The first ascent of K2 in 1954 marked one of the high points in the history of Ampezzo mountaineering, but of course the story did not end there. In the years that followed, successive generations of climbers continued to explore and reinterpret the walls of the Dolomites, .while techniques, equipment and, above all, the very …
The war abruptly interrupted the first chapter in the story of the Scoiattoli, founded in Cortina only in 1939, but it did not put an end to their passion for climbing. Those wartime experiences would play an important part in the development of post-war mountaineering in Cortina. Many of them were little more than boys …
When Angelo Dibona began his career as a mountain guide in the early years of the twentieth century, many of the great summits of the Dolomites had already been climbed. The challenge was no longer simply to reach the top, but to find new lines, tackle more difficult walls and confront problems that only a …
Carlo Gandini remembered a very different image from the one we might expect when thinking of one of the greatest climbers of his time. As a boy, walking home from school, he would often see a quiet old man sitting on the benches in Cortina, entirely unassuming, smoking his pipe. It was his friends who …
Antonio Dimai and Dolomites mountaineering history After exploring the great pioneering ascents of Paul Grohmann and Cortina’s first mountain guides, I would like to continue this journey through the history of mountaineering in the Dolomites. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the great summits had been climbed and it seemed there was little …
Today, it is difficult to imagine the Dolomites without marked trails, mountain huts, via ferratas and hundreds of climbing routes. The mountains have names, their elevations are known precisely, their walls have been climbed in every direction, and many routes first opened more than a century ago are now part of the mountaineering tradition. In …