Preparation

Alta Via 2 is not a hike one can do without planning. Obviously, one must be sufficiently trained - though advanced climbing skills are generally not needed, walking on steep mountain trails for multiple days requires some experience and a decent condition. But there is also the logistics side of things: Where are you going to sleep? How many clothes are you bringing? Do they all fit in your backpack? And what if it rains?

Training

We started planning this hike about a year in advanced, so we had plenty of time to train for it. Unfortunately, since I now live in the Netherlands, I could not practice by actually walking in mountain trails. My dad was luckier, because there are plenty of physically demanding trails that start just a few minutes drive away from where he lives.

So I replaced the actual hiking with two types of training: long-distance running and leg muscle exercises.

For the running part, I went for 6-12km runs twice a week more or less regularly. This is something I enjoyed regardless of my goal of training for the hike; I even took part in a local half-marathon run.

At the starting gate of the Leiden half marathon. Two hours and six minutes later, I am not going to be smiling like that.

The gym part was less entartaining for me, I never liked exercising indoors. But I managed to train somewhat consistently for 15-30 minutes once or twice a week. My exercises included squats, side planks, one-leg push-ups and the like. Boooring.

With all of this I was quite confident I was going to be in good shape for the hike. I was more worried about the logistics…

Planning the route

Most sources (including the one I followed, a red booklet that I can’t find online, but whose content is mostly summarized in this website) suggest walking Alta Via 2 in 12 or 13 days. But this way some of the days consist of less than 5 hours of walking. On the other hand, well-trained hikers can complete the whole route in 7 days or less. We decided that 10 days would be a good middle ground for having a fun and intense hike without overdoing it. In hindsight, this was a good plan, but I don’t think I would have minded some of those short walking days.

For multiple reasons, we decided to sleep in huts rather than camping. Since these regions tend to be quite popular with turists, we decided to book our accommodations early on. We started booking in May, thinking it would be early enough, but it was not - at least not the for part in Südtirol. None of the huts in our first two days had any spare bed. We contacted all the places that were somewhat close to our path, to no avail. In the end we were forced to squeeze the first 3 days into 2, and make a long detour to reach a nearby village to sleep in a B&B on our first night.

The rest of the route followed largely the border between Trentino and the province of Belluno, and it was easier to find accommodation there. fine. Not every hut in our original plan was available, but we could always find good alternatives nearby.

Our final plan was the following:

For the first and last days, the plan was to have someone bring us there and pick us up, so we spent only 8 nights out. We did not realize at the time, but this plan gave us a nice balance between high mountain huts (for the real mountaineering experience) and proper hotels (for better comfort). Confusingly, both the huts and the hotels were also called rifugio (or hütte in German, or utia in Ladin).

Packing up

You may find it silly, but fitting all the necessities in our backpacks was the part of this adventure that I was most worried about. We were going to hike for 9 days, but clearly we could not pack 9 sets of clean clothes; that alone would almost fill our backpacks. And it’s not just t-shirts and underwear, we needed warm and waterproof clothes, too. And what about food? The huts served dinner and breakfast, but we definitely needed something to eat throughout the day.

In the end, this is what we packed:

Hiking gear

• Hiking boots.
• Hiking sticks, similar to nordic walking poles, but they are usually kept shorter. They help pushing when going up and keep you stable when you walk down.
• A simple harness consisting of a strong rope with a carabiner, to be used for the occasional equipped trails (think of a via ferrata, but easier).
• Two water bottles (0.5L + 1L). The smaller one was a thermos-like bottle, but I ended up never filling it with hot water or tea. It would have been better to just bring two lightweight plastic bottles.
• Maps: Tabacco maps number 30 (Brixen-Villnössertal), 6 (Val di Fassa e Dolimiti Fassane), 22 (Pale di San Martino), plus an older map of the same brand for the Feltre area, that followed a different numbering scheme. We also had offline maps from OpenStreetMaps on our phones - we used Organic Maps and Mapy as clients - but a paper backup is always convenient, especially because of the size: it is much easier to read a large map than to look at one on a 6” screen. The Tabacco maps were also more accurate in some specific parts, because they included codes for describing each trail’s type or difficulty.

Clothes

Most of the clothes we brought with us were made of some synthetic fabric that was extremely lightweight and quick to dry up.

• 4 T-shirts (2 or 3 would have been enough).
• 4 pairs of underwear (again, 2 or 3 would have been enough).
• Zip-off hiking trousers that could be converted to shorts (but I ended up almost always using them in trouser form).
• A full set of “normal” clothes (underwear, socks, T-shirt, shorts) that I used only in the huts.
• A lightweight hoodie that somehow kept me warm amazingly well. I used it for any temperature between 2°C to 20°C, as it did not feel uncomfortable when it was too hot, as a regular hoodie would.
• A regular cotton hoodie that never used.
• Slippers.
• A baseball cap.
• A rain poncho. I did not like wearing it, because it made me sweat a lot and I ended up getting wet anyway. But in ceratin moments it was necessary.
• Rain trousers. In the end I never used them, my regular hiking trousers were somewhat waterproof, and the rain poncho covered all the rest.
• Gloves. Temperatures reached close to 0°C, and having your hands wet with strong winds at near-freezing temperatures is not fun.

Food and medicine

• The only food we pack were protein bars. We brought 3 bars per person per day, but this was way too much. I ended up eating one ~100g bar per day on average, because we were often able to grab some food (like a slice of Strüdel) in the huts we walked by during the day.
• Energy tablets. Some quick energy boost, they were mostly vitamins with some caffeine.
• Plasters, both regular ones and blister platers.
• Painkillers and other basic medicine.

Other stuff

• Sleeping bag. A very light one is enough, since every hut provided heavy blankets, but not linens, and guests have to bring their own.
• One towel, the most thing to bring.
• Soap, toothbrush and toothpaste.
• Wet wipes.
• Wallet, phone, phone charger and a power bank.
• A small planner and a pen, to keep a journal of the trip.

At 12kg water included, the backpack is quite heavy. I could have saved a couple of kilos, but in the end we used almost everything that we brought.

Ready to go!