Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 3, 2025

2125m

Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy

Cima Paganella looms above Trento in the Italian Dolomites and boasts several trams and ski lifts, as well as over 1000 m prominence. This is a well-known ski resort in the winter. I noticed this objective by browsing the “World’s P600m Map” and immediately noted that Petter Bjørstad had recently done it by taking these ski lifts to the summit. This is essentially a “freebie” so I casually mentioned it to Adam, and not to my surprise Adam wanted to do it right away. We had just ascended Monte Bondone earlier in the morning and would need to drive towards the Julian Alps later in the day to position ourselves for Jôf di Montasio. After some calculations I thought we still had plenty of time to do one or two of these “freebies” so we drove towards Paganella. I’m not the most experienced when it comes to taking the chairlifts to the top of a mountain so Adam did the research while I drove. The cost was 25 EUR per person for the round trip and the starting point is Passo Santel. There’s another set of lifts in Andalo and I believe that’s the one Petter took, because we needed three lifts to the summit whereas Petter only took two.

I thought about to only purchase the lower two of the three lifts and hike to the top of the mountain while gaining 150 m elevation, but reluctantly agreed on taking three lifts all the way to the summit to save time/energy. There was some walking required between these lifts. The summit itself is occupied by a shit ton load of infrastructures including a restaurant so we wondered around for some views. The entire experience reminded me the popular peaks in eastern China. I was not impressed at all. We walked southwards for quite a while to find some better views and then leisurely walked back to the summit.

The plan was to take the three consecutive chairlifts all the way down but they had somehow closed the uppermost lift. I was not happy about that because we had paid for the full package, but on the other hand we got to walk 150 m of the descent, which was sort of like a “bonus”. We then took the lower two lifts down to the parking lot and quickly drove away from the circus. The next objective would be Monte Grappa, which was basically a “drive-up” hence another circus. I cannot say I’m a fan of these zoo-typed objectives but some of these boast significant prominence so we must do it, one way or another. If I live in the area I would have waited for the “off season” and do it on snowshoes, perhaps.