Rifugio Pisciadù → Lago Fedaia

Above Rifugio Pisciadù the trail hauls itself out of its sheltered basin and onto the Altopiano del Sella, the high tableland that crowns the Sella massif (Gruppo del Sella in Italian, Sellagruppe in German). This is the great plateau-shaped fortress at the very center of the Dolomites, a roughly square block about 9.5 km east-to-west and 7 km north-to-south, ringed by four famous road passes — Gardena, Sella, Pordoi and Campolongo — and bounded by the Ladin valleys of Gardena, Badia, Fassa and Fodom. Up here on the roof of that fortress there is no soil and almost no green: just a pale, fractured desert of dolomite slabs, sinkholes, karst hollows and lingering snow patches, with Piz Boè rising as a tawny pyramid at the far edge. It is one of the most genuinely otherworldly stretches of the whole Alta Via 2, and on a clear morning the silence and the bone-white rock really do make it feel like walking across the surface of the moon.

The rock beneath your boots is the reason the Dolomites exist as a separate, pale-walled world. Some 250 million years ago, in the Triassic, this whole region sat near the equator under a warm, shallow tropical sea — a corner of the ancient Tethys Ocean. Coral reefs, algae and the shells of countless sea creatures piled up here in water 25–30°C warm, building thick carbonate platforms. Over the eons those reefs were chemically altered into dolomite — calcium-magnesium carbonate — a rock harder and more erosion-resistant than ordinary limestone, which is exactly why it now stands up in such sheer cliffs and flat, gleaming tablelands. So as you cross this barren plateau you are, quite literally, walking across the fossilized floor of a tropical lagoon lifted three kilometers into the sky.

Set in a shallow saddle in the heart of the plateau at about 2,871 m, Rifugio Boè is the classic coffee halt of the day — a small mountain hut marooned in a sea of pale rock with the summit cone of Piz Boè looming directly above. Snow lingers around it well into early summer, and standing on its terrace surrounded by nothing but white dolomite at over 2,800 m, you get the full 'walking on the moon' sensation that gives this stretch its reputation. A cappuccino, a slice of strudel or apple cake on the sunny veranda is the traditional fortification before the final pull to the top, and for those skipping the summit it is also where the wider Sella crossing rejoins the main line toward Forcella Pordoi.

The hut has a surprisingly long pedigree. It was built at the very end of the 19th century — in 1898 — by the Bamberg section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club (DOAV), constructed in stone with a generous veranda and originally known as the Bamberg hut at Boè (Capanna di Bamberga al Boè). Like many Dolomite refuges, it changed hands after the First World War when these mountains passed from Austria-Hungary to Italy; today it belongs to the Trento branch of the SAT (the Società degli Alpinisti Tridentini), has been completely renovated and enlarged over the years, and is run by the Vaia family. It offers meals and overnight bunks through the summer season, making it both a day-stop and a possible base for an early start on the surrounding peaks.

The optional but unmissable high point of the entire Alta Via 2, Piz Boè is the highest summit of the Sella group at 3,152 m and the route's literal roof. It is the only three-thousander in the whole massif, a clean tawny pyramid with a topographic prominence of about 939 m, and it is widely regarded as the easiest 3,000 m peak to reach in the Dolomites — which is exactly why, on a fine summer day, you will be far from alone on top. The name 'Piz' is the Ladin and Romansh word for a peak, the same root you hear across these valleys; 'Boè' ties it to the surrounding Boè sub-group of the Sella.

The approach from the plateau is a short, well-marked scramble rather than a true climb: you pick your way up rocky steps and ledges, with some genuine exposure and a few cabled or eroded sections, gaining the final height to the summit ridge. Perched on the very top is the Rifugio Capanna Fassa (Capanna Piz Fassa), one of the highest huts in all the Dolomites, which has crowned the summit since the 1960s and serves drinks and simple food — and even offers a handful of bunks — through the summer. To stand at over three kilometers up, lean on the railing of a working mountain hut, and look out over half a mountain range is a particular kind of magic.

From the summit the route drops back across the plateau and off its southern rim to Forcella Pordoi, a narrow notch in the rock wall at about 2,829 m guarded by its own tiny refuge, the Rifugio Forcella Pordoi. The word forcella means a 'little fork' or saddle — the sharp gap between two heads of rock — and this one is the gateway off the high Sella and down toward the Pordoi pass far below. The little hut perched in the gap is a welcome sight and a last chance for a drink before the knee-punishing descent that follows.

That descent is the steepest, most relentless stretch of the entire day. From the forcella a long, scree-choked gully plunges in tight zig-zags down the south face of the Sella, dropping some 500–600 metres of loose rubble toward Passo Pordoi, with the road, the cable-car station and the green meadows opening steadily below you. It is hard on the knees and ankles and demands care on the shifting stones — trekking poles earn their keep here — but it is quick, and it is the dramatic hinge of the day: the moment you leave the barren, blinding-white Sella moonscape behind and descend into the softer, grassier world of the Padon chain and the Marmolada side of the valley.

After Passo Pordoi the path climbs gently onto the Viel del Pan — the 'way of bread' — an almost level high balcony that traverses the grassy southern flank of the Padon ridge between the Pordoi and Fedaia passes. The Ladin name Viel dal Pan literally means 'road of bread' (Via del Pane in Italian), and it records exactly what this trail once was: an old trade and smuggling route along which merchants and mountain people moved grain and flour high above the valleys, carrying it between Val di Fassa in Trentino and Val Cordevole in the Veneto. In the days of the Venetian Republic, smugglers used this lofty contour to slip sacks of grain past the heavy taxes and customs of the valley roads below — and, walking it now, you can see why they chose the high line: the views are sublime and the going is easy.

The trail has a second name and a more recent benefactor. It is also widely known as the Bindelweg, after Dr. Karl Bindel, a German physician and president of the Bamberg section of the Alpine Club, who explored and championed the route at the end of the 19th century and oversaw its development into the walkers' path it is today. Whichever name you use, the Viel del Pan is now one of the most famous and most photographed easy high-trails in the whole Alps — and rightly so, because for almost its entire length the icy north face and shrinking glacier of the Marmolada fill the sky directly across the valley.

The Viel del Pan finally curls down off the Padon balcony to the long, turquoise reservoir of Lago di Fedaia, cradled at 2,054 m at the foot of the Marmolada at the day's end. The lake sits right on the watershed boundary between Trentino and the province of Belluno (Veneto), filling the Fedaia pass directly beneath the highest mountain in the Dolomites. After a day that began on a lunar plateau and crossed the route's loftiest summit, arriving on these still, mirror-bright shores beneath the Queen of the Dolomites is a fittingly grand finish — and on a calm evening the whole pale wall of the Marmolada hangs upside-down in the water.

For all its beauty, the lake is man-made. It is a hydroelectric reservoir created by a great curving dam — about 57 m high, more than 600 m long and 42 m thick at its base — that holds back the meltwater of the Marmolada glacier; the resulting lake stretches roughly two kilometers along the pass, and you can walk out along the crest of the dam itself. It has generated electricity since around 1950, and there is a curious footnote to its history: in that same year a physicist from the University of Padua set up a cosmic-ray laboratory at the foot of the dam, which ran for several years at this high, clear-aired site.