Climbing the Via Ferrata

In Italy’s Dolomites, a Hike Through World War I History

  • By Matt Mossman
  • Photographs by Joe Wilcox
  • Smithsonian.com, August 20, 2008, Subscribe
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Piccolo Lagazuoi
Piccolo Lagazuoi as seen from Cinque Torre, an Italian position overlooking the front line (Joe Wilcox)

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Via Ferrata cable on Giuseppe Olivieri

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From my lofty perch 8,900 feet above sea level in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, the view is spectacular. Towering peaks frame an idyllic Alpine valley, with deep-green pine forests and golden foothills.

It’s hard to believe that just 90 or so years ago, during World War I, these mountains were wracked by violence: explosions blew off summits and shrapnel pierced tree trunks. Even now, the ground is littered with bits of barbed wire and other debris from the conflict.

Thanks to a network of fixed climbing routes installed during the war, this breathtaking vista and history-rich area is accessible to anyone, not just experienced climbers. The routes, rigged with cables and ropes, were developed by troops as supply lines, to haul gear up the mountains. After the war, mountaineers appropriated them, creating what’s known as the Via Ferrata, or “Iron Way.”

My climbing partner, Joe Wilcox, and I chose September, the end of the climbing season, to explore the routes. We based ourselves in Cortina d’Ampezzo, a ski village with cobbled streets, small inns and chic shops—and the setting for the 1956 Winter Olympics and the 1963 movie The Pink Panther.

The gear list for climbing the Via Ferrata is short: a waist harness, helmet and Y-shaped rig of short ropes. The tops of the rig end in carabiners—metal rings with spring-hinged sides that open and close—which clip onto a permanent metal cable bolted to the mountain. The cable is the climber’s lifeline. The carabiner-free end ties to the harness.

Electrical storms kept us from climbing the first day, so we took a cable car up a nearby peak, 9,061-foot Lagazuoi.  When Italy declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire in May 1915, this border area of South Tyrol was under Austro-Hungarian rule.  To more easily defend the region, Austrian troops moved from valley towns like Cortina to a line of fortifications on Lagazuoi and other peaks, forming the “Dolomite front.”   Both sides built supply lines up the mountains.

On the night of October 18, 1915, Italian soldiers scaled Lagazoui’s east flank to a ledge midway up the mountain. Under the ledge, the soldiers were protected from Austrian guns above and able to fire on Austrian trenches below. The Austrians tried dangling soldiers from the top of the mountain armed with grenades to toss on the Italians encamped on the ledge, with little success. With both sides stymied by not being able to directly reach the other, the war went underground.

From the summit of Lagazuoi, Joe and I walked east to a tunnel complex inside the mountain dug by Italian soldiers during the war. Both the Austrians and the Italians tunneled, to create bunkers, lookout positions and mine shafts under enemy bunkers, which would be filled with dynamite and detonated. Five major explosions rocked Lagazuoi from 1915 to 1917, turning its south face into an angled jumble of scree, wood scraps, rusted barbed wire and the occasional human bone.


From my lofty perch 8,900 feet above sea level in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, the view is spectacular. Towering peaks frame an idyllic Alpine valley, with deep-green pine forests and golden foothills.

It’s hard to believe that just 90 or so years ago, during World War I, these mountains were wracked by violence: explosions blew off summits and shrapnel pierced tree trunks. Even now, the ground is littered with bits of barbed wire and other debris from the conflict.

Thanks to a network of fixed climbing routes installed during the war, this breathtaking vista and history-rich area is accessible to anyone, not just experienced climbers. The routes, rigged with cables and ropes, were developed by troops as supply lines, to haul gear up the mountains. After the war, mountaineers appropriated them, creating what’s known as the Via Ferrata, or “Iron Way.”

My climbing partner, Joe Wilcox, and I chose September, the end of the climbing season, to explore the routes. We based ourselves in Cortina d’Ampezzo, a ski village with cobbled streets, small inns and chic shops—and the setting for the 1956 Winter Olympics and the 1963 movie The Pink Panther.

The gear list for climbing the Via Ferrata is short: a waist harness, helmet and Y-shaped rig of short ropes. The tops of the rig end in carabiners—metal rings with spring-hinged sides that open and close—which clip onto a permanent metal cable bolted to the mountain. The cable is the climber’s lifeline. The carabiner-free end ties to the harness.

Electrical storms kept us from climbing the first day, so we took a cable car up a nearby peak, 9,061-foot Lagazuoi.  When Italy declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire in May 1915, this border area of South Tyrol was under Austro-Hungarian rule.  To more easily defend the region, Austrian troops moved from valley towns like Cortina to a line of fortifications on Lagazuoi and other peaks, forming the “Dolomite front.”   Both sides built supply lines up the mountains.

On the night of October 18, 1915, Italian soldiers scaled Lagazoui’s east flank to a ledge midway up the mountain. Under the ledge, the soldiers were protected from Austrian guns above and able to fire on Austrian trenches below. The Austrians tried dangling soldiers from the top of the mountain armed with grenades to toss on the Italians encamped on the ledge, with little success. With both sides stymied by not being able to directly reach the other, the war went underground.

From the summit of Lagazuoi, Joe and I walked east to a tunnel complex inside the mountain dug by Italian soldiers during the war. Both the Austrians and the Italians tunneled, to create bunkers, lookout positions and mine shafts under enemy bunkers, which would be filled with dynamite and detonated. Five major explosions rocked Lagazuoi from 1915 to 1917, turning its south face into an angled jumble of scree, wood scraps, rusted barbed wire and the occasional human bone.

Next we headed west across the rubble-strewn peak to the Austrian tunnel complex (enemy positions on Lagazuoi were as close as 90 feet).  The Austrians built narrower and shorter tunnels than the Italians, both here and elsewhere in the South Tyrol. The Italians typically chiseled upward, letting gravity dispose of the rubble, then loaded the tops of the tunnels with dynamite to blow up the Austrian bunkers above. The Austrians dug downward, lifting out the chopped rock, to explode dynamite in a mine shaft that would intercept an Italian tunnel heading upward. On Lagazuoi, outside an Austrian tunnel, we uncovered rusted coils of iron cable, the kind still found on the Via Ferrata.

The next day, the weather clear, we headed out to climb the Via Ferrata at last. The route was three miles east of Lagazuoi on 8,900-foot Punta Anna. We clipped our ropes onto a cable and began the ascent, a mixture of hiking and climbing.  The cable is bolted into the rock face about every ten feet, so at each bolt, we paused to remove our carabiners and move them to the next section of cable. 

The first rule of climbing the Via Ferrata is preserving a constant connection with the cable. This means moving the carabiners one at a time. Up we went, slowly, around the ragged cone of Punta Anna, until we reached a vista overlooking a valley. On our left, the village of Cortina, at the foot of a snowy massif, looked like a jumble of dollhouses. Straight ahead were a cluster of craggy spires called Cinque Torri. On the right was the peak Col di Lana, site of one of the area’s most famous World War I battles.

Like Lagazuoi, 8,100-foot Col di Lana was held by Austria at the start of the war. In early 1916, the Italians decided to dynamite Austria off the mountain. They spent three months carving a tunnel that climbed at a 15-degree angle inside the mountain. By mid-March, Austrian troops in their bunkers atop the mountain could hear chiseling and hammering beneath them.  Instead of abandoning their post, Austrian troops were commanded to stay.  Military strategists feared that retreating could open up a hole in the frontline, leading to a larger breach. But, says local historian and author Michael Wachtler, there was also a mind-set on both sides that troops should stay on summits regardless of casualties.

“The big decisions were taken far away in Vienna, and there the deaths of more or fewer soldiers was not so important,” says Wachtler. “The opinion of the supreme command was to hold positions until the last survivor.”

On April 14, 1916, the noise finally stopped. Italy’s tunnel was by then about 160 feet long and ended 12 feet below the Austrian bunker. There was nothing to do but wait—it became a matter of which Austrian troops would be on duty when the summit exploded.

It took Italian troops three day to load five and a half tons of nitroglycerin into the underground shaft. When it was finally detonated at 11:35 p.m. on April 17, one hundred men died. The mountain’s summit was now a crater and about 90 feet lower than before. Inside the Austrian bunker, 60 troops remained, prepared to fight. But after realizing fumes would kill them if they stayed, they surrendered.

By the time the Dolamite front was abandoned in late 1917, some 18,000 men had died on the Col di Lana, according to Wachtler. About two-thirds of these deaths were caused not by explosives but by avalanches. A record snowfall in 1916 dumped as much as 12 feet of snow. Tunneling inside the mountains by both the Austrians and Italians served to increase the risk of avalanches. As two enemies fought to capture a mountain, it was ultimately the force of the mountain itself that inflicted the battles’ greatest casualties.


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Comments (10)

Living into this present age, I recall the stories my father told me about his time in the WWI during his duties as a soldier in the Italian Army. He fought in the battles of the Carsso, the Piave, and the Tagliamento, and other skirmishes with the Austro-Hungarian and German Armies during the many months that these armies occupied the homeland of northeast Italy. The battle of the Piave was on a par with that of the battle of Verdun. That war too was a massive war and it's all too easy to forget about those who fought and died and the accomplishments of those who participated in WWI. My memory can conjure up just a few of the episode my father once told to me but given some time I may recall a few more. I followed in my father's footsteps by joining in the forces of WWII with the U.S. Navy. Norge J. Santin

Posted by Norge J. santin on September 28,2008 | 03:06 PM

Amazing pictures! Interesting history. Thanks.

Posted by Ruth on September 23,2008 | 07:56 PM

it was quite interesting reading

Posted by bill on September 8,2008 | 12:47 AM

my father was part of the 1 world war,in artillery outfit,my uncle giorgio varchetta was aboard a( mas) boat under commander luigi rizzo when they sunk the battleship st,st efano im the bermuda port,i was in world war2 with the 88 mechanizes cavllry recon troop 88 div, based in the spessa castle near cormons.in a visit to italy 1978 we rivisitedthe castle and the national military italian redipuglia museum where my uncle giorgio and commsnder rizzo posed for a picture after the sinking of the battleship st stefano.i was born in brooklyn and returned to it ,lived there to 1961 and moved to seaford were i reside now.your story was very interesting and reminded me of some memories. gennaro grimaldi

Posted by gennaro grimaldi on September 6,2008 | 10:02 AM

I was fascinated by this story. My father was a young soldier in the Italian army at the time of this struggle, but he seldom spoke to me about WW I. There is a lot I don't know about this period of his life, but I do know he was badly wounded and spent a year and a half in captivity before escaping. My mother confided to me that "Pop" often would awaken at night in the early years of their marriage screaming at some horror that haunted him. I'm sure the tunnels of Lagazuoi had their share of horrors as well.

Posted by John Del Cecato on September 5,2008 | 06:12 PM

Thank you for this fine description of a forgotten element in a forgotten war. I am pass President of The Great War Society (www.worldwar1.com/tgws/) in which we specialize in all aspects of a war which is still influencing our current times. I climbed the Dolomites when I was in Italy in the early 60's which at that time had little interest in WWI. Since then, my facination with the war led me to our Society. The Italian front is the least known of the conflict and your description illustrates the incredible odds in fighting not only with a human enemy but a more powerful one, nature. Thanks for the information.

Posted by Sqlvatore Compagno on September 5,2008 | 01:03 PM

Beautifully written, delivers a great sense of place and history.

Posted by Diane Rooney on September 5,2008 | 11:48 AM

Nice digging! What a fascinating front line, reminds me of India and Pakistan in Kashmir today. I wonder why Italian's chiseled up and Austrians dug down?

Posted by Justin Nobel on September 4,2008 | 08:14 PM

My grand-father fought during these days in the Dolimiti, on the Italian side, and I can still remember the stories, and enjoy the photographs. Then in my years when in summer we went in the same Dolomiti, campings and around the mountain trails I could find traces of their battles. How many memories !

Posted by Fiorenza Albert-Howard on September 4,2008 | 05:44 PM

A beautifully crafted, stirring piece of writing.

Posted by Danny Glasner on September 2,2008 | 03:09 PM



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