During our first trip to the Dolomites, my wife and I hiked from Seceda to Resciesa via Forcella di Mesdi. We could see from the col that a via ferrata route went up to the summit of Sass Rigais, one of the highest points above the town of Ortisei where we were staying. I wanted to just do it as a scramble that day without any gear but thought better of it. It was high on my to-do list as we came back through Ortisei a few years later on our parental leave trip.
I took one of the first bins up to Seceda, chatting up an Australian couple most of the way. Right at 9am, I started jogging down and across the high traverse from Seceda toward the basin below Sass Rigais. I was moving pretty fast. Too fast, it turned out. In only 25 minutes, I ran right by the right trail, thinking it couldn’t possibly be this soon. There was a relatively high-looking peak to my left and it seemed correct to curl around and head up a well-established trail into the drainage that was ahead of me. I was pushing myself to go fast uphill and didn’t look at my topo map. Whoops. It wasn’t until I was at the high pass near Odla de Valdusa nearly 2,000 vertical feet up that I realized I’d made a big mistake.
I launched myself back down the trail and hooked into the correct approach, now worried I’d be stuck behind a bunch of parties on a nice Saturday. Thankfully, I was able to pass all of the bigger groups and arrived at the base of the East route alone with nobody close ahead of me. The route was quite short and straightforward and I reached the summit at noon. I soaked in the views for a few minutes and then charged down the Southwest route. This proved to be quite a bit longer than the way up, but generally pretty mellow. I wasn’t sure that what looked like a shortcut along the way down to the left would go, so I stuck with the main route all the way to Forcella di Mesdi. From here, it was just a quick descent and then a jog back across to Seceda. I decided to finish by going up to the high point at the end of the traverse to take in the classic view of the Odles before reaching Seceda just after 2pm.
This was a gorgeous area and fun route, though I found myself wishing it were longer and a bit more consistently technical. The bonus mileage and vertical made it feel like a more worthy day even if it was a complete mistake.