Trentino: bears, over 80 lakes and a retreating glacier

Trentino's nature runs from 65 meters above sea level at Riva del Garda to 3,343³ meters on Punta Penia, the top of the Marmolada, and in between it has brown bears again because ten of them were brought over from Slovenia between 1999 and 2002.

Adamello Brenta: 62,051 hectares since 1967

The Adamello Brenta natural park was established in 1967 and covers 62,051¹ hectares, which makes it the largest protected area in Trentino. Over 80 lakes, the Adamello glacier and the Brenta Dolomites all sit inside its boundary.

It is also a UNESCO Global Geopark, a label for geology rather than for monuments. And it is not an empty wilderness: the park authority counts 21 valleys and 49,000¹ residents within its area.

The park authority itself confirms the valleys, the residents and the Geopark status. The founding year and the surface come from an encyclopedic source, so treat those two as the less certain figures.

The bears came back by project, starting in 1996

The Life Ursus project began in 1996, and between 1999 and 2002 it released ten bears from Slovenia into the Adamello Brenta park. That is where the Trentino population comes from, not from animals that wandered back on their own.

The count grew to 60 to 78 individuals in 2018 and to an estimated 98 in 2023. The provincial large carnivore portal did not respond when this page was checked, so 2023 is the latest year given here.

The province publishes a new Rapporto Grandi Carnivori every spring. Read the current one, and the local trail notices, before a walk in the Brenta.

Marmolada: 3,343 meters and the 2022 collapse

Punta Penia on the Marmolada reaches 3,343³ meters, the highest summit in the Dolomites, and the mountain carries the largest Dolomite glacier. That glacier is in marked retreat.

On July 3, 2022 a serac broke off and killed eleven people on the glacier. The mountain's ridge is the boundary between the province of Trento and the province of Belluno, drawn along the watershed in 2018.

The cable car that climbs it runs from Malga Ciapela to Punta Rocca, and a 12 km ski run descends on the Belluno side. The glacier's current surface is not given here, because it changes every season: the surveys of the Comitato Glaciologico and of ARPAV are the place to read it.

Riva del Garda: the same province, at 65 meters

The northern tip of Lake Garda belongs to Trentino, and Riva del Garda, with 17,784⁴ residents, sits at 65 meters above sea level. The Brenta Dolomites are a few tens of kilometers away.

Riva has its own named winds, the Ora and the Balinot. A morning on the lakeshore and an afternoon above the tree line fit in the same day here, and the next section is about what that does to your packing.

Dress for 2,004 meters, not for the lake

The Passo Rolle weather station, at 2,004 meters in the Dolomites, records an annual mean of 3.2 °C on the 1991-2020 normals. July, the warmest month, averages 11.9 °C⁵, and February averages minus 4.4 °C.

That gap with Riva is the practical point of this page. Summer clothes that suit the lakeshore are wrong on a pass the same afternoon.

Stelvio: Trentino holds one of three sectors

The Stelvio National Park covers over 130,000⁶ hectares around the Ortles-Cevedale group, across Lombardy and Trentino-Alto Adige. Trento, Bolzano and Lombardy each administer their own sector, with separate offices.

For a walk on the Trentino side, the Trentino sector's office is the one to contact, and its rules are the ones that apply. The park's home page gives neither its founding year nor the height of the Ortles, so neither appears here.

More in Trentino, the Marmolada, the 2022 collapse, the two bear populations and Trentino's UNESCO sites.

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