Climbing the Tofana di Rozes' Dimai-Eötvös, Dolomites, Italy

How can a grown, educated man, be obsessed by a mountain? This is what I have experienced and want to describe. It is a mountain I know well, the Tofana di Rozes. I have been going to Cortina since I was a small child, and I have been taking countless hikes around it. It cannot fail to impress any passer-by: you see it as soon as you enter the valley of Cortina, towering as the leftmost of the most famous massif in the valley (the 3 Tofane). You see it on your right when you drive towards the Falzarego pass, and its huge mass is almost hanging over you. But then you can see it from anywhere if you rise high enough in the Dolomites: it is simply one of the biggest in that very remarkable group of mountains. It is so fascinating because it is so big and at the same time it is so well defined, detached from the others. It stands on its own.

I do not consider myself a mountaineer. I love nature and the mountains, I love hiking, and I love climbing. But I am not a mountaineer because I do not have the confidence and the sense of orientation that a true mountain person has when hiking and climbing. I do not feel capable of safely finding my way round in areas that are difficult and/or risky and that I do not know well. This lack of confidence most likely comes from my taking up serious hiking and climbing only as an adult, maybe 40 years old or so, but it has not prevented me from enjoying mountains to the full, following the lead of mountain guides. And this has a very important benefit added to it: “going outside with guides” (meaning going to hike or climb with them — I am using here a wonderful phrase I once heard from a very old and very smart woman of this valley) combines a number of different experiences: the physical experience of the effort it takes to reach your target, nature’s contemplation and the conversation with the guide.

The mountain guides I know are a combination of wisdom and experience, subtle psychological skills, and a fascinating display of local culture. Most of all, they are your guardian angels, they make sure you complete your excursions safely, they encourage you all the way to the top. You become bound to them by one of the best kinds of friendships: the friendship the bounds together the teacher and the student, the protégée and the protector, the people who have same passions, though practiced at different levels.

Though I have known Rozes since I was a child, I never thought of climbing it. I remember vividly when the idea was planted in me. I was on the top of one of the 5 Torri, a group of small peaks that is the training ground for climbers in Cortina. I had just completed the Quarta Bassa route (UIAA IV or 5.5), one of the easiest routes in that group of mountains, a typical ascent for the beginners, with Davide Alberti, a skilled guide. As I was gazing around with satisfaction and some apprehension (it is the nature of mountain peaks to be sloping down, often very steeply, in all directions), Davide points to me the huge mass of Rozes, which, though on the other side of the valley, dwarfs the 5 Torri. The huge southern face is the one that you see from the Quarta Bassa. He said: “A guy like you should climb the Rozes on the Dimai-Eötvös (UIAA IV+ or 5.6), a classic route of the beginning of last century,” and he pointed to me the way the route covered the entire southern face of the mountain, its most imposing side. I was frankly flattered that a guide who had just seen me climbing and knew my (limited) skills and stamina, would suggest that I would be able to complete such a task: the route he was suggesting me was roughly 20 times longer the one we just completed!