The path regained, a well-marked zigzag led us to the broad crest of the ridge dividing Val Brenta from the Vallesinella. There is probably no spot in the neighbourhood—not even excepting Monte Spinale—which commands so general, and at the same time so picturesque, a view. On three sides the ground falls rapidly towards Val Nambino and its tributary glens. Full in front of us stood the defiant tower of the Cima Tosa, with the two Boccas on either side of it. We could trace every step of our ascent to the Bocca dei Camozzi, an expedition in some respects even more singular than the Bocca di Brenta, and one which will in time become well known to travellers. Beyond the valley rose the comparatively tame forms of the granite range. Nearest to us was my old conquest, the Presanella, the highest summit of the whole country; further south, the upper snows of the Lares and Lobbia glaciers spread in a great white curtain between the Carè Alto and Adamello. Behind Monte Spinale the circle of mountains was completed by the dolomites of Val Selva.
Our path forked on the crest, one branch descending to a châlet perched on a shelf immediately overlooking the green plain at the head of Val Brenta. From this alp a footpath of some kind leads down to the track of the Bocca—a fact to be borne in mind by future travellers who wish to see in a day as much as possible of the scenery of the dolomites without crossing the pass to Molveno. We followed an upper track, skirting the southern base of a group of rocky pinnacles, on the highest of which stands a withered pine-stem, perhaps planted there by some agile shepherd. Before long the path came to an end in a rocky hollow immediately at the base of the precipices of the Cima di Brenta. Their appearance, had we not learnt from afar something of their secrets, would have been sufficiently forbidding. Over the gap by which we were about to recross into the head of Vallesinella shot up an astonishing dolomite, a facsimile of a Rhine castle, with a tall slender turret, perhaps 300 feet high, at one corner. Once across the ridge, the climber turns his back on all green things, and enters on a stony desert. He is within range of the mountain batteries, and in a fair position to judge of the havoc caused when frost and heat are the gunners. Overhead tower sheer bastions of red rock; the ground at their base is strewn with fragments varying in size from a suburban villa to a lady's travelling-box. A dripping crag, with a scanty patch of turf beside it, offered all that was wanted for a halting-place. We were now overlooking the lower portion of the deep trench, filled higher up by glacier, which divides the Cima di Brenta from the rock-peaks to its north. Through it a pass, a worthy rival of the Bocca di Brenta, and leading like it to the Val delle Seghe, has been discovered by Mr. Tuckett.
A short distance above us was the glacier-covered breach by which we felt confident the fortress might be won. To reach the level of the ice we climbed under the base of an almost overhanging cliff, and then across a boulder-strewn shelf. Mounting the sides of the glacier by a ladder of steps kicked in the snow which still covered them, we quickly reached and left below precipices and pinnacles which a short time before had looked hopelessly near the sky. At the top of the steep ascent lay a miniature snow-plain, surrounded by steep broken crags. From its further end a sort of funnel fell through the cliffs overhanging the Bocca di Brenta.
The summits of the Cima di Brenta were at some distance to the left, and it seemed possible there might yet be difficulties in store for us. The steep faces of rock fronting the south offered good hold for feet and hands, and discarding the rope we took each of us his own path. In a quarter of an hour we came to a broader part of the mountain, and surmounted in succession two snowy cupolas. The second looked like the summit, but on reaching it we saw a still higher crest beyond. Between us and it was a gap, on the north side of which lies a glacier which soon curls steeply over and falls upon the larger ice-stream at the base of the mountain. A short scramble, down and up again, brought us to the real top—a ridge of shattered crag nearly level for some distance. From here our eyes should have feasted on a view of rare beauty over the rich valleys of the Trentino to the rival peaks of Cadore and Primiero, down upon the deep-lying waters of Lago di Garda, and northwards over the snowy ranges of Tyrol. But our ill-luck in distant views that season followed us to the last. Dark clouds, the forerunners of a thunder-storm, had already wrapped the distant mountain tops, and fleecy vapours choked up the valleys at our feet. Nothing was clear but our own peak and the Cima Tosa, the huge mass of which now scarcely overtopped us by the height of its final snow-cap. We waited long and patiently for some friendly breeze to lift even a corner of the white carpet which concealed from us all that lay at the base of the precipices on the Molveno side. We prayed in vain; the weather changed only for the worse, and we did not care to risk a meeting with the thunder-cloud.
The storm which broke on us during the descent prevented any attempt to vary the morning's route until we reached Val Nambino, when we turned off to the left, and hurried down to rejoin our companions at Pinzolo.
Val Selva, though the shortest, is not the only tolerably easy means of access from Campiglio to Val di Sole. To the left from the Ginevrie Pass a path branches off to the Passo delle Malghette, and leads in six hours to Pelizzano; to the right another track leads over at the back of Monte Spinale to the Flavona alp—a high pasturage at the head of Val Teresenga, one of the few valleys in the Alps six hours in length which have escaped the all-seeing eyes of the author of the 'Alpine Guide.'
The Passo di Grostè is sometimes ascended by visitors to Campiglio as the nearest spot whence it is possible to look eastward over the Trentino. The rocks fall away from the top towards the Flavona Alp in a series of advancing courses of massive masonry, like the sides of a Greek theatre. Without local guidance, it is easy for a solitary traveller to get into difficulty amidst the maze of low cliffs.
The upper châlet of the Flavona Alp stands in the middle of a broad sloping pasturage overlooked by the bold cliffs of Monte Fublan and connected on the further side by an easy shepherds' pass with Val Sporeggio. Another 'Bocca' lately brought to light leads under the cliffs of the Cima di Brenta to the Val delle Seghe and Molveno. We must now, however, follow the water, which carries us down into one of the strangest recesses of the Alps. Our guide will soon desert us. For the greater part of its length Val Teresenga has no stream and no channel for one to run in. Where by every precedent there should be a level trough, we find nothing but a confusion of high-piled mounds. Mountains have fallen and blocked up this glen with their ruins, and one's impulse, unscientific it may be, suggests an earthquake as the only adequate cause for so extraordinary a cataclysm.
The open alps lie high up on the sunny shoulders of the Sasso Rosso and Sasso Alto; the depths are clothed in dense forests rich with a rank undergrowth of ferns and flowers, and, still more welcome to dry-throated travellers, of wild fruit. One Saturday afternoon, when the woodcutters and their families who visit the glen in summer were on their way down to spend a holiday at their villages in Val di Non, we met at least 200 people, scarcely one of whom was without a basket filled with bilberries, strawberries and raspberries.
Suddenly a new colour shines through the branches, and we reach the shore of a large circular sheet of water hemmed in on every side by cliffs and woods. By such a solitary pool might old Saturn have sat,