Tofana di Rozes
Peak · 3225 m · Dolomites
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Tofana di Rozes forms a three-edged pyramid above Passo Falzarego, its sheer south face making it the most climbed peak in the Tofane group and one of the best known in the Dolomites. Paul Grohmann and three Ampezzo guides reached the summit first in 1864. The Lipella via ferrata, long and strenuous, loops more than halfway around the mountain on its way to the top.
In February 1916, Italian troops led by Lieutenant Luigi Malvezzi began tunneling into the Castelletto, advancing as much as 30 feet a day until the shaft ran 500 metres into the mountain. They packed the end with explosive and detonated it at 3:30 am on 11 July 1916, with King Victor Emmanuel III and General Luigi Cadorna watching from a distance. That tunnel survives as the dark, headlamp-lit stretch of the Lipella via ferrata, named for Giovanni Lipella, an Italian soldier who died on the mountain on 15 June 1918 and was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valour. The south face itself waited until 1901 for its first route, when the guides Antonio Dimai, Agostino Verzi and Giovanni Siorpaes led two Hungarian baronesses, Rolanda and Ilona Eötvös, up a winding line across nearly a kilometre of rock that is still climbed today.
What you see
West of the summit, separated from the main face by a steep rocky gully, the narrow spire of the Castelletto rises some 700 feet from the mountain's flank.
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