Day 6 – Hiking Vallunga and Dantercepies

Oct 6, 2022

Today’s Adventure

Today we took advantage of stellar weather to enjoy a sampler of three prime attractions near Ortisei – the steep-walled Vallunga valley, the dramatic mountain pass at Dantercepies, and a repeat visit to Seceda.

We started out with a bus ride from Ortisei up to Selva di Val Gardena (Wolkenstein in Gröden in German). A quick shuttle from the main street took us up to the Vallunga trailhead near Ciampac. From there we walked along the valley floor for about 2-1/2 miles before the trail started to become more technical. We knew that we had other things planned for the day so we decided to turn around there and enjoy the views on the way back. We had the valley more-or-less to ourselves for the first leg of the hike, but the traffic was definitely increasing during our return – we were glad that we had made an early start that morning.

After we arrived back at the trailhead we continued back towards town and the nearby base station for the Dantercepies cable car. We used our handy lift pass to ride the cable car up to this dramatic saddle high in the mountains between Val Gardena and Val Badia. Partway up the cable car passed through a mid-station where it detached and slowed down for optional loading/unloading (not unusual) but it then made a 30 degree turn to the left before continuing up to the top (unusual!).

From the top we were treated to spectacular views of the surrounding valleys as well as the stunning Piz Boè massif. We found our trail and headed off to the rather well-known Jimmi Hütte for a nice lunch on their sun terrace, but we discovered upon arrival that they had already closed for the season. This was very disappointing in light of Facebook posts and other web information to the contrary. So we trudged back up the hill and had lunch in the Dantercepies Mountain Lodge with a bold view of Piz Boè, the serpentine SS243 roadway, and the towns of Colfosco and Corvara far below. Our waiter was kind enough to teach us how to pronounce Dantercepies (Dawn Tear Chep E Us), a Ladin word that means “in between the summits”.

Our ride back down on the cable car gave us a great of view of the Val Gardena. This really helped us to understand how all of the valleys in this area relate to one another – you can study the maps all day long, but nothing beats actually being there and getting an aerial view. Instead of waiting for a shuttle at the bottom of the cable car we opted to walk back to the main street in Selva where we caught a bus back to Ortisei.

We still had lots of daylight left and it would be a shame to waste such nice weather, so we decided to futher abuse our lift passes by making a return visit to the top of Seceda. The online videos of this iconic ridgeline simply don’t do it justice – you really must see it in person to appreciate the majesty and scale of the formation in context with the surrounding mountains and valleys. We had already visited here earlier in the week, but we still very much enjoyed this impromptu return.

To return to the main page for Ortisei click here.

To return to the main page for the entire trip click here.