TRENTO – In the history of mountaineering, some of the greatest moments and most spectacular ascents have taken place in Italy’s Dolomites range. In the middle of the 1800s the first foreign visitors started writing travel journals extolling the area as an exceptional destination and celebrating its breathtaking alpine beauty. Although the first official climbers were English and Austrian local shepherds and hunters had naturally already climbed many of the Dolomite peaks.
At first the visiting climbers brought along foreign guides from places were alpinism was already well established, but they soon turned to the local guides with greater knowledge of the mountains. This led to a new profession in the Dolomites, the alpine guide, giving local men much-needed jobs and helping many to escape poverty. Along with the new opportunities being created for work in the developing tourism trade, this led a new era for the people living in the Dolomites. The alpine guides also became accomplished climbers in their own right whose fame sometimes eclipsed their clients’. The first alpine rescue teams set up in this period still form the backbone of today’s mountain rescue organisations. Many alpine guide groups were named after animals: the Cortina Squirrels, the Gardena Catores (an alpine bird), the San Martino Eagles and the Fassa Ciamores (chamois).
The event that marks the start of alpinism in the Dolomites was the first successful recorded ascent on the Pelmo summit made by the English climber John Ball in 1857. Austrian climber Paul Grohmann dominated the scene afterwards opening up routes to many Dolomite peaks, often accompanied by local guides from the Ampezzo valley. The pioneers in the Brenta Dolomites were the English climbers Douglas Freshfield and Francis Fox Tuckett, who crossed the Bocca di Brenta in 1864. The following year the Trentino alpinist Giuseppe Loss climbed the Tosa Peak, the highest in the Brenta Dolomites. The local alpinism scene soon led to the founding of the Dolomites branch of the Italian Alpine Club (CAI), with the 1868 creation of the Agordo Alpine Society, and the Trentino Alpine Society (SAT) founded in 1872.
This first exploration phase of Dolomite mountaineering finished around 1890 when about 400 of the most important climbing routes had been opened. In the meantime the Alpine clubs had set up a number of refuges connected by a network of paths, leading to sustained growth in the alpine tourism phenomena. Between the 1800s and 1900s alpinism spread all over the Dolomites; this was the “classic” period of Dolomite mountaineering peopled by historic guides like Antonio Dimai, Tita Piaz, Angelo Dibona, and Austrian and German climbers Georg Leusch, Hans Duelfer and Paul Preuss.
In the years just before the First World War climbers started using new techniques including piton spikes and snap-hooks, leading to heated disputes between advocates of pure climbing and those using the new equipment, a debate which still crops up occasionally even today. In the 1920’s the so-called Munich school was formed, including top climbers like Emil Solleder and Willo Welzenbach. Welzenbach created the standard numerical rating system (Grades I to VI) based on his experience with hundreds of routes in both the western and eastern Alps. Italy’s top climbers of the period include Emilio Comici, Alvise Andrich, Ettore Castiglioni, and Riccardo Cassin. The most well known climbers after the Second World War were Lino Lacedelli, Luigi Ghedina, Lothar Brandler, Dietrich Hase, Cesare Maestri and Armando Aste. In the 1970s there was talk of a seventh level grade for climbers like Reinhold Messner, one of Italy’s most exceptional mountaineers.
Meanwhile a new kind of mountaineering started in the Dolomites, sports climbing, and climbers began talking about eighth, ninth and tenth grades. An important figure in contemporary Dolomite mountaineering is the Fruili climber, sculptor and author Mauro Corona, with 200 climbs higher than sixth level to his credit, mostly in the Oltrepiave and Friuli Dolomites. This June nine Dolomites mountain groups were added to the United Nations World Heritage List as a serial natural site for their exceptional beauty, superlative natural phenomena and outstanding examples representing major stages of the earth's history.
