The Dolomites are not subtle. They erupt from the surrounding Alps without warning — vertical towers of pale limestone, sheer faces streaked with iron oxide, ridges so sharp they look like something torn rather than eroded. At alpenglow, when the low sun catches the rock at the right angle, the towers turn amber and then rose and then a deep, improbable red. Photographers come from everywhere for this. I had seen the photographs. They do not prepare you for the reality, which is that the Dolomites in evening light look like something that should not exist at this latitude, in this century, on this planet.
The Alta Via 1 runs 120 kilometres from Lago di Braies in the north to Belluno in the south, crossing eight passes and linking a chain of rifugios — the mountain huts that are the infrastructure of alpine trekking in Italy — at intervals of roughly a day's walking. It is not a technical route. You do not need a rope. You need good boots, a head for heights on the via ferrata sections, and the sense to get off the ridges before the afternoon thunderstorms arrive. I had done the full route twice before, always staying in rifugios. This time I wanted to bivouac — to sleep above the treeline, outside, with the towers overhead and no walls between me and whatever the night brought.
I started at Lago di Braies on a Tuesday in early August. The lake was the colour of malachite. There were tourists with rowing boats. By noon I was above them, on the first ridge, and the lake was a green disc far below and the towers of the Croda del Becco were directly above me and the world had rearranged itself into the correct proportions.
The first day is a long climb through pine forest and then dwarf pine scrub and then open scree, the trail gaining 1,400 metres before levelling onto the high plateau above Rifugio Biella. The rifugio itself is a stone building perched on a shelf of rock with a view south across the Fanes plateau — a high, flat limestone plain that feels more like a Scottish moor than anything Italian, except for the towers rising from its edges.
I ate dinner at the rifugio — pasta e fagioli, a half-litre of house red, a piece of Schuttelbrot that arrived without being asked for — and then carried my bivouac kit another twenty minutes up the slope above the hut to a flat shelf of rock at 2,500 metres. The rifugio warden had looked at my bivouac bag with the expression of a man who has seen this before and knows how it ends. He said: "The forecast is good until 3am. After that, maybe not so good." He said this in a tone that suggested he found my optimism entertaining.
The night was extraordinary. The Milky Way was directly overhead — not the faint smear visible from lowland Europe but the full, dense, overwhelming original, the galactic core visible as a distinct brightening in the band of light. The towers of the Croda Rossa were silhouettes against it. I lay on my back on the rock shelf and looked up for a long time. At 2am the cloud came in from the west, exactly as the warden had predicted, and I retreated into the bivouac bag and slept until dawn.
The Fanes plateau is the heart of the Alta Via 1 and the section I return to most often in memory. It is a high, open limestone plain crossed by a network of trails and dotted with small lakes that reflect the towers on their edges. The light changes constantly — cloud shadows moving across the pale rock, the towers shifting from grey to white to amber as the sun moves. There are marmots everywhere, fat and unhurried, standing upright on boulders and watching you pass with the mild curiosity of animals that have decided humans are not worth worrying about.
The via ferrata sections begin in earnest on day two. The Alta Via 1 includes several aided climbing sections — fixed cables and iron rungs bolted into vertical rock faces — that require a via ferrata kit (harness, lanyard, helmet) and a reasonable head for heights. They are not technically difficult. They are exposed in a way that concentrates the mind. The views from the cables are the best views on the route, which is saying something.
The afternoon thunderstorm arrived at 3:15pm, forty-five minutes after I had reached the rifugio. I sat on the terrace with a Radler and watched it come in from the west — a wall of dark cloud moving fast, the towers disappearing into it one by one, the first lightning striking the ridge I had crossed two hours earlier. The storm lasted forty minutes. When it cleared, the rock was wet and the air smelled of ozone and the towers were sharper than before, every edge defined.
Thunderstorm Warning — Dolomites
Afternoon thunderstorms are the primary hazard on Dolomites high routes from June to September. Storms typically build from noon and strike between 2pm and 5pm. Plan to be below the treeline or inside a rifugio by early afternoon. Never shelter under isolated trees or rock overhangs. If caught on an exposed ridge, descend immediately, crouch low on insulating material, and keep away from metal equipment. Check the Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano weather forecast each morning at meteo.provincia.bz.it.
The Milky Way was directly overhead — not the faint smear visible from lowland Europe but the full, dense, overwhelming original.
Passo Falzarego is where the First World War arrives. The Dolomites were the front line between Italy and Austria-Hungary from 1915 to 1918, and the passes and ridges are still scarred by it — trenches cut into the rock, tunnels bored through the summits, rusted wire and shell casings in the scree. The Cinque Torri, five isolated towers above the pass, were a strategic position. The open-air museum there preserves the trenches and dugouts exactly as they were left. I spent an hour in it and came out feeling the particular weight of places where history has been very literal and very recent.
The second bivouac was below the Cinque Torri, on a grassy shelf at 2,100 metres with the towers directly above and the Marmolada glacier visible to the southeast — or what remains of it. The Marmolada has lost more than a third of its volume since 1900 and the retreat is visible from here, the bare rock below the ice line pale and raw where the glacier has pulled back. In 2022 a serac collapse on the Marmolada killed eleven people. The mountain is still beautiful. It is also diminishing, season by season, in a way that is not reversible on any timescale that matters to the people watching it happen.
The final two days descend steadily from the high plateau toward Belluno and the Venetian plain. The towers diminish as you lose altitude, the landscape softening from limestone and scree into meadow and then forest, the air thickening perceptibly as you drop below 2,000 metres. By the time you reach Belluno the Dolomites are a wall on the northern horizon, already looking improbable from this distance, already looking like something you might have imagined.
I stopped on the last ridge above the descent to Belluno and looked back north. The towers were catching the late afternoon light — amber, rose, the beginning of red. I had been looking at this view, or versions of it, for five days. It had not become ordinary. I do not think it becomes ordinary. The Dolomites are one of those landscapes that resist familiarity, that remain slightly astonishing no matter how many times you return to them.
The bivouac had been the right decision. Not because it was more comfortable than a rifugio — it was not, by any measure — but because sleeping outside in that landscape, with no ceiling between you and the towers and the stars, adds a dimension to the experience that walls remove. You are in the mountains rather than adjacent to them. The cold is real. The dark is real. The dawn, when it comes, is yours alone.
On Bivouacking in the Alps
Bivouacking above the treeline in the Dolomites is legal on most terrain outside designated nature reserves, provided you set up after sunset and leave before sunrise, leave no trace, and stay at least 500 metres from rifugios and settlements. Check the regulations for the specific area you are in — the rules vary between the Veneto and South Tyrol administrations. The Alta Via 1 passes through both.
The practical requirements are modest: a good three-season sleeping bag, a bivouac bag or lightweight shelter for wind and rain, a sleeping mat, and the discipline to get off exposed ground before the afternoon storms. The reward is disproportionate to the effort. The Dolomites at night, above the treeline, with no artificial light and no sound except the wind — this is one of the great available experiences in European wilderness. It costs nothing except the willingness to be cold for a few hours before dawn.
I will go back next summer. I will bivouac again. I will lie on my back on the rock and look at the Milky Way and the towers and feel, as I always feel in that place, that the world is larger and stranger and more beautiful than I had remembered.
Marco Ferretti
Contributing Writer
Marco Ferretti is a writer and alpine trekker from Trento. He has completed the Alta Via 1 three times and the Alta Via 2 twice, and writes about the Dolomites, the First World War landscape of the Italian Alps, and the particular quality of light at altitude. He is working on a book about the mountain huts of South Tyrol.
