Averau
Peak · 2648 m · Dolomites
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Averau rises to 2648 m beside Nuvolau and Ra Gusela above the Cinque Torri, first climbed by Austrian mountaineer Richard Issler in 1874. Italian troops built an observatory on its summit during the First World War to watch the enemy lines below. A short via ferrata now leads to the top, with views stretching to Pelmo, Civetta, Antelao and Sorapis.
The refuge below the summit, built in 1903 by the Finazzer family as the Nuvolaupasshütte, became an Italian army headquarters when soldiers occupied it in 1916 and stripped it of its roof and windows in the fighting that followed. King Vittorio Emanuele III spent a night at a barracks on the mountain's flank in July of that year. Three infantrymen had reached the top on 1 October 1915 to build the observatory, wiring it with a telephone line, an electric reflector and optical signaling gear that relayed Austro-Hungarian troop movements and artillery coordinates in Morse code. Climbers kept returning to the rock in peacetime: the Camino Est route went up in 1910, a west-face chimney followed in 1925, and the Via Astaldi of 1942 became the first route on Averau to reach the sixth grade of difficulty.
Practical
The via ferrata starts near Rifugio Scoiattoli, reached by the 5 Torri chairlift; a 2024 renovation split what had been a single crowded up-and-down approach into separate ascent and descent lines.
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