Brenta Dolomites

The best-known peaks

• Cima Tosa3,136 m
• Cima Brenta3,151 m
• Crozzon di Brenta3,130 m
• Campanile Basso2,877 m
• Cima Grostè2,901 m

Elevations from the map (OpenStreetMap).

What the group is like

The Dolomites UNESCO Foundation describes the Brenta peaks as majestic structures, shaped by erosion into spires and pinnacles. The dominant rock is the Dolomia Principale, in compact beds. Where fractures cross, the Campanil Basso, the Campanil Lungo and the Torre Vallesinella were born; small differences between one layer and the next formed the ledges, the rock balconies along which the Via delle Bocchette runs.

The rock lets water through. The Adamello Brenta park explains that water disappears underground and creates karst features such as the Vallesinella waterfalls, and that the group’s glaciers have shrunk to small patches.

The highest peak and the first ascents

Cima Tosa, first climbed, according to Visit Trentino, on 20 July 1865 by a party led by Giuseppe Loss, was then considered the highest peak in the group. Visit Trentino still gives it 3,173 metres on one page, but on another writes that after the ice on its summit melted, the latest surveys give first place to Cima Brenta, 3,151 metres. The map on this page, built on OpenStreetMap data, says the same.

Cima Brenta was climbed in 1871 by Freshfield and Tuckett, whose name lives on in a hut. The Campanil Basso gave climbers a hard time for decades, until two climbers from Innsbruck, Ampferer and Berger, reached the top. Today the Trentino mountain guides’ association offers the Via delle Normali, which links 10 of the group’s peaks in 6 stages.

Where to start

To the west the bases are Madonna di Campiglio and Pinzolo; to the east Molveno, on its lake, and Andalo; Visit Trentino also mentions San Lorenzo in Banale. From Campiglio the cable car goes up to the Grostè Pass, where the Via delle Bocchette begins. In Val di Non lies Lake Tovel.

For walkers who skip the via ferratas, there are trails linking the group’s huts, and the Dolomiti di Brenta Trek circles the whole massif over several days. The full picture is in the Brenta Dolomites guide.

The Via delle Bocchette and the huts

The Madonna di Campiglio tourist board describes it as a large network of protected paths covering the whole massif, along airy ledges. It crosses the group from north to south, always above 2,000 metres, in five or more days: from the Grostè the Benini ferrata, the Bocchette Alte to the Tuckett and Alimonta huts, then the Bocchette Centrali below the Campanil Basso, the Tosa Pedrotti hut, the Brentari ferrata, the Agostini hut, the Castiglioni route, the Dodici Apostoli hut and the Brentei hut.

Among the climbers who searched for natural passages from one hut to the next, Visit Trentino recalls, was Bruno Detassis. You need a helmet, harness and via ferrata kit: the rest is in the via ferrata guide.

Park, Geopark and UNESCO World Heritage

Since 26 June 2009 the Brenta Dolomites have been System 9 of the Dolomites UNESCO World Heritage Site: 11,135 hectares. They lie in the Adamello Brenta Nature Park, created by the Province of Trento with provincial law 18 of 1988 and now covering 620.50 square kilometres, which also includes the Adamello and the Presanella. Since 2008 the park has been part of the Geoparks network, and since 2015 it has been a UNESCO Global Geopark. In German the group is called Brenta-Dolomiten.