Nowhere does a climber's attempt appear more ambitious and hopeless than in a dolomite country. The broken crags serve as scales by which to measure distance and emphasise height. There is none of the encouraging but deceitful monotony of snow-slopes. Yet as, ourselves still untouched by the sun's rays, we steadily mounted our treadmill path, huge towers which half-an-hour before had seemed sky-piercing, sank beneath us and gave place to another tier rising far overhead. At last the battlements were reached and the snowy breach of the Bocca opened on the right. But the pass did not satisfy our ambition, and we told Nicolosi to lead us against the keep itself. Passing round a rocky corner, we found ourselves for the first time facing the huge mass of the Cima Tosa. Two fields of ice lying at different levels clothed its shoulders, over which rose a bold head of rock. Below and behind us lay a strange tableland pierced by a deep punchbowl, empty as if it had been recently drained in a witches' Sabbat. But its singularity did not long detain our eyes, for in the east, far as the eye could reach, shone range behind range of deep-toned mountains, and the memory wandered to past summers as we counted over again the noble roll of the Venetian Alps.
The Cima Tosa is everywhere cliff-girt, and it is difficult to decide where to attack it. The spot where we approached it did not look more tempting than others. But Nicolosi had the advantage of experience, whereby we gained confidence and lost excitement.
To avoid a burning sun, we lunched in the cave between the ice and rock. After a few yards' scrambling the foot of an absolute wall was reached. Its height may be estimated by the fact that our rope, sixty feet long, just sufficed to pull a man up the whole of it. It was therefore some ten feet less than the rope. But although practically perpendicular throughout, and at the top even considerably overhanging, so much so that in descending I tried in vain, sitting on the edge, to watch the progress of my predecessor, it was not dangerous or even difficult. Leave on any wall bricks projecting throughout and send a man to the top of it with a rope, it is no hard matter for any one of moderate activity and nerve to follow. No strain may be put on the rope round your waist, yet it is a sort of moral banister which places one completely at one's ease.
This crag scaled, the rest of the way, though steep, proved easy. The rope was left, and we scrambled as we liked up alternate rocks and snow-beds until the final snow-dome of the mountain was gained.
The view resembled in general character those from the Adamello summits, except that the neighbouring snow-fields hid the Swiss Alps, and in revenge the upper end of Lago di Garda lay, a blue polished sheet, beneath the broad back of Monte Baldo.
The neighbouring tower or buttress, so noble from the Val di Brenta, was now a stone's throw below us. Its top may some day be reached, but there is a gap to be crossed, and the Matterhorn has not more awful precipices. A long trough, filled with the snows which break off year by year from the mountain crest, falls 3,000 feet, at an almost uniform angle, on to the Val di Brenta side of the Bocca. A party of steady, patient men with ice-axes might mount or even descend it in safety, but it is a place where haste or carelessness would mean broken necks.
It is easy to return by the ordinary route to the corner whence the peak was first seen, and then traverse ledges to the top of the Bocca. The way from the pass to the plain beneath the great tower lies along the bottom of a trough, snow-filled and steep above, then more level and grassy. The last descent is made by a stony zigzag on the right-hand side of the cleft. Run down it as swiftly as you may, and then fling yourself on your back among the creeping pines and look up straight into the sky, where more than 4,000 feet overhead the vapours meet and part round the astounding rock-tower which shoots up solitary and unsupported until its top is lost in the sky. Nowhere in the Alps will you gain so strong an impression of sheer height.
Then careless of 'times,' and leisurely, as if your sinews had not been strung up by a severe climb, loiter through the strawberry-beds and linger at the 'malghe' until the sun shines only on the great Lares snowfields, and the lower world is cool in shade and rich in colour.
When as you stroll down to Pinzolo or up to Campiglio you think over the impressions of the day, we shall surely agree that the Brenta group are as 'Delectable Mountains' as any Alpine pilgrim need sigh for.