Pizzo Centrale (ridge hike from Gloggentürmlipass to Passo Posmeda)

The Pizzo Centrale is still a popular summit, even though resurveying stripped the summit of its 3000m status some years ago. Besides the normal route from the Lago della Sella, there are three ridges leading to the summit. All of the ridges have interesting alpine hiking routes, which have been described on Hikr many times already. Surprisingly, however, no-one so far has combined the west ridge (Gloggentürmli - Sellabödeli - Gamsspitz) and the east ridge (Pizzo Prévat - Giübin) into a single hike, in spite of the nice horseshoe around the Lago della Sella made by this route.

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From the Gotthardpass, an asphalted road (closed to traffic, but annoyingly many cars still use it illegally) leads to the Lago della Salla dam. A little further along the western reservoir shore, a white-blue-white marked path leads to the Gloggentürmlipass, with its spectacular rock pinnacles. From here we follow the ridge eastwards without a marked path. The steep west face of the Gamsspitz looks unpleasant, but a well-trodden trail through the loose rocks makes the ascent relatively painless. The Gamsspitz east ridge is a little more difficult, with one exposed traverse (T5, I), but thankfully the rock is a lot more solid here.

At the Guspissattel, we join the normal route onto the busy Pizzo Centrale summit. The east summit seems just a stone's throw away from the main summit, but the brief exposed scramble in between requires some care (T5, I). After the east summit, the terrain quickly gets easier again on the descent to the Rotstocklücke. Here, you can descend into the Val Prévat if necessary.

We continue our horseshoe hike with the Pizzo Prévat. Though there are no real technical difficulties, the terrain (a heap of various types of rocks and boulders) is slow and energy-consuming all the way from the Rotstocklücke to the Passo della Sella. Here, we join the white-red-white hiking path that makes the ascent of the Giübin and the return to the Gotthardpass a much quicker affair.

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Purists might want to make the Lago della Sella horseshoe complete by including Monte Prosa (which I already climbing two years ago) at the start, and Posmeda and Pizzo Canariscio at the end.