Toblinger Knoten - Torre di Toblin
Peak · 2564 m · Dolomites
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Toblinger Knoten is a sheer rock tower behind Rifugio Locatelli in the Tre Cime Nature Park, first climbed in 1889 by W. Eckert and guide Michael Innerkofler. It held strategic importance in the 1915-1918 mountain war, and its old military paths now form via ferrata routes, including the Leiternsteig with 17 ladders through a north-face chimney. The summit faces the Tre Cime's north walls.
The pre-war border between Austria-Hungary and Italy ran just south of the mountain, through the Tre Cime to Monte Paterno, and when fighting reached the Dolomites in 1915 Austrian troops fortified both of the mountain's shoulders. A bastion and cavern above the west side was later named the Roth-Galerie, for General Josef Roth, and an outpost on the east side, the Adlerwache, the eagle watch, looked out over the whole Bodenalpe above the Fischleintal. In April 1917 the Austrians dug 300 metres of tunnel through the snow to the Sextenstein to attack the Italian lines below, and held their ground here until the Italian army withdrew from the Dolomites front that November. Climbers on the Leiternsteig today still call the crux squeeze inside the summit chimney the Zwergentod, dwarf's death.
What you see
A First World War tunnel cut into the rock near the via ferrata's start frames the classic photograph north to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo.
Practical
The via ferrata starts behind Rifugio Locatelli and takes about 45 minutes to the summit; the descent follows a different line down the north-east flank, the Feldkurat Hops-Steig, rather than reversing the ladders.
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