Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 25, 2025

2472m

Friuli-Venezia-Giulia Region, Italy

Col Nudo is the highest peak in Venetian Prealps and one of the several “ultra prominent peaks” in the Dolomites. This peak is considerably less popular than the world-class giants in the Dolomites because it’s not that lofty from the elevation perspective and the routes are far from “classic”. The standard route from the SW is known for the poor trail and rock quality. There is a trail for most of the way, but the trail is overgrown and the scree on the upper route is loose even by the Rockies standard. The road access was also difficult. There seemed to have several possible starting points. Adam and I picked the most obvious one above Pieve d’Alpago but the final 5 km was narrow and somewhat rough. The roads are mostly paved but there were many pot-holes and water puddles. We only had a rental 2WD so the driving was a little bit nervewracking. I opted to park in front of a washout and camped, and dealt with the unknowns in the morning. The washout ended up being trivial so we did drive to the end of the road. We could have driven another kilometer or so further, but didn’t want to break the rule this time. There was marginal gain anyway. We had just done over 2100 m elevation gain in the previous day and the plan for the following day was Antelao with another 2000 m elevation gain, so we decided to take our time on Col Nudo “enjoying” the outing rather than rushing it.

A short while later with about 100 m elevation gain we plodded to the absolute end of the road system where we got passed by a fast European hiker. I eventually summitted a few minutes behind this hiker and not to my surprise, he’s a local living in the vicinity. I opted to follow Adam’s lead and the trail quickly became overgrown with lots of wet grass and stinging nettles. The trail bed was also fairly poor with lots of rocks so none of us enjoyed this hike. Our shoes were soaked in no time. About halfway up the views started to open up but the terrain never gave way to the alpine. Instead, we were treated with more wet grass even after passing the pinnacle of Col di Piero. The slope angle petered out briefly as we traversed across some flat terrain towards climber’s right, but then it was another steep grunt to Pass di Valbona where we took the first and only break on the ascent.

The route splits above this saddle with the GPX tracks obtained from peakbagger.com all veering hard left onto the scree benches. Adam decided to stick with the known whereas I was more intrigued by the direct finish via the SW Ridge onto Cima Lastei. There’s a route labelled on the Gaia map and the lone hiker ahead also went this way. I thought this would be more direct and fun. Well, it was definitely more direct but probably less fun. There was more wet grass in addition to some steep scrambling and the “trail” was poorly marked. The traverse from Cima Lastei to the true summit of Col Nudo was indeed an enjoyable ridge walk with some narrow stretches. I didn’t bother to actually tag the summit of Cima Lastei and instead, I traversed underneath the high point and went directly for Col Nudo. I got to the summit when that lone hiker was still resting so we shared some stories with each other, while waiting for Adam to show up via the longer, climber’s descent route. I could see my potential objective for the following day, Antelao free of snow so the final decision was made. That was another reason for doing Col Nudo, to actually set my eyes on Antelao’s rock faces.

Adam was not impressed about this objective so we didn’t stay too long up there. Adam wanted to reverse his route so I followed. I thought the scrambling was actually harder on the descent especially right underneath the summit ridge, but the scree was definitely more fun than the grass, especially on the way down. I then followed Adam traversing a long ways down skier’s left to rejoin the trail, and carefully plodded down to the vehicle. The descent was uneventful but still unpleasant, and the grass was still wet. Thankfully I had the entire afternoon to dry off the shoes. We then did the routine grocery and McDonald’s stops, and drove to the starting point for Antelao to settle for the night.