In 2020, I went with a friend to the Italian Dolomites, with the intention of hiking the Alta Via 1. We ended up starting this trail, but decided to move on to Gran Paradiso after 4 days because there were bad weather predictions.
The fact that we did this trail in October made it a pretty unique experience. Almost no people on the trail (or at least on large parts of the trail), amazing snow-covered landscapes and extremely beautiful mountain views.
A word about the trails
There are many unmanned huts in the region, but you would have to do research beforehand. We stayed many nights in unmanned huts, two nights in the tent and 1 night in a hotel.
Dolomites – Alta Via 1
After following the Alta Via for 2 days, we decided to find a way to get back to the starting point by creating a loop hike. We found a really beautiful way to do this, however, only after hiking the trail we realized that this trail was actually closed because of safety issues. Indeed, this part of the trail was very dangerous and therefore I would not recommend taking this route. The relevant markings were only present at the ending (from our point of view), so be careful when taking less popular hiking routes in the Dolomites.
Gran Paradiso
In Gran Paradiso we started off with a single day hike, we didn’t really plan this part. We ended up hiking from La Thuile to Refugio Deffeyes and back again. Normally we aren’t really big fans of trails where you just have to take the same route back again, but this hike was actually really spectacular, so we didn’t complain.
After the day hike, we were ready for the more serious work and decided to go for another 3 day loop hike in the region.
If you have any more questions about this hike, feel free to contact me!
If you want to know if I would recommend hiking in this region, the answer would definitely be yes.