Tre Cannoni

In the Ortler Alps in northern Italy is a minor summit called the Dreisprechenspitze: the ‘three-language peak’. For hundreds of years this tiny mountain was a tripoint — where Switzerland, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian empire met. (The languages then were German, Italian and Romansh, still an official language of that part of Switzerland.) Now, Austria is over 50 kilometres away by road, after the border was redrawn in Italy’s favour after the First World War.

The thing is, the very real problem is, that once you get things like that six-ton cannon up there, they are very difficult to get down. While a lot of the scrap metal lower down was salvaged, some of it is too high, or to heavy, or just too damn difficult. Said cannon fired 149mm shells, and it took hundreds of men 76 days to drag to its current resting place. Although we didn’t see anything as large as the ‘hippopotamus’ on the Cresta Croce, there was still debris everywhere, with barbed wire even encroaching on to the hiking tracks.

Off the beaten track there was much more to discover. Nose around at the foot of the glaciers, and you’re likely to find anything…

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