Italy
Tre Cime di Lavaredo
Three vertical rock towers punching through alpine cloud, their shadows sweeping across scree fields.
The towers appear without warning: sheer walls of pale limestone punching five hundred metres out of the scree, their shadows moving across the valley like sundial hands. The air carries nothing but wind on rock. Cloud wraps the summits and dissolves again within minutes.
The Tre Cime di Lavaredo top out at 2,999 metres on the Cima Grande, flanked by the Cima Ovest and Cima Piccola on the border of South Tyrol and the Veneto. A ten-kilometre circuit rounds the whole group from Rifugio Auronzo in three to four hours, passing Rifugio Locatelli, whose terrace faces the north walls head-on. Those faces, vertical for half a kilometre, have been a benchmark of climbing ambition since Paul Grohmann first stood on the Cima Grande in 1869. The toll road up runs on advance reservation, which is half the reason dawn here still belongs to walkers who stayed the night.
Solo
Walk the loop at whatever pace the cloud allows, linger at the huts and return by the slower shoulder of the massif.
Couple
Overnight at a rifugio and the towers change colour twice for you, at sunset and again at dawn.
Friends
The circuit warms a group up; via ferrata routes on the surrounding peaks add the exposure some will want.
- The Cima Grande reaches 2,999 metres, one metre short of the number everyone rounds it to.
- A ten-kilometre circuit rounds all three towers in under four hours of high walking.
- Rifugio Locatelli's terrace faces the north walls straight on; sunrise turns them copper.
- Paul Grohmann made the first ascent of the Cima Grande in 1869, opening an arena that never closed.
Rifugio kitchens send out canederli in steaming broth, dumplings that earn their weight at altitude.
Speck with dark bread and mountain butter is the default packed lunch of the Sexten Dolomites.
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