parts with patience, she taught me some technique and in the beginning she took my backpack. But after a while I managed to do it myself. Day 11 was the toughest one.

Smiling after my first via farrata climbing

The conditions concerning rifuges and other things are similar to Alta Via 1. In some places there are alot of people, especially around Marmolada and some places are all nice and quiet. There are many of alternatives especially if you want to have some more excitement and don’t suffer from vertigo. There are a lot of rifuges so there is often a possibility to have longer or shorter days. We only slept in Rifugios, it’s not very common to sleep in a tent in the Dolomites, we met some people that had tent but they often came inside since it often rained in the nights. Most of the rifuges are placed on the tops and we often spent the night above 2000m. The food was good a mixture between the Italian and Austrian kitchen, often we could choose between pasta and knödel. Some times we made our own breakfast since the breakfast is often only white bread and jam and it’s expensive.

The guidebook we brought was Dolomites Trecking- Alta Via 1: Alta Via 2; second edition 2005 by Henry Stedman. Publisher: Trailblazer Publications. It was ok. However we met people who had Trecking in the Dolomites by Gillian Price. Publisher: Cicerone. I think I prefer that one.