For a lifetime, Alberto Vendruscolo has built roads where there were none and seen routes where others did not. It was in his DNA, and was his job as a road builder and owner of the company that still bears his surname. This was also the case for the ‘La VolatA’, the black run that he dreamed of completing to connect the Col Margherita to the San Pellegrino Pass. A venture considered by many to be ‘crazy’ and realised by his son Mauro, the current president of Funivia Col Margherita. Those capitals ‘V’ and ‘A’ are a tribute to those who dreamed of this run, without being able to see their dream come true. “Making a piste there is a bit of a crazy idea,” Mauro Vendruscolo was heard to say. It was not just a matter of creating a trail that would start in one region, Veneto, and finish in another, Trentino. What made the idea seem crazy were those gaps in the rock at the end, where even imagining a route seemed impossible. Yet Mauro could clearly make out that line among the Col Margherita’s snowpacks, just as his father Alberto had imagined it. The dream of both was to complete that first steep section created in the late 1980s by Livio Sommariva, the first president of the Funivia Col Margherita company. In 1982, with the installation of the ski lift of the same name, the first step was taken towards the creation of the Ski Area San Pellegrino, connecting the San Pellegrino Pass, in the province of Trento, to the 2,514 metres of the Col Margherita in the territory of Falcade (BL) in just a few minutes. The completion of ‘La VolatA’ was first set down on paper in 2011 but it was only a few years later that the project became a reality, shortly afterwards hosting a competition at the highest level: the Val di Fassa Junior World Championships. Today what Alberto Vendruscolo envisioned between those rocks is a World Cup run.
La VolatA is divided into five sections: the first stretch of 190 metres, the Muro Alberto dedicated to the founder of the Ski Area Alberto Vendruscolo, is followed by a 280-metre change of gradient, the Muro Manfroi. Next comes La Piana, a section of 410 metres with gentler gradients. In the second part of the route, the adrenaline kicks in again: the 1,000 metres of the Muri del Poeta, and then the 880 metres of the Dosso del Camoscio, a stretch characterised by various bumps and dips leading to the start of the Col Margherita lift.
The challenging course – FISI and FIS homologated for downhill, super-G, giant slalom and special slalom – hosts the elite of world skiing. From 24 to 28 February 2021, the Val di Fassa Ski World Cup, the women’s Alpine Ski World Cup, was held here. The VolatA was also the training ground for the European trials of the queen of speed, Lindsey Vonn, a three-time Olympic medallist and the most prize-winning skier in history. On La Volata, the elite of Italian alpine skiing, including the Italian women skiers Brignone, Bassino, Goggia and Pirovano, as well as athletes from the German, Slovenian and other national teams, put themselves to the test. Among the big names to be seen on this slope were Peter Fill and Christof Innerhofer. Also among the top female racers was Tessa Worley, a French alpine skier and giant slalom specialist, world champion in the speciality in Schladming 2013 and Sankt Moritz 2017 and winner of two giant slalom World Cups.
Consortile Passo San Pellegrino – Falcade S.P.A.
Sen Pelegrin, 32
E-mail: info@skiareasanpellegrino.it
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P.IVA/C.F. 02029420227 | REG.IMP. TN-195379 | CAPITALE SOCIALE: € 550.000,00 I.V.