Why "Viel dal Pan"?

The footpath that stretches right across the mountain, linking Passo Fedaia with Passo Pordoi, was once used by flour merchants from the Belluno area as a quicker and alternative route to the roads down in the bed of the valley. Flour, an essential ingredient for making bread, represented an excellent bargaining product and was bartered in the Ladin valleys for handcrafted goods, as well as for other products. It is precisely because of the little path’s original use that the existing route and mountain refuge are now called “Viel dal Pan”.
To tell the truth, praise for the discovery of this route, one of the easiest and most spectacular footpaths in the Dolomites, with its incomparable view of the Marmolada “Queen of the Dolomites”, should go to the German doctor Karl Bindel, president of the Bamberg section of the “DOAV-CAI” , who first covered the route in the late 1800s, and who personally oversaw its restoration. Indeed, footpath No. 601 is also known as the “Bindelweg”, after its discoverer.