On October 31, 2022, I got up quite early and drove towards South Tyrol, Cortina d'Ampezzo and then up to Passo di Giau. It was about 10am when I arrived on the pass, parked my van and climbed up the little hill behind the small pond where I took a few photos of the surrounding mountains, but please don't ask me about their names or correct me if I have named a mountain wrong.

Marmolada

Piz Boè

Monte Ragusela

It was an awesome Autumn day and so I decided to hike a little further towards the Lago Federa. At this time I didn't know that I would do the complete hike to that lake and luckily I have had enough to eat and to drink with me.

Unfortunately I had not noticed the crowds of people who also took advantage of the great weather until I overtook the first group of 6 or 7 people.

Apart from one quite long steep part up to Forcella Giau it's a fairly easy hike and for this reason there were a lot of families with kids on the trail. I couldn't avoid the people on the first part of the hike but as soon as I reached the Forcella Giau right after the said steep part, I left the trail and walked straight across the mountain pasture where I passed the little lake Laghetto di Baste.

View back from the Forcella Giau to Passo di Giau (photo taken with my Xiaomi phone).

Laghetto di Baste Laghetto di Baste with Monte Pelmo in the background (photo taken with my Xiaomi phone).

Laghetto di Baste and Monte Pelmo

There were a lot of people around the lake but Photoshop helped me to get rid of them. In the first photo of the lake, which I have taken with the phone from further away, you might see some of the people. I never add anything to my images, but I often clone distracting elements out, and people are mostly distracting in my eyes 😉

Becco di Mezzodi

Some of these huge rocky mountains remind me somehow on images I know from Arizona in the US.

Becco di Mezzodi

Monte Pelmo

My next private path, which wasn't a path at all, was hiking straight up a steep slope to a ridge and then even steeper down on the other side towards the trail again. It was very exhausting but definitely much more fun than walking amongst the people, and the views were awesome.

Antelao

Becco di Mezzodi The Becco di Mezzodi looks completely different from the opposite side ... or maybe I'm wrong ;)

The last part of the trail to the lake was crowded with people but this time I couldn't avoid them and so I followed the trail till I reached the Lago Federa which is a quite nice little lake that I certainly will visit again on another day when it's hopefully not surrounded by millions of people 😅 - it was so loud there that I didn't take photos, except the following phone shot, and I left after a short rest of about 10 minutes.

Lago Fedora Lago Fedora - too many people (photo taken with my Xiaomi phone).

On my way back there were less people and luckily the loud families had also left. So I made a short break at the Forcella Giau from where you can already see the Passo di Giau and the Monte Ragusela where I took some photos on the hill to the south of the path while the sun was slowly setting. It was cold and windy, but the light was beautiful. Some other photographers have also been on this hill off the path, but luckily no one was in my way 😉

After about half an hour I was pretty much alone and so I also made my way back down the steep part of the trail that was quite slippery and I also have become a little bit tired after the 5-hour-hike.

When I was back at the hills on Passo di Giau I wanted to go to my van for a rest at first, but then I saw these amazing clouds and couldn't resist to climb up one of the hills and take some more photos.

Clouds like flying ghosts.

A little later it got darker and I went down to my van, had something to eat and after looking through the photos I had a looong and cozy rest till the next morning.

The next morning was quite nice and although all my bones hurt, I climbed up the hill behind the reflection pond, that was occupied by other photographers, and took a few more photos of this awesome area.

View north from Passo di Giau

About one month later I have been there again: in the morning I had a nice sunny walk at the Adriatic Sea in Grado and in the evening I wanted to shoot the sunset on the snowy Passo di Giau, but I arrived a little too late. I will show you the images about this trip in another post.

Monte Ragusela to the left and the reflection pond to the right. My van is the little white dot besides the road (photo taken with my Xiaomi phone).