Rasciesa Alm & the Forgotten Plateau
While everyone rides the gondola to Seceda, a quieter chairlift on the opposite side of the valley — the Rasciesa lift — carries you to a broad, largely tourist-free plateau at 2,175 m where Alpine meadows stretch toward the Sella group without a souvenir shop in sight. This is the Ortisei that locals actually use on a Sunday afternoon.
The Hike on Top
From the Rasciesa top station, trail No. 35 leads south-east across open pasture to the Rifugio Rasciesa (also called Raschötz Hütte), a working Alpine dairy hut where you can buy fresh Buttermilch (buttermilk), hand-rolled butter and a rough-cut slice of local Graukäse — a tangy, low-fat grey cheese unique to the Eisack/Isarco valley. The hut has a sun terrace with unobstructed views toward the Sassolungo massif.
The full loop back to the lift via path No. 34 takes about 2.5 hours at an easy pace, with only 200 m of elevation gain after you leave the station. In late June and early July the plateau is carpeted with Alpine wildflowers including gentians, arnica and wild orchids — bring a macro lens.
Why It Stays Quiet
The Rasciesa chairlift is older and slower than the Seceda gondola, and it doesn't connect to any major ski piste network, so it rarely appears in ski-holiday packages. That invisibility is your gain: on a summer morning you may share the summit with only a handful of local families and a few grazing Haflinger horses.
The plateau also offers one of the most unusual vantage points in Val Gardena — looking back down you see Ortisei's church spire, the full sweep of the valley floor and, on clear days, the distant shimmer of the Brenner Pass corridor. It is a view almost nobody photographs, which makes it feel like a genuine discovery.
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