Secëda

Interesting facts

Fragments of an ichthyosaur about 240 million years old have been found on Seceda, a rare find from a time when these marine reptiles had become scarce.

The ichthyosaur specialist Ryosuke Motani attributes the remains to the shastasaurids, a primitive group of long-bodied reptiles that swam with snake-like movements.

The dark, layered, flint-rich limestone just beneath the summit cross formed on the floor of a fairly deep Triassic sea basin, the Buchenstein Formation.

Just south of the cable car top station, dark lavas crop out: Triassic eruptions that once poured onto the seabed between the Odle and the Sassolungo group.

The Odle spires beside Seceda are the remains of a Triassic carbonate platform, a shallow sea dotted with small islands covered in conifer-like vegetation.

Geologists drilled a core through the Buchenstein beds at Seceda, and its dated volcanic ash layers help to calibrate the Middle Triassic timescale around 238–242 million years ago.

Tiny scales of Triassic fishes such as Placopleurus and Peltopleurus have also been collected in the rocks of Seceda.

The La Longia ski run descends about 8.8 km from near the top of Seceda, at roughly 2,500 metres, all the way to Ortisei at about 1,300 metres.

Why it is worth it

Secëda is the mountain behind one of the most recognisable views in the Dolomites: a broad, grassy slope that rises gently from Val Gardena and then simply ends, breaking off along its crest into sheer, crumbling cliffs. Standing on the ridge you look along a line of tilted green meadows cut off as if with a knife, with the jagged rock towers of the Odle (Geisler) group rising beside them. The contrast — soft pasture on one side, a near-vertical drop of pale rock on the other — is what draws photographers here at every hour of the day.

The summit reaches 2,519 metres and marks the meeting point of three municipalities, Ortisei, Santa Cristina and Funes. Its northern and western faces belong to the Puez-Odle Nature Park, where the brittle walls fall away steeply, while the southeastern side is open alpine grassland grazed in summer. The name is generally traced to the Latin siccus, "dry", after the arid pastures below the top — and in the Ladin language of the valley the mountain keeps the spelling Secëda.

The broad slopes make Secëda as much a winter mountain as a summer one: it is part of the Val Gardena ski area, with long runs down to Ortisei and Santa Cristina, and the start of the Gardenissima, billed as the world's longest giant slalom, lies close to the summit. In summer the ridge is the start of walks across the high pastures, including a route north over the Pana pass towards the Brogles hut beneath the Odle walls. The light is best early and late, when the shadows sharpen the edge of the ridge and the spires turn gold.

Getting there

Secëda rises above Ortisei (St. Ulrich) in Val Gardena, South Tyrol. A two-stage cableway from the centre of Ortisei climbs first to the Furnes middle station and then by a larger cable car to the top station at 2,453 metres, a short walk below the summit ridge. The nearest larger town in a straight line is Bressanone (Brixen), about 14 km away, and the nearest airport is Bolzano Airport (BZO), about 35 km away; Val Gardena is reached by road from the Bolzano area.

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Secëda

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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