Piz Bernina

The Piz Bernina, at 4,049 m, is the highest peak of the Eastern Alps and the only four-thousander east of Monte Rosa. It lies in the glaciated Bernina group on the border between the Engadin and the Italian Valtellina. Famous is the Biancograt, an elegant firn ridge regarded as one of the most beautiful high tours in the Alps.

Highlights

• Highest mountain of the Eastern Alps and the only four-thousander in the region
• Biancograt, the stairway-to-heaven firn ridge
• Glacier world around Diavolezza and Morteratsch
• View from the Diavolezza viewpoint without a climb

Good to know

Practical info

Background & History

The Piz Bernina, at 4,049 metres, is the only four-thousander of the Eastern Alps and the highest peak of Graubünden, towering high above the Upper Engadine and the Poschiavo valley. A whole mountain group bears its name, the Bernina group, whose most striking link is the famous Biancograt, a knife-sharp ridge of firn of flawless elegance that has earned the mountain the nickname Stairway to Heaven among alpinists. The summit was first climbed in 1850 by a surveying expedition under the engineer Johann Coaz.

Geologically the Piz Bernina is a piece of ancient earth crust: the Bernina granite formed more than 300 million years ago, long before the folding of the Alps, and belongs to the so-called Austroalpine nappes, which in the course of the mountain-building were thrust far to the north over the lower rock layers. Mighty glaciers descend from its flanks, among them the Morteratsch Glacier, the largest in the Eastern Alps. In its rock the mountain thus combines the deep prehistory of the Alps with the living world of ice and rock that surrounds it to this day.