Walk up a meadow that stops at a sheer drop

Seceda is a mountain above Ortisei in Val Gardena, and one side of it is a long, gentle slope of grass. The grass climbs along the ridge for about a kilometer, then runs out of mountain. On the far side is a drop, and in front of it stand the Odle, a row of rock spires that look built rather than grown.

Two cable cars do the climbing, from Ortisei up to about 2,500 meters. From there the ridge is a walk on grass with nothing harder than a slope, which leaves all the attention for the edge.

At the edge the meadow simply stops and the spires take over the view. The same photograph gets taken about forty times. That is the correct number.

The spires were not built, in fact. Like the rest of the Dolomites they grew as reefs in a warm, shallow sea, more than two hundred million years ago. The summit cross on the ridge stands at 2,519 meters.