Vertical lifestyles

The road of the cable cars

This is an easy walk that climbs slowly but travels far. In the Adamello Brenta Natural Park every step you take is through landscapes modelled by hard work and tenacity. Here life was lived on the vertical plane, from the village up to the halfway houses, and then further up to the high mountain farms. <p>People stayed in the halfway houses during the spring, preparing the animals for their communal time on the high Alpine meadows, and again in autumn to store hay for the winter. The young unmarried people went up, descending only on Sunday for mass. The rest of their time was hard work, silence, and patience.</p> <p>No roads reach this point, only footpaths. The only connection to the valley was the cable car, and along this walk you encounter three. The one up to the Masi di Dengolo functions by gravity, without an engine. The steep slope and the weight of a  loaded bin at the top raises the lower end upwards. When there is no wood for ballast they use water in a simple but ingenious solution.</p> <p>The most recent cable car was constructed as a shared facility in 1927, supplying the mountain farms free in exchange for communal work.</p> <p>As you walk you can look up the suspended cableways, symbols of initiative in the face of a tough vertical lifestyle, persisting in this forgotten corner even today.</p>