Cima Brenta Alta

Cima Brenta Alta reaches 2,960 metres and belongs to the Catena degli Sfulmini, that line of rocky peaks shaped like needles or towers which stretches from north to south in the Brenta group. Seen from the north-east it looks like an enormous block of rock, and with its north-east face of about six hundred metres it dominates the whole area; like many peaks in the Brenta it is made of solid dolomite, which is the reason climbers seek it out.

The first ascent took place on 19 August 1880 and was made by the Trentino mountaineers Annibale Apollonio and Giorgio Rossaro, guided by the brothers Bonifacio and Matteo Nicolussi of Molveno. The two names recur often in the first ascents of the Brenta, and here the source says what elsewhere remains implicit: they were brothers.

The normal route is still that of the first climbers, and starts from the Pedrotti hut, at 2,496 metres: you follow path 318 to the Bocca di Brenta, then north to a chimney, and climb with easy scrambling over terraces of scree and the ledges typical of the Dolomia Principale, in about two hours. The serious routes are another matter and begin in the 1920s, with the south edge by Miori and Prati in 1926 and the west face by Agostini and Steger in 1928; in 1972 Anghileri, Gogna and Rava climbed the north-east edge, placing eighty-five pitons on a vertical route of 470 metres.