Alpe di Siusi
Val Gardena & the Sciliar · South Tyrol, Italy
The same mountains as Alta Via 1, walked a completely different way: across Europe's largest high alpine meadow, with cable cars everywhere, hotels with swimming pools, and arguably the best food in the Alps. Shorter days and softer ground. Maybe the safest bet.
- Nights
- Hotel base + 2 nights at mountain inns
- Total distance
- 36 km / 22 mi
- Total ascent
- 1,680 m / 5,510 ft
- Highest point
- 2,563 m — Monte Pez
What you'd be looking at
First reaction to Alpe di Siusi?
One tap. You can change your mind later.
How it stacks up
Where we'd stay
The most comfortable of the four. Hotel nights at either end, and the two huts in between both have private rooms as well as dormitories.
Val Gardena
1,236–1,563 mA hotel in one of the three Val Gardena villages at either end of the walk. Three and four star, half board, and many have a pool and spa. This is where the group would gather on the first night and eat together on the last.
FoodSouth Tyrolean half board is not hut food: four or five courses with a choice at every one, a wine list, and breakfast spreads that take a table to lay out. Three restaurants in the valley hold Michelin stars.
- Type
- Three or four star hotel
- Where
- Ortisei, Santa Cristina or Selva
- Board
- Half board
- Often
- Pool, sauna and spa
- Rooms
- Private, en suite, family rooms normal
- Good for
- The two people who would rather not walk
Schlernhaus / Rifugio Bolzano
2,457 mA large, long-established hut on the Sciliar plateau. Singles, twins and triples as well as dormitories, so families can be together. Showers are token-operated and run while the water supply lasts. Linen is changed daily and washed on site. The building is unheated, so it is cold at night even in July.
FoodTraditional mountain cooking — dumplings, barley soup, strudel — either à la carte or as a set dinner. Everything on the plate came up by cable lift or helicopter, which is worth thinking about while you eat it.
- Beds
- 110 — 30 in private rooms, 80 in dorms
- Dorms
- 3-bed up to 14-bed
- Washing
- Token-operated showers, while the water lasts
- Linen
- Changed daily, washed and air-dried on site
- Note
- Unheated
- Season
- Early June to mid-October
- Supplies
- Cable lift or helicopter
Rifugio Sassopiatto
2,300 mA hut at the foot of the Sassolungo with about sixty places and a good reputation for food — vegetables from their own garden, foraged herbs and local meat. Dormitory and private rooms.
FoodThe best hut kitchen on any of these four routes. Vegetables from their own garden, herbs foraged on the meadow, meat from farms below — regional cooking rather than refuelling.
- Places
- About 60
- Rooms
- Dorm and private
- Kitchen
- Own garden, wild herbs, local farms
- Season
- Late May to mid-October
- Position
- Directly under the Sassopiatto
- Getting out
- Passo Sella and a bus, 10 km
What you'd be eating
This is the route to pick if the eating matters as much as the walking. South Tyrol cooks Austrian and Italian at the same time and takes both seriously: dumplings and speck from one side, pasta and espresso from the other, and an unusual density of very good kitchens. Three restaurants in Val Gardena itself hold Michelin stars — Anna Stuben in Ortisei, and Alpenroyal and Suinsom in Selva.
The huts are not an afterthought either. Rifugio Sassopiatto grows its own vegetables, forages herbs off the meadow and buys meat from the farms below. And because the Alpe di Siusi is dotted with working huts, lunch is never something you carry — it is somewhere you stop.
Canederli / Knödel
Bread dumplings with speck, or with cheese, or with spinach, in broth or browned in butter. The regional staple, and the yardstick by which you judge a South Tyrolean kitchen.
Schlutzkrapfen
Thin half-moons filled with spinach and ricotta, finished with brown butter, parmesan and chives. Lighter than they look and the best lunch on the plateau.
Speck and Schüttelbrot
Juniper-smoked cured ham, cut thick, with hard flatbread and pickles. What arrives on a board the moment you sit down outside a hut in the sun.
Lagrein and Gewürztraminer
South Tyrol makes serious wine, not tourist wine — dark Lagrein, aromatic Gewürztraminer from the village that gave the grape its name, an hour down the road. Hotel wine lists here are genuinely good.
Canederli dolci
Sweet dumplings dusted with sugar, served with a glass of something bright red on the terrace — the dessert version of the plateau's signature dish, at the hut that grows its own vegetables.
Lunch on the trail
The best of the four by a distance. Huts serve lunch every few kilometres across the Alpe di Siusi, most with a terrace and a view, so no one carries food and stopping becomes part of the day rather than a delay.
Dietary needs
Straightforward. Hotels and huts here deal with vegetarians, allergies and children's portions as ordinary business, menus are printed in three languages, and there is enough choice that nobody is stuck with the one alternative dish.
What it costs
Hotel half board in Val Gardena typically runs €120–190 per person per night in peak July, dinner included. A hut main is €12–18, a coffee €2. The stars are €150 and up, for anyone who fancies one night of it.
Special considerations
The hardest bit
Day 1, if you walk up from Ortisei instead of riding the cable car — 820 m of gain. Take the lift and the hardest thing about this route is that five hours is still five hours. There is nothing technical, nothing exposed and nothing frightening anywhere on it.
If someone's had enough
Lifts run up onto the plateau from Ortisei, Santa Cristina, Selva, Siusi and Compaccio, and buses serve the passes. On most of this route you are within an hour of a way down.
Where you sleep
A hotel in Val Gardena at either end — three and four star, half board, many with pools and spas — and mountain inns on the plateau in between, which in South Tyrol means private rooms and serious cooking rather than bunks. The most comfortable Italian option by a distance.
Fitting twenty-one people
Easiest of the four. Val Gardena is a full resort valley with hotels that routinely take groups, so twenty-one people is an ordinary booking rather than a problem, and families can be in adjacent rooms.
Getting there
Verona (VRN) 2h30, Innsbruck (INN) 1h45, or Venice (VCE) 3h
When to book
Less pressure than the hut routes, but peak July in Val Gardena still books up. Six to nine months ahead is comfortable, so autumn 2027 keeps the good options open.
Days either side
Bolzano is an hour away — vineyards, arcaded streets and the Ötzi museum. Lake Garda is two and a half hours, and Venice three.
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