The photographer's father in Dobbiaco, Italy. Adri Tan
When photographer Adri Tan's family offered to take their father anywhere in the world to celebrate his 60th birthday, he chose hiking the Alta Via 1 trail (AV1). End to end, the legendary trek in the Dolomites crosses 20km (75 miles), with rocky scrambles, some stiff ascents and truly astonishing scenery. Because of the strenuous nature of the hike, a few family members opted to stay home, so Tan’s best friend accompanied them.
“My dad chose the trail, but I handled all of the logistics," Tan says. To get to the trailhead in the Dolomites, they flew to Venice, took a bus from the airport to Cortina d’Ampezzo, another bus to Dobbiaco and, the following morning, a third bus to Lago di Braies, where the AV1 begins. Tan booked overnight accomodations in rifugi along the path; this network of mountain huts reaches throughout the Dolomites. The group appreciated leaving the planning to Tan, who speaks Italian and could handle the correspondence with the rifugi easily.
The scale of the trip was a major departure for Tan. “I had neither been on a hike with my dad before nor been on an international trip with him outside of visiting family in Malaysia,” says Tan, who was the least experienced hiker of their group. And the trail itself was “grueling. I consider myself to be a fairly active and strong person, but normal cardio and strength training doesn’t prepare you for the endurance required to hike 6 to 11 miles [9km to 18km] a day at a high elevation gain.”
At times, each hiker struggled, Tan says, “except for my best friend, who seemed to have legs of steel.” The group always made it to each night's rifugio on time though, so their individual challenges didn't result in any serious delays. “If anything, our more experienced hikers helped us stick to the correct trails and find the ones that had been washed away by rockslides earlier that spring,“ Tan says.
“I was born in the Year of the Ox, according to the Chinese zodiac, so my family’s nickname for me is Cow or Cow Cow,” Tan says. “We saw a lot of dairy cows grazing along the AV1 trail, and my family got a kick out of calling them my cousins whenever we saw them.”
“The Europeans we encountered were very unfamiliar with the existence of Asian Americans,” Tan says. “We hiked during a very busy time of the year in the Dolomites, when mostly every rifugio is booked. The majority of the people we encountered were also foreigners of various nationalities, but we only ever encountered around six other people of color during the trip. It was a very stark contrast coming from Queens, New York, which is the most ethnically diverse place I’ve ever lived. This lack of racial diversity is not an uncommon occurrence in my experiences hiking in the US, but my self-awareness was perhaps amplified by being in another country. Throughout the trip, I became hypervigilant to racial microaggressions, which became very draining. Despite that, hiking the AV1 trail was still an overwhelmingly positive experience for me.”
“My family didn’t travel often when I was a child, but when we did, we mostly took road trips around the US. My earliest road trip with my family was to Yellowstone as a 2-year-old, where there was photo evidence of me trying to run away while a family photo was being taken,” Tan says.
Another memorable trip was driving from Minnesota to New York City when Tan was 11. “I loved [New York] but can only remember certain moments, mostly of me being tired and hot,” Tan says. “I remember that people were selling turtles on top of plastic water bottles on the street in Chinatown in the blazing sun, and I think I also had a meltdown on Canal Street when my mom refused to buy an expensive New York City zip-up hoodie that I wanted so badly. I didn’t get the hoodie in the end.”
For Tan, hiking in the Dolomites required the same kind of physical and emotional persistence as a long road trip, and the 11-day trail had its highs and lows. “Highs being the most gorgeous views I’ve ever seen, and the lows being hiking up steep trails while hungry and tired. I was pleasantly surprised by how well we all got along, despite the challenging hike,” Tan says.
Adri Tan is a photographer and zine artist in New York. They created a series of zines about their Dolomites hiking experience.
