Alta Via 1 in the Dolomites: Stages, Huts and the Bed Count

The route: 125 kilometres from Lago di Braies to Belluno

The provincial guide divides the Alta Via 1 into three parts. The first runs from Lago di Braies to the Tofane, across the Croda Rossa d'Ampezzo and the Fanes plateau. The second runs from the Tofane to the Civetta, past the Nuvolau, the Croda da Lago and Monte Pelmo. The third runs from the Civetta to Belluno, through the Moiazza, Tamer-San Sebastiano, Pramper-Mezzodì and Schiara groups.

The highest point is Rifugio Lagazuoi, at 2,752 metres, and the lowest is Belluno, at 389. The guide counts 57 hours of net walking, variants excluded. It names the seventh stage as the longest, six hours from Palafavera to Rifugio Vazzoler, but the last one takes seven if you walk all the way into central Belluno. The shortest is the first, three and a half hours. The biggest ascent is on the third stage, 1,070 metres between Rifugio Fanes and the Lagazuoi. The biggest descent is on the last: 1,900 metres down to Belluno.

On the seventh stage you walk past Lago di Coldai, at the foot of the north-west face of the Civetta. The last four stages, from Passo Duran onwards, cross the Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park.

Other sources, including the CAI section of Treviso, give 150 kilometres. We use the provincial guide's figure, which is the same as the park's and the CAI portal's. For other multi-day treks there is our Dolomites trekking guide.

The 12 stages and where they end

The provincial guide's stages are not the only possible sequence. The CAI booking portal suggests another one, also in 12 stages, with nights at Rifugio Cinque Torri, Croda da Lago, Passo Staulanza, Tissi and 7° Alpini. The portal and the managers of Rifugio 7° Alpini also treat the section from Pian de Fontana to 7° Alpini as a single stage of 7 to 8 hours, with no night in the bivouac.

Two of the guide's stages do not end at a hut. The sixth ends at Palafavera, on the SS251 road in Val di Zoldo: the guide itself points to Rifugio Venezia, two hours earlier, for anyone who wants to add a day. The eleventh ends at the Bivacco del Marmol, an unstaffed emergency shelter.

Below are the guide's stages, with net walking time and metres of ascent and descent. We take the times and the elevation figures from the guide. Not the bed numbers: the guide dates from 2005 and those numbers have changed.

• 1. Lago di Braies-Rifugio Biella: 3.5 hours, 900 m of ascent and 60 of descent
• 2. Rifugio Biella-Rifugio Fanes: 4.5 hours, 565 m of ascent and 830 of descent
• 3. Rifugio Fanes-Rifugio Lagazuoi: 5 hours, 1,070 m of ascent and 375 of descent
• 4. Rifugio Lagazuoi-Rifugio Nuvolau: 5.5 hours, 635 m of ascent and 810 of descent
• 5. Rifugio Nuvolau-Rifugio Città di Fiume: 4.5 hours, 260 m of ascent and 915 of descent
• 6. Rifugio Città di Fiume-Rifugio Venezia-Palafavera: 5.5 hours, 580 m of ascent and 990 of descent
• 7. Palafavera-Rifugio Coldai-Rifugio Tissi-Rifugio Vazzoler: 6 hours, 850 m of ascent and 650 of descent
• 8. Rifugio Vazzoler-Rifugio Carestiato: 4 hours, 550 m of ascent and 430 of descent
• 9. Rifugio Carestiato-Rifugio Sommariva al Pramperet: 5 hours, 450 m of ascent and 430 of descent
• 10. Rifugio Sommariva al Pramperet-Rifugio Pian de Fontana: 3 hours, 540 m of ascent and 760 of descent
• 11. Rifugio Pian de Fontana-Bivacco del Marmol: 4 hours, 830 m of ascent and 195 of descent
• 12. Bivacco del Marmol-Rifugio 7° Alpini-Belluno: 7 hours, 100 m of ascent and 1,900 of descent

The chain of beds: the bottleneck is the fifth night

Stages can be moved. What cannot be moved is where the beds are, and how many there are.

Rifugio Città di Fiume has 20 beds. If everyone followed the guide's sequence to the letter, no more than 20 people a day could set off from Braies, and only if all those beds were theirs. The night before, at the Nuvolau, there are 24 beds. On the first night, at the Biella, there are 42, more than twice as many.

This is one of the reasons for the variants. From the Nuvolau the guide offers one that goes down past the Cinque Torri and via Rifugio Croda da Lago, on Lago Federa, which has 50 beds. The CAI portal has you sleep right there on the fifth night, instead of at Città di Fiume.

In the southern part the huts are small. Between the Carestiato and Belluno the guide plans three nights: at the Pramperet, which has 25 beds, at Pian de Fontana, which does not publish a number, and at the Bivacco del Marmol. If you do not want to sleep in the bivouac, you walk from Pian de Fontana to 7° Alpini in one go. Rifugio Bianchet, which has 40 beds according to the CAI section of Belluno, lies on the variant that exits through Val Vescovà, and the managers of 7° Alpini also name it as a starting point for the final via ferrata.

We have no verified number for the Lagazuoi. In mid-September, though, its website said that bookings for summer 2026 were sold out.

Below are the huts where the stages end, with the altitude and the number of beds stated by the huts themselves or by the CAI sections that own them. Where we have no verified number, we do not give one.

• Rifugio Biella, 2,327 m: 42 beds
• Rifugio Fanes, 2,060 m: 66 beds in rooms, plus a dormitory with 11. For the nearby Rifugio Lavarella, at 2,050 m, we have no verified number
• Rifugio Lagazuoi, 2,752 m: number not verified
• Rifugio Nuvolau, 2,575 m: 24 beds
• Rifugio Città di Fiume, 1,917 m: 20 beds
• Rifugio Venezia, 1,947 m: 62 beds, plus 10 in the bivouac
• Rifugio Coldai, 2,135 m: 93 beds
• Rifugio Tissi, 2,250 m: number not verified
• Rifugio Vazzoler, 1,714 m: 52 beds
• Rifugio Carestiato, 1,834 m: 8 rooms with 4 beds each, plus 4 rooms in the annex
• Rifugio Sommariva al Pramperet, 1,857 m: 25 beds
• Rifugio Pian de Fontana, 1,632 m: the hut's website does not state its beds
• Rifugio 7° Alpini, 1,502 m: the managers say 50 beds, the CAI section of Belluno, which owns it, says 60

2027 bookings: the Nuvolau opens last

The rule in our hut-to-hut guide is to book starting from the smallest hut. On the Alta Via 1 there is a catch: the huts do not open bookings all at once, and the Nuvolau, one of the smallest with its 24 beds, is the last among those that have already given a date.

If you book the Vazzoler for the seventh night in October, you have already fixed the fourth night too, the one at the Nuvolau, which you cannot book before January. There are two ways to go: wait until January and build the other nights around the Nuvolau, or book the rest first and accept the risk of having to move everything.

Before you choose, read the terms, because deposits do not always come back. At the Biella the 50 per cent paid when booking is not refunded. At the Vazzoler the 30-euro deposit per person is not refunded either.

These are the summer 2027 dates that the huts were publishing on their websites in mid-September 2026. The other huts in the chain, on the pages we checked, had not given a date yet.

• Rifugio Coldai: from mid-October
• Rifugio Vazzoler: in October, with the exact date the hut said it would publish on 26 September
• Rifugio Venezia: at the end of November
• Rifugio Croda da Lago: on 1 December
• Rifugio Nuvolau: from January 2027, on the hut's website

How to book

There is no single booking for the whole Alta Via. The CAI runs a portal, Prenota Rifugi, with a page for the Alta Via 1 that lists the stages and links to the huts. Among the huts in the chain, the portal includes Città di Fiume, Vazzoler, Pramperet and Pian de Fontana. Almost all of them also take bookings on their own websites, and the rules change from one hut to the next.

Two things apply to more than one hut. At the Vazzoler and the Croda da Lago a booking is held until 6pm: if you will arrive later, let them know. And at least at Città di Fiume and Croda da Lago a sleeping-bag liner or a sleeping bag is compulsory. The general rules for a night in a hut are in our guide to Dolomites huts.

• Biella: online booking, with a 50 per cent deposit that is not refunded
• Lagazuoi: online booking, with a credit card for the deposit
• Città di Fiume: request through the website, confirmed only after a deposit of 35 euros per person, sleeping-bag liner compulsory
• Croda da Lago: booking held until 6pm, sleeping bag compulsory
• Venezia: request form on the website
• Vazzoler: half board only, 30-euro deposit per person, booking held until 6pm
• Carestiato: online only, with a credit card as a guarantee
• Pian de Fontana: booking required

Difficulty: the protected sections and how to avoid them

The provincial guide grades the Alta Via 1 EE and EEA, the Italian grades for expert hikers and, on some sections, for expert hikers with via ferrata gear, plus a short mountaineering passage around the Marmol. The basic route, it says, is within reach of a good hiker, and the difficult passages are protected. The first two stages are easy, the third and fourth are EE.

There are three protected sections, and the first two can be avoided. On the fifth stage the descent from the Nuvolau to Passo Giau goes down a rock step with a ladder and some metal cables. If you would rather not do it, you take the variant past the Cinque Torri and the Croda da Lago, which the guide describes as easy but a little longer. On the sixth stage the Sentiero Flaibani climbs to Forcella di Val d'Arcia, at 2,476 metres: if you do not feel up to it, for example in bad weather, the guide points to the variant via Passo Staulanza.

The third section is at the end. From Forcella del Marmol starts the Piero Rossi via ferrata, formerly called the Marmol via ferrata. It covers 500 metres of elevation on the south side of the Schiara and then joins the Zacchi via ferrata. The National Park describes it as very demanding and exposed, and the managers of 7° Alpini recommend it only to experienced hikers with a via ferrata kit. From the bivouac to the hut the guide says to allow three hours, and recalls people who reached the bivouac late in the afternoon and were caught by nightfall.

If you do not do via ferratas, there are two ways out. The first is the variant described by the managers of 7° Alpini: from Pian de Fontana through Val del Grisol, Cajada and Forcella Pis Pilon, 13 kilometres, 8 to 10 hours, grade EE. The second is the guide's variant that goes down from Pian de Fontana to Rifugio Bianchet and along Val Vescovà to the Agordina road, finishing the Alta Via in 11 days instead of 12, without crossing the Schiara.

At 7° Alpini you can rent a via ferrata kit and book a mountain guide to accompany you. The Piero Rossi and Zacchi via ferratas were closed after the rockfall at the end of August 2023, and the Municipality of Belluno reopened them by ordinance in July 2024: check that they are open before you set off. For the gear there is our via ferrata guide.

When to go: the window when the whole chain is open

The useful window is set by the hut that opens last and the one that closes first. In 2026 the rooms at the Nuvolau closed on 20 September, like Rifugio Venezia, and the Tissi's last day open was the 19th. The CAI section of Belluno says its huts are normally open from mid-June to 20 September, subject to adjustments by the managers.

The summer 2027 dates have not been published yet. The provincial guide notes that early in the season there is still snow in the gully along the Marmol via ferrata, and that once the huts close, the only places to sleep are the winter rooms of the CAI huts. September is quieter, but on the Alta Via 1 the season ends early: we wrote about it in our guide to the Dolomites in September.

These were the 2026 dates, as the huts published them.

• Rifugio 7° Alpini: 30 May to 27 September
• Rifugio Carestiato: from 6 June, every day until September
• Rifugio Pian de Fontana: 6 June to 30 September
• Rifugio Città di Fiume: 13 June to 27 September
• Rifugio Vazzoler: 13 June to 26 September
• Rifugio Venezia: 13 June to 20 September
• Rifugio Croda da Lago: from 15 June, with overnight stays until 16 October
• Rifugio Nuvolau: rooms open until 20 September
• Rifugio Tissi: last day open on 19 September
• Rifugio Sommariva al Pramperet: 20 June to 20 September, according to the hut's page, which gives no year

Getting to Braies and getting back from Belluno

For twelve days you are better off leaving the car at home. The Braies valley website says nothing about leaving a car for several days: it says the car parks at the lake are paid and spaces are limited. For the valley's access rules there is our guide to lake parking.

By train you reach Val Pusteria, at Dobbiaco, Villabassa or Monguelfo. Bus 442 goes up to Lago di Braies from Dobbiaco and Villabassa, and takes 28 minutes from Dobbiaco bus station. In high season it is backed up by bus 439, which leaves from Monguelfo station.

In 2026 access to the valley was regulated from 1 July to 15 September, between 9am and 4pm. During that period the bus also had to be booked online and paid in advance, and the Mobilcard and the Guest Pass were not valid. For 2027 the valley's tourist association has already said that the regulation will return in the summer months, with details in spring.

The finish is in Belluno. From 7° Alpini, trail 501 goes down Val d'Ardo to Bolzano Bellunese: from there you carry on on foot into the centre or take a bus, and the hut managers reckon five hours from the hut to Belluno. In the centre there is the info point where hikers finishing the Alta Via get their stamp, as the Municipality noted in July 2024.

Belluno has a railway station, on the Padua-Belluno-Calalzo line, with direct trains arriving from Venice via Treviso and Conegliano. If your car is still in Val Pusteria, the return by public transport is long: train to Calalzo, Dolomiti Bus line 30 to Cortina, then bus 445 to Dobbiaco. The 2027 timetables have not been published yet. The rest is in our guide to the Dolomites without a car.