After hiking the Alta Via 2 for 8 days, here’s what I would recommend: Do visit the Dolomites. Even if it’s not to do the Alta Via 2, they are stunning mountains worth seeing. The people are super nice. No one will make you feel bad for not speaking Italian! I’ve hiked in a lot of places and this is one of the very few where I really get why it is so popular. It is actually very stunning. Budget at least €100/person/day for the hike alone. So for 8 days, expect to spend €800/person. This does not include transportation to/from the AV2. The standard itinerary is about 13 days, which would run you about €1,300/person. You need to arrive at each hut by 18:00 in order to get dinner, so you do not have all available daylight to you for hiking. Expect to pay around €75/night for half board in the huts, another €20 for lunch, and at least €5 on drinks at dinner. I would be more comfortable recommending €120/person/day. Book huts as far in advance as you can. We booked everything in March for our trip in late August and that was almost too late, but thankfully not too late. You’ll end up emailing a bunch of them. It’s really not so bad. I found this website helpful for listing at least the names of all the huts, even if the contact information was out of date.1 Refugio Volpi al Mulaz has an online booking that showed no availability, however when we emailed, they did have availability. This might be fixed by the time you hike, but new challenges might present themselves. Use traileasy to get the GPX file. Specifically look for one that avoids going over Marmolada. This is a mistake our friends made and we almost made. You can see the full itinerary we did on traileasy, here. If you just look up “AV2 gpx” online, you’re likely to come across one that goes over Marmolada. Everything else in the file is likely correct though. If traileasy is still available and free, it’s an excellent planning tool for this. If you’re young and an experienced hiker, you will likely not need via ferrata gear. We didn’t. It might have been useful in adverse weather, but even still, we likely would have been fine. We had one day of rain and nothing technical that day. The via ferrata gear seems mostly designed to help people deal with some moderate exposure. Bring a water filter. A bunch of huts don’t have potable water, so you’ll end up paying a bunch for bottled water otherwise, both when you arrive and when you depart. Bring work/gardening gloves. Best €4 purchase we made ahead of this hike. You’ll use them to scramble up rocks and pull yourself up some of the cables. Pack snacks. Otherwise, you’ll end up paying a lot for them or going hungry. Expect low quality food from the Refugios. Also, if you have big days, expect to be at a caloric deficit. Initially, I thought this would be the one hike I might gain weight on. I ended up losing weight for sure. If you have luggage that you don’t want to take with you, I’d highly recommend the Italian postal service. This only works if you can get a box that will fit all your stuff and if you have some place at the end that will hold it. Our AirBnB host in Feltre offered to hold our boxes for us, which was great. I think we paid about €30 to ship 2 boxes, weighing 20kg in total. We mailed the boxes from Verona to Feltre. Definitely wait until you’re in-country to mail your stuff to the end if you choose to do this, as opposed to mailing it from outside of Italy. Pack light. You don’t need a tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, pillow, or most meals. You will absolutely need a sleeping bag liner! If you do carry food and the Refugios let you self cater, this might be a good way to get some significant savings. Check the rules of the huts though before you commit to carrying food you can’t eat. We brought just our outfit for hiking and one extra pair of clothes to change into at night. We only showered on days 3 and 4 where hot showers were free/included. You don’t necessarily need boots, particularly if you are experienced. Trail runners were fine for us. We always use trekking poles. I can’t imagine doing this without them, although I’m sure you could. I’d recommend bringing ear plugs for the huts although I only heard snoring on 2 of the nights. The Dolomites are fairly popular in August and the prices reflect that. 8 days was fine for us. If you’re tempted to go faster to save money, by all means go for it. I think we probably could have done this in 7 days, but any less and we would have been too stressed about missing dinner. We were already a bit pressed for time on days 6 and 7. On the other hand, days 3, 4, and 5 were quite mellow. ...
Pyrenees High Route: Summary
This was a bit later than I intended, but I still wanted to post my summary of the HRP. I wrote all of this before hiking in the Dolomites, but I didn’t have long enough in front of a computer to post this before we left. We did it, in our own way. We didn’t walk the entire trail, heck we technically didn’t walk all of the PCT either, but we saw enough. Plenty. I have a ton of thoughts about this hike, most of them born out of comparing the HRP to hiking long distance trails in the United States. ...
Alta Via 2: Day 8
Our Refugio last night had a great vibe. All the people there had been hiking together as a cohort for some time so they all knew each other. We were the only newcomers. It was cool getting to talk with them and hear from most of them. I will say, our most awkward question is usually, “so how long are you guys in Italy for?”, which inevitably leads to a discussion about us not working for the past 1.5 years, traveling around, and somewhat monopolizing the group conversation with our story. We don’t need the limelight but it often finds us. ...
Alta Via 2: Day 7
Dinner was mediocre last night. We sat with a Belgian couple who were doing some prepared itinerary for 4 days in the opposite direction to us. Apparently the guy was carrying a full pack because he was preparing for a 4 week backpacking trip the following year. Being old seems hard. We thought we had the 4 bed room to ourselves last night. I went to sleep early, around 20:00 because I was wiped. Some guys showed up at 20:30 last night, apparently doing the same big day we did. Except we knew our day was big so we kept it moving and took brief breaks. They must have done something different and missed dinner as a result. ...
Alta Via 2: Day 6
We met three Australians yesterday, two of whom are on a 6 week holiday. Apparently they’ve been doing this every other year, for years. They’ve been all over. For some reason they were quite impressed with us. They were great to talk with and we got on really well. Our cramped dorm was completely full. Thankfully Zoë controlled a window so we didn’t overheat. We were up ahead of breakfast at 6:15 because we knew we’d have a long day, so we wanted to be out right after breakfast. Breakfast was incredibly disappointing. It was basically a drink (tea) and bread. That’s it. How the hell were we supposed to fuel for a big day with bread and jam?! ...
Alta Via 2: Day 5
So our hotel was fine but somehow worse than the Refugios, despite being on a road with access to regular amenities. At breakfast this morning, they had plenty of food but somehow I didn’t want to eat any of it. I think the quality of everything was just a little too low and I wasn’t up for stuffing myself. By the time we left it was 8:45. This was our short day. We should have no problem getting to our next Refugio, Volpi al Mulaz, before 18:00. We left our hotel, walking along a narrow shoulder of road as cars whizzed by. It was a popular area, but there wasn’t great options for pedestrians. We took a trail that had us climb up ski slopes. There was not a cloud in the sky so we got to see what we couldn’t yesterday. We may have missed more than I thought yesterday, walking in the clouds. ...
Alta Via 2: Day 4
Dinner last night was pretty weak. I think that’s been my impression for most of these huts: the food is deeply mediocre. Italy can do much better, but these huts just don’t. Our main course was about what you would expect on an airline, and Rifugio Castiglioni Marmolada is car accessible, meaning they can get fresh supplies regularly. I ended up full at least. There were only 3 of us in our 8 person dorm and it was silent yet again. I guess the smell of horse shit blew in all night towards Zoë’s bed, but I didn’t smell anything. My mattress was too soft and I ended up bowed like a banana and woke up with a sore back. At least we were out of the rain which started sometime in the night and was still going when we woke up in the morning. ...
Alta Via 2: Day 3
Another great day in the Dolomites. Last night we talked with some Polish students who are studying medicine. They failed their exams so they have to retake them in September so they brought iPads to the hut to study. Apparently 50% of their class failed so it’s not uncommon. Also in Poland, undergrad seems to be combined with medical school, so they do 6 years of school before residency, rather than 8. The funny part was, they had rented a car and driven to the base of the mountain. They had booked this specific hut without doing much research I guess, for 3 nights. They figured it would be a short walk from their car and that they could do day hikes from the hut. They were then greeted with the via ferrata section after a very steep pass. I’m surprised they kept going up. ...
Alta Via 2: Day 2
I can’t believe no one snored last night in our 10 person dorm. Someone closed the window and I woke up at 3:00 sweating. Who likes sleeping in the hot? I don’t get it. We got up at 6:30 which was plenty of time to do everything else before breakfast started at 7:00. The breakfast wasn’t bad. It was a buffet of breads, jams, some cheese, ham, hard boiled eggs, yogurt, muesli, tea and coffee. We made sure to eat our fill so we could make it to lunch with minimal snacking. I even had two cups of tea which felt like a real luxury. ...
Alta Via 2: Day 1
Today, we found ourselves hiking again. It was a somewhat restful period between our last hike, the Pyrenees High Route, and now. It was only made less restful by the fact that we had all the usual travel logistics to deal with every day in between: where do we go, what do we do, and what do we eat? We solved it by renting a car in Verona, Italy and driving around the Italian Alps for 8 days, sleeping in campgrounds. ...