Cimon della Pala
Peak · 3184 m · Dolomites
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Riders grinding up Passo Rolle spend the last kilometres under a peak the Dolomites call their own Matterhorn, il Cervino delle Dolomiti. Cimon della Pala is not even the highest of the Pale di San Martino group, since Cima Vezzana beats it by a few metres, but its slender point is the one that dominates the landscape.
The first ascent came on 3 June 1870, when the Englishman Edward Whitwell and his guides Santo Siorpaes and Christian Lauener climbed the Travignolo Glacier on the north side, after the Austrian alpinist Paul Grohmann had turned back from a vertical wall on the south approach from Passo della Rosetta. The north face still draws serious alpinists: Emanuele Andreozzi and Matteo Faletti opened a demanding 900-metre mixed ice-and-rock route there, Elements of Life, on 1 April 2021. On the south side, the Bolver Lugli via ferrata climbs to the Fiamme Gialle bivouac at 3,005 metres. Riders reach the peak's foot by climbing Passo Rolle, a 20 km ascent with Cimon della Pala and Cima Vezzana looming over the final kilometres.
What you see
The summit's narrow rock pyramid dominates the classic view from Passo Rolle; the pala in its name means blade or paddle in the local dialect, a nod to that same profile.
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