Walk around the Tre Cime at first light

The Tre Cime di Lavaredo are three towers of rock in the Dolomites, close to three thousand meters high, and a broad path runs all the way around them. The loop is about ten kilometers, it climbs a little, and it takes a few hours.

The start is in the half dark from the hut under the peaks, with a headlamp that is needed for about twenty minutes. Then the sky comes up and the path does the rest.

At the saddle on the far side all three peaks come into view at once, in the first light of the day. This is the picture, with everybody in it slightly out of breath. Breakfast is back at the hut.

Paul Grohmann, a climber from Vienna, stood on top of the tallest of them on 21 August 1869, eight days after his first ascent of the Sassolungo. Forty-six years later the front line between Italy and Austria-Hungary ran past this path, and the mountain guide Sepp Innerkofler was killed near the summit of the Paternkofel, the peak beside it, on 4 July 1915.