Rifugio Tosa Tommaso Pedrotti

At the Bocca di Brenta, where the Bocchette Centrali begin: this is where the SAT built its very first hut.

Rifugio Tosa Tommaso Pedrotti sits at 2,491 metres just below the Bocca di Brenta, the pass that cuts the group in two. There are actually two huts, side by side: the old Rifugio Tosa, built in 1881, the first hut in the history of the SAT, and the Pedrotti, the larger building that came later. Few places in Trentino tell the story of mountaineering so well: the late nineteenth-century exploration of the Brenta set out from here, and from here you look straight at the Brenta Alta and the Campanil Basso.

There are two classic ways up. From Molveno you climb the Val delle Seghe past Rifugio Selvata: long, about four hours, but with no equipped sections. From Vallesinella, above Madonna di Campiglio, you pass Rifugio Brentei instead and cross the Bocca di Brenta, with a steep final stretch and some fixed gear: more spectacular, but it wants a sure foot. Either way it's a real climb, to be tackled fit and with the right weather.

The hut is the starting point of the Bocchette Centrali, the most celebrated stretch of the Via delle Bocchette: ledges, ladders and suspended balconies circling the Campanil Basso. That's why in summer it's full of people in helmet and harness from breakfast onwards. It has 120 beds plus a winter room, opens roughly from late June to late September, and is run by Franco Nicolini, mountain guide and climber at home in half the world's ranges. Book early: it's a compulsory stop on Brenta traverses and the beds go fast.

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