Masino, Mello & more

Val di Mello or Valmasino? Wait — aren’t they the same?

At first glance, Val di Mello and Valmasino might seem like one and the same — or maybe you haven’t even heard of Valmasino yet.
 Let’s clear it up!

Valmasino is a vast alpine valley tucked deep in the heart of the Alps, a wild land of granite spires and soaring walls, just north of Lake Como. Spanning over 100 square kilometers, it branches into several side valleys.

Hidden within it lies Val di Mello — a secret garden of crystal-clear streams, bright meadows, scattered woods, and immense cliffs that rise like cathedrals.


For us locals, Valmasino is the whole kingdom of granite, stretching from 800 to 3.367 meters.

And Val di Mello? It’s the special one — a magical place, low in the valley, where cars are banned and human life and nature have found a way to coexist in harmony... despite the occasional clash.

VAL DI MELLO

Now, you’re probably wondering, besides the scenic view, what makes Val di Mello so special?


To understand what makes Val di Mello so special, we need to go back to the 1970s and to the spirit of what was called Nuovo Mattino — the “New Morning” of climbing. It was a time when a small group of young climbers from Sondrio began making a name for themselves with fast, bold ascents on major routes in the Badile and Bernina ranges.

With a strong sense of adventure and a simple, effective style, they repeated what were then considered extreme climbs, and they did so with surprising ease. At the same time, they began exploring the valley floor — climbing on crags and boulders simply for the sake of movement, searching for the gesture, the flow, and the aesthetic side of climbing. It was a break from the prevailing idea of mountaineering as the "conquest of the summit.”

In place of pitons or expansion bolts, they used nuts, eccentrics, and eventually friends — protection that reflected their clean, forward-looking approach.

Unsurprisingly, this approach caused a stir among the more traditional circles of the Italian Alpine Club (CAI). In 1976, the Valtellina section of the CAI even organized a roundtable to discuss these “troubling” developments. During the discussion, a senior member turned to one of the young climbers and said:


“What you’re doing isn’t Alpinism — it’s just Sassismo.” 
(Roughly: “rocking around on boulders.”)

From that moment on, the climbers from Sondrio proudly embraced the term and began calling themselves Sassisti — the “boulderers.”

They kept pushing forward, moving from boulders to wild granite walls, and interestingly, even with limited access to international information, their vision mirrored what was unfolding in places like Yosemite, the UK, the Dolomites, and the Western Alps

HIGH VALMASINO

The upper part of Valmasino — or simply 'Masino' (now that you're among friends, you can use its nickname) — is where mountaineering in the area truly began, in the second half of the nineteenth century."As in many other corners of the Alps, the first to conquer its peaks were Anglo-Saxon nobles, guided by their trusted mountain guides.

Just to name a few milestones: Piz Badile was first climbed in 1867 by William Auguste Brevoort Coolidge, an Anglican priest from New York, alongside the Chamonix guides François and Henry Dévouassoud. Meanwhile, Monte Disgrazia saw its first ascent in 1862, when British alpinists Edward Shirley Kennedy and Leslie Stephen (father of Virginia Woolf), together with Thomas Cox and the Swiss guide Melchior Anderegg, reached its summit.

These days, the High Masino stands as an endless, untamed playground.

From mountaineering-style classics to elegant trad lines and formidable big walls, its coarse granite and sweeping vistas weave a climbing experience that feels both raw and timeless.

Far from the heat. Far from the worn-out clichés. Deep in the wild — where the silence still speaks.

VAL BREGAGLIA

The granite pluton of Valmasino doesn’t stop at the Italian border — it spills over into Switzerland, into the striking Val Bregaglia.

Here, the landscape shifts noticeably. The atmosphere becomes more austere, the walls steeper and often north-facing, and in some cases, the scale turns truly monumental.

Two legendary routes deserve mention:
the North Ridge of Pizzo Badile and the Cassin Route on its Northeast face — 1,000 meters of granite that have written a key chapter in the history of alpinism.

But Val Bregaglia isn’t just about big walls and Pizzo Badile. The cliffs above the Albigna reservoir offer enjoyable, scenic multi-pitch climbs with minimal approach — does La Fiamma ring a bell?

And good news: after being closed since 2017 due to the Pizzo Cengalo rockslide, the Capanna Sciora is finally reopening this year! A hidden gem of alpine climbing is once again accessible, thanks to a newly built trail.