Rifugio Puez → Rifugio Pisciadù

An hour or so off Rifugio Puez the high karst plateau opens out and the trail drops to Lech de Crespëina, a still alpine tarn cupped in pale dolomite gravel and sparse tundra grass at roughly 2,374 metres. The name is Ladin — "lech" simply means lake in the old Romance tongue that has survived in these valleys for more than a thousand years — and you are now in the very heart of the Crespëina high basin, the western lobe of the vast Gardenaccia (Gherdenacia) plateau inside the Puez-Geisler / Puez-Odle Nature Park.

The setting is pure karst. The whitish rock underfoot is Dolomia Principale (Main and Dachstein Dolomite), a stone so prone to fracturing and dissolving that rain and snowmelt vanish straight down into a maze of crevices and grooves rather than running off in streams. That is why this shelf feels so strangely dry and lunar despite the altitude, and why the lake matters: with no inflow or outflow to speak of, Lech de Crespëina is fed only by precipitation and the last snowfields, so it swells in early summer and can shrink to a green sliver by a dry late August.

From the tarn the path turns up and climbs back over scree — the final ramp bolstered here and there with timber steps — to Forcella de Crespëina at about 2,528 metres, a clean notch in the rim crowned by a simple iron summit cross. "Forcella" is the Italian for a saddle or col (the Ladin equivalent you will see on signs is "jëuf" or "ju"), and this one is the literal gateway between the Crespëina high plateau behind you and the next world ahead.

The reward at the cross is one of the great reveals of Alta Via 2. Step over the lip and the entire northern rampart of the Sella massif fills the sky in a single stroke: a colossal, plateau-topped fortress of vertical grey rock, often still streaked with snow in its couloirs well into summer, walling off the route south. The Sella rises to 3,152 m at Piz Boè, and from here you grasp at once why it is among the most formidable of all the Dolomite groups — sheer fault-bounded cliffs on every side, a single tilted block of ancient reef stone lifted bodily out of the sea.

Dropping west off the pass, the trail threads down beneath the Pizes de Cir, a jagged comb of dolomite towers rising straight above Passo Gardena. The group wears three names for the three peoples of these valleys: Pizes de Cir in Ladin, Cirspitzen in German, and Gruppo del Cir in Italian. It forms the southern outpost of the Puez group, a row of roughly a dozen fins and spires marching down toward the road pass.

The two summits that matter are the Gran Cir at 2,592 metres and its lower neighbour the Piccolo (Small) Cir at 2,520 metres. They are among the most rewarding minor peaks in the whole Val Gardena precisely because they are so accessible — no cable car, just a short walk and scramble from the pass, with the Piccolo Cir reachable by an exposed via ferrata and the Gran Cir by a path with a few wire-secured steps. The first recorded tourist ascent of the Gran Cir was made on 7 August 1887 by Johann Santner — the same Bolzano alpinist whose name marks the famous Santner Pass on the Catinaccio — together with Gottfried Merzbacher, from the western side.

Passo Gardena is the single food-and-coffee stop on the stage. The Jimmi Hütte just below the pass is the reliable on-route choice — full kitchen, sunny terrace — with the Rifugio Frara and the road-pass bars right there. The last proper kitchen before the climb into the Sella.

From the pass the route crosses the road and climbs marked path no. 666 into Val Setus, a steep rocky gully — a "couloir" — that slices directly up into the northern flank of the Sella between its outlying towers. For the first stretch it is simply a hard, relentless trudge: a long tongue of loose scree and boulders, gaining height fast in a confined trench of grey rock with the walls closing in on either side. It is the unrelenting steepness rather than any technical wizardry that defines the lower half.

Higher up, where the chute steepens into slabs and the footing becomes unreliable, the route turns into a genuine, if modest, via ferrata. Fixed steel cables and iron rungs and stemples are bolted to the rock to haul you up the crux — graded only around A/B, the easiest end of the via ferrata scale, but not to be taken lightly. The exposure is real, the rock can be greasy when wet, and the gully is a natural funnel for stonefall, so a helmet, harness and proper via ferrata lanyard set are essential, and parties should keep close together and avoid knocking rock onto each other. The cabled section is short — roughly half an hour of actual hands-on climbing within a 650-metre line — but it is unmistakably the technical heart of the day, and the same gully doubles as the standard quick descent for walkers coming the other way.

Topping out of Val Setus, the ground levels onto a wild rock terrace deep inside the Sella, and there — almost impossibly — sits the turquoise Lago di Pisciadù, a small jewel of a lake cradled beneath the looming wall of the Cima (Piz) Pisciadù. After the grey claustrophobia of the couloir, this sudden sheltered amphitheatre of pale stone and bright water is one of the most striking arrivals on the entire Alta Via 2.

On the lake's shore stands the Rifugio Franco Cavazza al Pisciadù at 2,585 metres, one of the oldest and most storied huts in the group. It was built in 1903 by the Bamberg section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club and originally called the Bamberger Hütte; after the First World War redrew these borders, it was bought in 1942 by the Bologna section of the Italian Alpine Club (CAI), who renamed it for Count Franco Cavazza (1915–1941), a young lieutenant of the Alpini and CAI Bologna member who fell in the mountains of the Greek campaign. The hut still belongs to CAI Bologna today.