Alta Via 1 stage 6: Rifugio Vazzoler - Rifugio Carestiato

Perhaps the least enjoyable day of the entire Alta Via because there is not much to experience on this route. In addition, an ominous cloudburst heralds a torrential rain in the morning. And on top of that I am hopelessly lost halfway through a scree with a mobile phone where the GPS function is completely out of whack. No, this was by no means a great day.

I experience for myself that the weather can be capricious in the Dolomites when I want to leave in the morning. Because a storm is forecast at 1 o'clock in the afternoon and that's why I want to leave as early as possible. However, it turns out that the stormy weather arrives earlier than expected and despite waiting for an hour, I decide to leave in the pouring rain. The start is quite smooth with a descent on gravel roads and after half an hour on the clock I have covered almost a quarter of today's route. Still, it takes 4.5 hours to get to the finish point, Rifugio Carestiato, and that says a lot about the difficulty of the rest of the course (and my navigation skills in bad weather).

However, the slightly more difficult trail starts quite innocently with two firmly anchored wooden planks that bridge a stream. The stream swirls violently with all that rain. So I certainly don't want to end up in the water here and I carefully step over this water course. Not much later I find myself in the forest where a fairly steep slope is made even more difficult by the rain. Forest paths have been completely eroded away by the water and only mud tracks remain. Climbing up here with a well-filled backpack is quite a task. Fortunately I don't slip, but you really have to be careful here when it's raining cats and dogs.

The next part of the route is a relatively large scree that is close to a mountain wall. This is without doubt the most difficult part of the route with unclear paths with limited signage, a multitude of rocks that I have to clamber and some streams that are difficult to cross and require a little dexterity. It is here that I get lost when I decide to turn right at a non-existent path ending up in the middle of the scree. The best tip I can give is to follow the cairns (as the signage leaves a lot to be desired) and to stay as close to the mountainside as possible.

In addition, my phone's GPS function is going crazy and I can no longer orientate myself to go back to the last known point. Not very useful when you're lost... A few moments of panic later, I see some hikers walking at the top and that takes a lot of my heart. So that was very exciting, but unfortunately for me in the wrong sense of the word. The problem of the poor signage becomes painfully clear when I suddenly have to turn left according to the route on my phone, but I really don't see a path here. It turns out that I first have to crawl more than one meter high on a rock surrounded by bushes and only at the very top do I see that I can go to the left. No matter how hard I cursed my phone on this day, now I'm glad I brought it with me, because otherwise I had absolutely no idea what I should be doing here...

When I leave this stone plain, it is time for the third and last part of this route that goes through a combination of meadows, forest and a small scree. Here it is easier to walk, although it sometimes goes up steeply in short sections. I hold my breath when I see another scree with paths that lead to dead ends again and again. There's a big boulder that is begging to go wrong again, but now I'm using common sense. I crawl on a high point and I see if there is a clear path in the distance. And sure enough, I see a clear forest path and I decide to climb in a straight line over the rocks to this path. Not entirely according to the rules of hiking, but efficient when I reach the footpath a few minutes later. And here again it is best to follow the cairns, because you should not count on the signs... The last kilometer through the forest brings me to Rifugio Carestiato where I arrive after one o'clock in the afternoon in the full sun. And the rain? The rain has been gone for one hour and also for the rest of the day!

This has without a doubt the worst day of the entire Alta Via 1 and much - if not everything - has to do with the fierce rain that overshadowed this route with rain-soaked forest paths and a GPS on my phone that is redefining chaos theory. Admittedly, the latter is my mistake in relying (only) on modern technology for navigation. Getting lost in the stone field also caused an extra moment of stress, which also cast a shadow on a not too good hiking day.