(Anna-Maria writes in July 2013:) Having just got back from walking the Alta Via Una, the first of the high routes in the Dolomites, it is difficult to express my impressions from the 10 days of walking I have done. The route is magical, keeping to the mountains almost continuously from start to end, and this brings both benefits and some temporary hardships.


The Lago di Braies, the AV1's start point, sits below surrounded by wooded hillsides

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What is the route like?
It is impossible to use a single blog post to describe the route in detail so to start I will briefly describe one of the biggest days which I think encapsulated the entire trip for me. This was the ninth and penultimate day that we did, starting from the relative luxury at Passo Duran where a main road passes by two refuges and, as a result, food and resources are plentiful. In stark comparison, the day ends at the remote yet spectacular Rifugio Pian de Fontana, perched on a ledge with no easy access for anything.

Valleys and forests
We began the day with a steady stroll down the road. This stretch of main road last for less than 2km and is rare for the Alta Via 1. The route stays true to its name, staying high up in the mountains for its entirety and moving between mountain huts without ever coming down into a town.

Alpine Exploratory provides walkers with a brief respite from this "bare essentials" lifestyle by extending the standard route. Clients generally come down out of the mountains at the end of day four (easily managed with buses for those who don't want to walk the extra distance) for a pleasant and relaxing hotel night in Cortina.

On our penultimate day, after a gentle warm-up along the road we left the tarmac to climb in the cool air of a dense forest. The scent of the pine trees hung heavily in the air and the birdsong was intense with the great variety of birds found in these woodlands. Having been educated in some of the local rare plants while walking through the Alpine Garden at Rifugio Vazzoler a few days earlier I was overjoyed to find a Lady's Slipper Orchid growing wild in this forest – it’s a relatively rare orchid.


A Lady's Slipper Orchid glistening after rain

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Rocks and scree
For an hour we climbed through trees, ascending around the shoulder of a new mountain massif, before being spat out onto an old moraine field. The large rocks had been softened by the years of weather and walkers with a clear path worn across the moraine and leading us, in time, to the wide basins on the southern side of the mountain and a huge expanse of scree slopes.

Scree is relatively rare in England - I have found over the years that I have to set out on English walks looking for scree in order to find it and even then it rarely lasts long. It took me years to master scree as a result of this and even now I rarely enjoy it, but the scree on this stretch is not intimidating. The angle of the slopes is gentle and the path traversing the mountainside is bold and wide, allowing walkers to enjoy the openness of the scenery here. There are harder sections of scree to cross during the AV1 route, a small number of which require care as you descend slopes on the scree, but none of them seem to last as long as this stretch.

Mountainous scrub
The day continued after the scree with an extended period of climbing and contouring around the mountain massif in dense scrub. The low pine-like bushes and green scrub ground cover is found throughout the Dolomites where the summits above are stable enough to prevent landslip and rockfall creating moraine and scree but the altitude is too high to support a forest of tall trees. Instead the trees grow to a stunted waist-high level and allow enough light for wild flowers to grow among them.

Previous days on the route had involved far more hours of walking through terrain like this but on this day it was just a small part of every taste of the scenery offered by the Dolomites.


Colourful beige-salmon coloured cliffs above the AV1 route and its dwarf shrub and old forests

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While the weather had generally been stable for our trip our luck ran out on this day and we were briefly caught in a classic mountain deluge which lasted for less than half an hour and stopped as abruptly as it began. There was very little cover among the low scrub and we chose to walk on in our waterproof gear. Once the rain abated though we were repaid for our soaking as the wide array of alpine flowers, moistened by the rain and now glistening in the hot sunshine as they dried out, were even more stunning than usual.

A World War I history lesson
A notable point along this stretch occurred when we met an abandoned World War I barracks high in the mountains. During World War I there was an extended battle being fought across the Dolomites in this high mountain scenery - a territory dispute between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The mountains are littered with the remnants of those battles. This is the home of the original via ferrata routes - iron routes set out with ladders, cables and bridges making it possible for armed personnel to reach with (relative) ease areas that would otherwise only be accessible to skilled climbers and mountaineers.

But the mountains are also covered with old barracks and, perhaps most fruitless of all, tunnels cut into the mountains with windows cut out as lookout posts, overlooking the valleys. Imagine spending weeks or months living in remote wilderness, hidden away in a man-made corridor, watching for any signs of the enemy advancing in the valleys below you. This was in the days when any supplies would have to be carried up - there were no provisions being brought by the frequently helicopters or cable cars that supply the more remote huts now.

The Alta Via 1 provides a stark reminder of war and, for those of us who know less about those dark times, a living history lesson as we trek through the mountains.


The old WW1 barracks before the climb to Cime de Zita

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Desolate mountain passes
After many hours of walking in the mountain scrub we were ready for the next challenge of the day. There was a Rifugio in sight where many people stopped for lunch or chose to end the day. However, after a brief break in a grassy dip beside the path we chose instead to press on up the mountain. Our route ahead was to take us up to some high mountain cols and we wanted to be sure we had plenty of time to finish the day and recover without hurrying to reach our hut in time for dinner.

A long straight climb up, passing another man-made tunnel hewn into the rock, and another unexpected half hour of torrential rain as we climbed, brought us to our first col of the afternoon. Leaving behind the scrub we unexpectedly found ourselves in a strange land of large flat rocks sloping upwards away from us. Like huge paving stones laid out on the mountain and with only sparse patches of tough grass and late season snow to break the colour of the grey mountain rock, this was a unique moment for us. The climb over these slabs was long; using a combination of the two walkers ahead of us and brightly painted waymarks on the rocks to find our way we climbed slowly upwards towards the skyline until we reached another col and a sudden widening of views over a huge area. Far below we could see the abandoned barracks from the morning and trace the path we had taken around the mountain towards the Rifugio and on up to our new location. After what had seemed like hours of tramping gradually up through this grey slabby wilderness our senses were briefly overpowered by the variety of colours that greeted us from this high vantage.


Slabs lead up to the Cime de Zita on the way to Rifugio Pian de Fontana

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A final steep climb along the narrow ridge from this col brought us finally to a final col - the high point for the day and a watershed into a new world. This was perhaps the narrowest ridge of the entire route and not an easy stretch for those who dislike exposure, but fortunately it lasted for only a few metres and the rewards were ample.

Hidden valleys and alpine meadows
From the high col the view ahead was green and glowing. Below us was a series of lush meadows, each gained from the one above by way of a step zig-zag path. The grass was almost glowing in its emerald hues and while butterflies were dancing around the wild alpine flowers there was evidence of marmots everywhere, from their cries, burrow entrances by the path and, once or twice, a fleeting glimpse. This was a return to the pleasant high meadow walking that had characterised much of our first three days on the route. Along with the forests, the meadows were my favourite scenery and so this was a wonderful way to end the day, dropping steadily for well over an hour through the grass until we finally reached our Rifugio, perched on a lip at the very edge of the meadow.


Some more gentle and grassy slopes around remote Rifugio Pian de Fontana

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Companionship in the mountains
It would be impossible to mention this route without also mentioning the people we met along the way.

One of the pleasures of walking from hut to hut is the companionship. Each evening over dinner you make new friends and acquaintances while renewing old friendships from previous evenings. You may overtake, or be overtaken by, these same people the next day or perhaps several days later.

With the wide availability of huts in the Dolomites along this route we found that we could meet people on one evening and then find ourselves sharing a dormitory with them again two nights later, having broken our journey at a different place on the in-between night. Other walkers coincided with us for several days before taking a longer or shorter day so that we didn't meet them again during the trip.

With nothing but the mountain-scenery, the challenge of walking and the evenings in Rifugios to fill your time, conversation over dinner inevitably centres around each person's personal experiences. Every individual is struck by different aspects of the route so that we found ourselves comparing notes of what we had each seen in the evenings. We could also all share our special areas of knowledge, whether it was the flora, fauna or the skills required for the ground that we covered.


The Rifugio Lagazuoi, after roughly 3 days, is the highest refuge on our AV1 route and a stiff climb in zig-zags

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Discover the Dolomites!
This is a stunning route and I’m really glad to have walked it. The scenery is, in many ways, like the Alps. Despite that the nature of the walking, with it’s reliance on huts, the strange stamp that the war has made on the terrain, and the frequent variation of scenery make it unique. It’s a route I would highly recommend to everyone but be warned – it’s not one for creature comforts and there are a few areas of exposure so be sure to take along your head for heights!

Dolomites Alta Via 1 (Self-Guided) - our classic 10-stage trek
Dolomites Alta Via 1 (Guided) - join our guided groups of up to 8 trekkers

Labels: alpine, av1