First World War one day itineraries through Italy. Suggestion no. 4: Monte Tudaio and its fortification

Each post of the unit tagged as Itineraries will correspond to a one day trip proposal, so that everyone will be able to assemble and disassemble these suggestions to prepare a "more than a day schedule". Of course these are intended to be only suggestions, and you should always take into consideration the travel variables.

The fort - Photo Courtesy of Ugo Agnoletto

Google Maps Starting point: Piniè di Vigo di Cadore (you may take into consideration the Chalet "Pino Solitario")

This one may be a half-day itinery and combines perfectly historical and naturalistic interests. Well, almost every itinerary we suggest in the Alpine region is able to combine these two spirits. Let's say we could suggest this itinerary to people looking for World War One forts. Mountain forts are an interesting architectural type belonging to period that ends with the outbreak of the Great War, the so called Belle Époque. Today itinerary rises to the Monte Tudaio, a strategic peak between the mountain Piave area and Comelico region. The place where they built the fort was basically the point of convergence of many possible attacks to Italy coming from the Austro-Hungarian empire. If you take the map (by the way, if you're used to the popular Tabacco Maps this region is mapped in the number 16) you will easily catch this first localizing Santo Stefano, then the Ansiei Valley and finally the Mauria pass. Architecture-wise the fort is laid out in three floors and its volumes try to fit the summit of the mountain. As it often happens, eventually the fort did not play a key-role during the war. From 1915 to 1917 it was too far from the front and after Caporetto, when the Italian army gave up a huge portion of territory to the Austro-Hungarian troops, it was used only for a few days by the Italian army during the chaotic retreat. One year later, it was destroyed by the Austro-Hungarians retreating northward.


From the chosen starting point, we have two possibilities to reach the summit: the path n. 339 (a former military road, from 900mt to the 2140mt of the peak of Monte Tudaio) or the via ferrata "Sentiero attrezzato dei Mede". In this second option (probably not the most crowded via ferrata you may find in the Dolomites) you will have Cima Bragagnina at your right, while the large path n. 339 rises with a constant presence of the rivers Ansiei and Piave at your left. On the summit, besides the fort, you can enjoy with a spin the entire view. The Tudaio belongs to the Bretoni mountain range. From the top the view embraces the Cadore and the Comelico regions, Antelao, Cadini and Cristallo, Marmarole, the Three Peaks of Lavaredo, Monte Paterno, the Brentoni and Cridola. If you walk the normal way, don't forget that you can take advantage of the some hairpin bends from where some small paths start and lead you to nice panoramic spots of the Ansiei valley. Finally, not far from the fort and the peak, at a level of 1900mt, you will for sure enjoy the gallery.

The forthcoming conference at DHIP (Deutsches Historisches Institut Paris)

WWI gains more and more interest even among the cultural studies, which are focusing growing attention on the particular research field of “conflict studies”. Already E.J. Hobsbawm claimed in his The Age of Extremes: The short Twentieth Century that the history of the 1914-1945 years has to be considered as an uninterrupted “age of catastrophe”, emphasizing so correctly the deep interaction between both world wars. From the perspective of “entangled history”, the upcoming Summer School of DHIP (Deutsches Historisches Institut Paris) – “Conflict Studies et nouvelle histoire militaire. Regards croisés sur l’ère de la guerre 1914–1945″ from 30th June to 6th July 2012 – aims to go into the topic, taking advantage of new methodological approaches. Transfer processes will be analyzed in “space- and time-line” during this “age of catastrophe”. The papers will offer so not only a view of the impact of both conflicts in economic, intellectual, social and military history in different cultures and countries (space-line), but will also provide a comparison of how these same issues were handled during first and second world war, tracing so their parallelisms and differences (time-line). Discover the program here.

The First World War in music: "Le tombeau de Couperin" by Maurice Ravel

There's not only one way to write about what the First World War brought to music. We see at least two (does anybody see more?). Firstly we should depict the Great war as a singing war. Think about the importance of war songs among soldiers and for the mood of the troops. The preservation (perhaps by digitalization?) of that huge cultural and linguistic heritage should be one of the aims of all Centenary international projects. Secondly, we could recall some great composers that somehow got involved in the Great War or contemporary musicians that still draw inspiration and contents from World War One. This is much easier and the reason why this new musical unit opens with this second option will be sooner or later evident to everybody: we have scores, recordings and even books. Not that difficult compared to the dirty but awesome job we foresee in the first side of the "singing war" (it would be nice to see something moving quickly in this first side). It's not a matter of "cultured" and "popular" music, since we should look (listen) to the war songs belonging to the Italian Alpine troops (and to any other troops) with the same level of attention we pay to the Futuristic music movement or to Ravel.

Maurice Ravel is not new in Great War speeches. We all remember the Piano concert for the Left Hand he composed for Paul Wittgenstein (Ludwig's elder brother, who got amputation during the war and developed his original left-handed style). Ravel could not enter the army due to his poor health condition and joined the troops as a driver in the area of Verdun. His popular suite for piano solo, Le tombeau de Couperin, apart from being an homage to François Couperin, is also a tribute to friends who died during the war. Each of the six movements is dedicated to the memory of a friend (the fourth, Rigaudon, is a double tribute to Gaudin brothers, killed by the same shell) and the whole suite remains as an outstanding example of what First World War injected into contemporary music.

To learn more you could read this page.

Novels of the Great War: "La peur" by Gabriel Chevallier

It would have been much easier to start this new unit with a more popular novel coming from the Great War literary legacy. The so called top-of-mind World War One novels are almost worldwide the same (Ernest Hemingway, Erich Maria Remarque, Ernst Jünger, Henri Barbusse, Emilio Lussu just to mention writers from different belligerent countries). The reason why it is preferable to postpone a post dedicated to these is simple: there's already too much about their novels that can be found. Furthermore, it really makes sense to launch this new unit with the key-feeling of the Great War: fear. We usually don't pay enough attention to the simple matter of fact that fear was the most relevant and widespread feeling among the European trenches. We often dwell on strategies, battles, equipment without realizing that the simple condition of terror was by far the protagonist of that war. So simple that we don't dare to think about fear in darwinian terms, as one of the emotion of the war.

So let's start with a less popular work of fiction, a French novel coming out in 1930 with the straighforward title of La peur. Gabriel Chevallier (1895-1969) took part in war operations as a simple soldier (poilu). Now put  together the year of publication and the title: wasn't it a kind of revolutionary thing to write about fear in that time, when all countries were doing all the their best to come up with narration strategies able to refund people of those heroic acts? Wasn't it desecrating to title the book "Fear" when all goverments were trying to explain that wasteful and ultimate sacrifice? Probably the best historical research is the one that proficiently joins data with fictional works (nothing better to study the so called economical Italian miracle of the Sixties than comparing facts and figures with the great fiction works of that decade). The same can be true also for World War One. If we are able to find the junction between figures and the "fictional" heritage we will get close to its core. We may find a great help in Gabriel Chevallier's book. Finally, this novel by Chevallier is a great contribution to outline another fundamental topic of the First World War, namely the relationship between the higher echelons of the armies and the fearful soldiers possessed of their resigned compliance.

The poets and the World War: "Killers" by Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) 

Although he never took part to WWI, Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) presents in his War Poems the cruelty and foolishness of the Great War in a vivid way. He tells, soft and terrible, things, as a man speaking with or singing to a dead child. The 11 War Poems were composed between 1914 and 1915, and  appeared in 1916 in Sandburg's first book (The Chicago poems), which inaugurated his career as one of the most important American poets of the XX century.
It is true that all wars are somehow similar to each other and Sandburg reshaped maybe his own short experience, as in 1898 he volunteered for service for the Spanish-American war and spent few months in Puerto Rico. Yes, all wars are somehow similar to each other - they all make men killers and victims at the same time, they all send their "shining teeth, sharp eyes, hard legs" in the trenches "eating and drinking, toiling", and dying, they all let "red juice" soak "the dark soil", "the green grass" - and yet they all are unique. Unique, as each tragedy is. So it's poetry, revealing the oneness in what is always repeating. Yet it still seems astonishing how Sandburg depicted the WWI in Killers and precognized at the beginning of the conflict even that number: 16 millions. A number, and much more: 16 millions.


KILLERS


    I am singing to you
Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;
Hard as a man in handcuffs,
Held where he cannot move:


     Under the sun
Are sixteen million men,
Chosen for shining teeth,
Sharp eyes, hard legs,
And a running of young warm blood in their wrists.


     And a red juice runs on the green grass;
And a red juice soaks the dark soil.
And the sixteen million are killing. . . and killing and killing.


     I never forget them day or night:
They beat on my head for memory of them;
They pound on my heart and I cry back to them,
To their homes and women, dreams and games.


     I wake in the night and smell the trenches,
And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines--
Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark:
Some of them long sleepers for always,


Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always,
Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak,
Eating and drinking, toiling. . . on a long job of killing.
Sixteen million men.

"The Great War in Russian Memory." A review of the latest book by Karen Petrone

The Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 shaped the memory on the WWI: On the one hand, Russia’s withdrawal from the First World War made German troops available for operations against the Allies on the Western Front and influenced massively the further development of war events. On the other hand, the Soviet understanding of the WWI was progressively subsumed into the history of the October Revolution. The construction of the memory of the Great War – which corresponds in part to the construction of a long lasting collective self-perception of the post-revolutionary Russia – is the topic of Karen Petrone’s book, The Great War in Russian Memory, Indiana University Press, 2011. This study gives evidence of the newly grown interest in the WWI at Eastern Front and in its memory. This topic has been partially neglected in the literature, which tended for a long time to focus on other settlements of the conflict. 


The book handles the years 1917-1945 and argues the lingering memory of the First World War in Russia, despite government intervention and manipulation of the official Soviet culture of remembrance after the October Revolution. The interactions of memories and myths of the WWI and of the Civil war are considered in the first part (Chapters 2-5) within the context of religious, cultural and public representation during the war and the postwar period. Using literary and anthropological methods of analysis, the Author examines writings, movies, rituals, museums, traditions, in order to depict “the rich fabric of World War I discourse in the interwar period”. Although affected by a multidisciplinary approach of a not very stringent “cultural studies” tradition (methods of analysis and choice of the sources seem to be sometimes questionable), this part of the book discloses to the reader a fascinating view of the literary activity – in broader sense – and religious discussion – from the Orthodox to the atheistic ideology – , which played a significant role in the Soviet representation of WWI. The second part of the book (Chapters 6-7) traces the changing, disappearance and new shaping of the WWI discourse in the postwar period. While the memory of the First World War during the 1920s – not least because of mixing the memory of the revolution with that of civil war – had fallen into the shadow, it was revived in the early 1930s, in connection with the construction of Soviet patriotism. Focusing on censorship and institutional communication, the Author pinpoints the shifts in the WWI memories over time, revealing so the articulated policy in shaping the Soviet ideology, even in relation with the other Europeans countries. Post-1917 cultural leaders adopted a complex attitude, mocking and – at the same time – drawing direct inspiration from the pre-revolutionary tsarist narrative, in order to delineate the models of new Soviet heroes. The final Chapter (Chapter 8) handles lastly the period after 1945, giving a general outline of the further development of the discourse. Intermingling WWI memories and Russian Revolution mythology, this study provides a brief but fascinating overview of the complexity of Great War memory. 


The book fails maybe to assess appropriately the role of the multi-ethnic background of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union, providing sometimes a standardized image of the topic; it has however the merit of being an important contribution in integrating Soviet WWI memories into the history of European war representation, without underestimating the peculiarities of Russian history and culture. On the eve of the centenary of the First World War, we can thus welcome this book as a further step toward such a goal: Rediscover WWI history, seizing the tones of the single countries as a part of our collective memories, which still survive as interconnected network of legacies, beyond national boundaries.

World War I Editathon at British Library, St Pancras, London

WWI symbols - The summit 
of Monte Grappa in Italy 
and its military sanctuary

We guess that World War I web audiences and communities will be happy to read about the World War I Editathon that will be held next 16th of June at British Library, St Pancras, London. You can catch a first overview of this forward-looking project at this link where, among other interesting things, we also read the following: "Our goal is not only to improve Wikipedia articles on World War I topics, but also to build bridges between Wikimedians and academics" (by the way, nice reference to the naming of this blog). We would like to do our part supporting this initiative that comes under the always brilliant supervision of JISC. We are aimed to keep you up-to-date with the follow-up. Hope it will be feasible. Last but not least: good luck!

The Great War and the Modern Memory. Some thoughts in memory of Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell died
on May 23, 2012

Paul Fussel, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, died last Wednesday in Medford, Oregon, at the age of 88. He was author of many books on war and poetry. On the top of them, we all remember the successful The Great War and Modern Memory that along with No Man's Land by Eric Leed represents the must-have couple of books about the Great War. While Leed's book investigates the transformation of soldiers' behaviour after coping with the traumatic space and time of the trenches, Fussel's most popular book is a clear attempt to recreate the literary landscape coming out of that war.


If we consider the two authors we understand that basically with their books they drew the drivers of development of almost all initiatives today remembering the World War One. On one side we find the almost ethnographical description that goes back to Leed's mainstream, on the other we have the literary and artistic analyses inspired by Fussell. These two are the furrows where, still today, we can position the most relevant attitudes towards the study of the First World War (of course we could include a third important track, namely the technical and military narration of the war, but this is not our main interest, as we stated in the heading of this blog).

Even if it may seem a too ambitious scenario, we think that in the middle of these two (or three) streams there is enough room to make a new try to paint and tell that story, probably a cross-fertilization of all possible ways of remembering that war. The first names are there: together with Fussell and Leed, let's think about Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Annette Becker, Modris Eksteins, Antonio Gibelli and many others. The interdisciplinary approach has become so fashionable but a real and clever use of the interdisciplinary mix is hard to reach and follow. Probably it will never become so trendy since it's so laborious. It would have been interesting to know Fussell's opinion on this point on the eve of Great War centennial.

First World War one day itineraries through Italy. Suggestion no. 3: Forcella Toblin-Via Ferrata De Luca-Innerkofler-Forcella Camoscio-Monte Paterno

Each post of the unit tagged as Itineraries will correspond to a one day trip proposal, so that everyone will be able to assemble and disassemble these suggestions to prepare a "more than a day schedule". Of course these are intended to be only suggestions, and you should always take into consideration the travel variables.

Dolimites, Monte Paterno
 (Sesto mountain range)












GOOGLE MAPS STARTING POINT: Auronzo refuge.


This is one of the most famous – and fascinating – “Vie Ferrate” in the Sesto Group of Dolomites. It combines fantastic views to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo and an interesting wartime path with an extensive tunneled section and ruins of wartime trenches. We suggest you to start this itinerary as early as possible in the morning because the “Via Ferrata De Luca - Innerkofler” is usually crowded with tourists in high season. The whole tour takes about 5 hours; you should therefore plan a short break at Forcella Camoscio and then eat on the way back at Refuges Lavaredo or Pian de Cengia. The itinerary should be undertaken only in good weather; it pays to check local weather forecasts before leaving.

Degree of difficulty: Medium to advanced (good physical shape and basic climbing experience), only with proper equipment (a complete trekking and climbing equipment) and a torch.

Drive to Auronzo Refuge with your own car (toll road of about 20 Euro for the last 7 kms). You can go on foot from the parking at the beginning of the toll road, but it takes more than 1 hour. A shuttle bus is usually available during the summer months from Misurina. Please check this last - and cheapest! - possibility, contacting the Tourist Office of Misurina,  Email. As you arrive to Auronzo Refuge, take the path n. 101, which leads you to Forcella Lavaredo and to Lavaredo Refuge and go on towards Locatelli Refuge. The path runs along the rock face of Monte Paterno and reaches the Forcella Toblin (m.2405) where the Via Ferrata starts on the right. Climbing on the old wartime path and turning around a pillar called “Salsiccia di Francoforte”, you reach quickly the first tunnel entrance. Headlamp and an extra pullover are suitable, because the cold-wet tunnel climbs steeply and it's quite dark. Take your time to explore the tunnels, especially the second stretch, with its side-tunnels, windows and lookouts, rooms and rests of wooden barricades. At the end of the tunnel you arrive into a small platform, where you can wear the special equipment for the climbing (lanyard, energy absorbers, helmet and harness) and start climbing towards the Forcella Camoscio (m.2650). This passage is quite easy for trained climbers, should not be anyway underestimated (sometimes you have to pay attention to rubble and snow). From the Forcella Camoscio you have three options. 1) You can go up to the summit of Monte Paterno (m.2744) through the “Via Ferrata” on the right and then descend with one of the following alternatives; 2) You can descend immediately towards Forcella Passaporto and Forcella Lavaredo, taking a fascinating (wartime dugouts and fortifications), but difficult route. This option requires a good climbing experience; 3) We suggest you to take a third alternative, the “Sentiero delle Forcelle”. It may be longer but is equally attractive. This path runs along the eastern crest of Monte Paterno, scene of tragic war acts during WWI. You can still see the evidence of it by walking through ledges connected with wood bridges and ladders, till you reach “Forcella dei Laghi” (m.2550). The landscape you can enjoy is simply great.
From here, you have to walk down to the path at the base. At the junction of path n.101 and path n.104, you can choose if you want to take a break and eat at the near-located Pian de Cengia Refuge (path n.101) or at  Lavaredo Refuge (path n.104). It depends on how hungry you are! In any case you have to go back to Lavaredo Refuge in order to reach the starting point at Auronzo Refuge.

Une publicité de guerre. Les “annonces” dans les journal l’Illustration (1914-1918). A book by Robert Gallic

It may not find a place among the “standard literature” concerning WWI, yet the short book of Robert Gallic (Une publicité de guerre. Les “annonce” dans les journal l’Illustration (1914-1918), L’Harmattan, Paris, 2011) deserves attentions. The Author provides in this study a general description of the advertisement in wartime focusing on L’Illustration, one of the most widespread newspapers in France since the beginning of the XX century. If the first chapter describes the graphic and thematic changes occurred in December 1914 as a consequence of the outbreak of the conflict, the second chapter shows how far the war became from 1914 to 1918 a market in full expansion, whose necessities were intercepted and exploited by specific advertising strategies. However, it would seem quite naïf, thinking that war economy has only required new objects to be produced and sold. The third and last chapter of Gallic’s book points out in fact, how advertising transmits also new values and attitudes, which had to support – and sometimes to exasperate – the French national sentiments.

The worth of this study lies however not in the analysis or in the historical contextualization (which is quite general and not so innovative), but in the iconographic sources. The book affords a great number of different kinds of advertising announcements and enables so the reader to compare them and catch their implicit communication strategies. Even the simplest objects needed in the everyday living – clocks, torches, pens, multipurpose pastilles – in the trenches or in the hospital – gas masks, compasses, toilette products, legs prosthesis – are not simply offered to the market, in order to satisfy the needs of the whole society in the war time. Publicity assumes also an active role, which cannot be limited to the business economic interests. It gains a social value, as long as it depicts these same “war necessities” with an almost cheerful and reassuring aura, appealing to and mobilizing public support. From this point of view these advertising images represent a virtual crossing point of different – material, economical, psychological, social, medical or political – aspects of a “global war”, such as WWI was.

A flourishing literature has emerged in the last decade, trying to describe the intricate connection between WWI and advertising, yet this slim book gives its contribution to the discussion: it provides a direct view into the topic, letting images speaking for themselves. Images which disclose us the universe of feelings, fears and hopes of the common people during the WWI, and which continue to affect unconsciously also the reader's imagination today. And so, comparing the different, yet always attractive advertisements of Uronal ( a medical drug used to dissolve uric acid), which depict a toast in the trench or an angelic nurse flying over the hospital beds, it happens, that we finally understand what Samuel Beckett once wrote in Molloy: “If I go on long enough calling that my life, I’ll end up by believing it. It’s the principle of advertising!”

"1917". The unmissable exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz

Pablo Picasso 
Stage curtain for the ballet Parade.

It seems that nothing is missing. 1917 meets all the requirements to become the must-see exhibition about the creativity during the Great War. It is often preferable when the curators narrow to the utmost the span of time comtemplated by an exhibition, like they did in this case: in this way it becomes easier to figure out what the creative activity meant during a certain period. 1917 represents the so called "annus horribilis" and is worldwide studied as the turning year of the war, not only because of the United States entering the operations, the Fourteen points of President Wilson or, looking eastwards, the bolshevik revolution in Russia.

The works here displayed belong to public, private, art and military collections. The icing on the cake is for sure Picasso's stage curtain for the ballet Parade (a huge canvas measuring 10.5 by 16.4 metres). This is Picasso's largest work and was commissioned to the spanish artist by the director of Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev. The ballet featured a scenario by Jean Cocteau and music by Erik Satie. Today we can admire it keeping in mind what Apollinaire wrote about this total work of art: "for the first time this union of painting and dance, costume and theatre which hails the advent of a more complete form of art."


This 2300 square meter exhibition is hosted in Gallery 1 and in the Grande Nef of the Centre Pompidou-Metz. The first gallery tries to map the positions of almost 800 artists introducing a layout aiming to develop the themes of injury, violence, physical and symbolic distance from battlefields and trench art. The second section, hosted in the Grande Nef, swings between the opposite motifs of destruction and reconstruction (dwelling on faces, bodies, war artefacts and buildings) in a special layout resembling a spiral, a frequent form in the art of that year (think about Futurism and, before the war's outbreak, about Vorticism).

The exhibition:

1917

Centre Pompidou-Metz

26 May - 24 September, 2012

Curators: Claire Garnier and Laurent Le Bon, Centre Pompidou-Metz

An International Survey implemented by the World Heritage Tourism Research Network (WHTRN)

The WWI British cemetery of Giavera - Italy

Recently we took note of a really outstanding project launched by WHTRN, the World Heritage Tourism Research Network based in Halifax, Canada. Everything gets underway from a global survey that each of us can take into consideration and can start to surf from this link. It seems this project is going to look at the main objectives in order to shape the remembrance of the First World War on the eve of the centenary. According to our point of view, the most relevant goal is the global coordination that may derive from this knowledge in an international frame, especially with relation to World War One tourism. The project team is composed by E. Wanda George, Myriam Jansen-Verbeke, Mallika Das & Brian Osborne. We highly reccomend to take a look at the above mentioned link. 

First World War one day itineraries through Italy. Suggestion no. 2: Rifugio Refavaie – Monte Cauriol

Each post of the unit tagged as Itineraries will correspond to a one day trip proposal, so that everyone will be able to assemble and disassemble these suggestions to prepare a "more than a day schedule". Of course these are intended to be only suggestions, and you should always take into consideration the travel variables.


View of Cima d'Asta from the Cauriol and its cross















GOOGLE MAPS STARTING POINT:  Rifugio Refavaie – Caoria – Canal S. Bovo.

If you want to discover a less touristic side of Dolomites region, you should venture into the mountain range of the Lagorai, along which ran the front line between Italy and Austria during the First World War. We suggest you as first destination in the region the fascinating morainic barrier of Monte Cauriol, starting from Rifugio Refavaie, in the Vanoi Valley. This small refuge in the forest is the last place, where you can get refreshment. It may be therefore easier to plan a picnic on the top – a supermarket is available also in the near hamlet of Caoria – and take a rest at the refuge on the way home. The walk up to the Cauriol is quite long (7 hours for the whole tour), but it is not overly demanding, since the path is mainly wide and well-marked.  It requires anyway a good physical shape and endurance and trekking equipment.

You can park beside the Refavaie refuge (m1116), where the forest road soon enters the trees, along the river Vanoi, and turns then slightly right. About 100m after the first bend, take the path (n.320). Here begins a fairly steep climb into the wood (Bosco Laghetti), which joins up with another forest road. Take it, turning on the left, and walk among the upper meadows of Malga Laghetti, until the path (still n.320) turns away from the road and starts climbing up to Sadole Pass (m2066). From here follow the “Italian Way” on the right. The Old Italian military route runs over black rocks and takes you to Busa della Neve and to Selletta Carteri (m2343), a small saddleback, separating the two capes of Cauriol (the little and the big Cauriol – Piccolo e Grande Cauriol). After few easy climbing passages, you can reach finally the summit (2494m) of Grande Cauriol, with its metal cross, and can enjoy a magnificent landscape, which pays off the 4 hours walk. The 360-degree panorama (breathtaking when the sky is clear!) shows the views from Fassa Valley towards Latemar, Catinaccio, Sassolungo, Marmolada, Pale di San Martino and Cima d’Asta.

You can descend on the ascent path. Alternative would be the way back through the “Austrian Way”, which departs from Selletta Carteri and runs along trenches and fortifications of the Austrian Army, turns around the Piccolo Cauriol and reaches the Sadole Pass.  A third option is an unnumbered path which starts short after the summit of the big Cauriol (there’s a sign indicating “Malga Laghetti”) and takes you to the rests of an Italian trench of the WWI till the ruins of an old village built up by the Alpine Troupes. This last trail however could be difficult to recognize among the trees. As you reach Malga Laghetti, follow the forest road which runs down to Rifugio Refavaie.

If you have time and still want to discover something about the WWI in Lagorai you can visit the local museum in the near hamlet of Caoria (please contact the local group of Alpini to agree a visit or check the opening time at this email).

Below some useful links:
- Val Vanoi
- Rifugio Refavaie