History of mountaineering
To the north of the Valtellina furrow stands the Masino-Bregaglia Group, one of the most beautiful, and therefore most renowned, environments in the entire Alpine area. Bordered by four valleys, Val Masino, Valmalenco, Val Bregaglia and Val Codera, from a geological point of view the mountain range is a gigantic granite island that rises hundreds of meters from mere pastures suspended on deep valleys on the southern slope and emerges from tormented glacial bodies on the northern one.
It stretches into a chain of peaks that looks like a castle to the dreamy eye: towers of various shapes connected by battlements with crenellated ramparts, cusps and pinnacles emerging from the sharp ridge, sharp blades leaning against huge walls. This unparalleled sequence of gray and rugged peaks goes down towards the east until it joins the rocks of the Monte Disgrazia Group, whose reddish-brown hue, due to the oxidation of the green serpentines of which the massif is made up, introduces a new world different, from the lunar aspect.
It is not surprising that these structures have been involved in mountaineering exploration. Peaks, walls, pillars, ridges and gullies of these mountains have attracted since the mid-nineteenth century, thanks to their hostile appearance, the competitive attention of the most famous representatives of international alpinism, from E.S. Kennedy who won the Disgrazia in 1862, Riccardo Cassin who in 1937 violated the dreaded north-east wall of Pizzo Badile, to get to the very strong Czechs that in the 80s opened one after the other streets until then considered impossible. It is no coincidence that Walter Bonatti, a Lombardy climber linked to countless companies in the Alps and outside Europe, once had the opportunity to observe:
“On the big occasions we were aiming towards Val Masino: it was the university, there we graduated Mountain climbers”.
From a mountaineering and hiking point of view, the southern slope of the Masino Bregaglia group, compared to the one facing Switzerland and a protagonist of recent upheavals, presents a more domestic and sunny aspect. Already towards the first quarter of the twentieth century, the network of trails, largely made by the Milanese section of the Italian Alpine Club, reached practically every corner of the valley, tracing and improving largely how much the millennial work of man had patiently realized. The way was also opened to a new mountaineering season, in which, conquered by now the great peaks, we could devote ourselves to the discovery of the single walls or those structures that seemed placed there to challenge the resourcefulness of climbers.
Today, thanks to this historical value, even the most tranquil trekker can practice a hike that in addition to satisfying the physical pleasure of walking in a spectacular environment, allows you to find the names of great alpinists from Giusto Gervasutti to Mario Dell’Oro, from Alfonso Vinci to Vasco Taldo and Nando Nusdeo, just to stay with the most famous only of the great era of classic alpinism. They embellish with their silent but tangible presence the beauty of certain edges and certain walls that even an eye not accustomed to reasoning in terms of supports and holds is not without notice. Behind these names and many others there are stories of people who have dedicated their best resources to invent paths on the rocks, driven by a passion that is not different from that which guides an artist to be captured by the creative inspiration and make visible to all what was at first was impressed in his thoughts.
Mountaineering, but not only! The muleteers of service to the valleys that frame the Group and the paths that climb up to reach the refuges and bivouacs to support the tourist-mountaineering activity, now that the pastures are almost abandoned, are traveled annually by thousands of people who in their approach to these environments they try to get out of the patterns of everyday life to experience new and different sensations.
Photogallery
