Società degli Alpinisti Tridentini


The Società degli Alpinisti Tridentini is an association operating in the Italian alpine province of Trento. It is the largest section of the Italian Alpine Club.

History

SAT was founded in Madonna di Campiglio on September 2, 1872 under the name of Alpine Society of Trentino. The founding members intended to promote the knowledge of the Trentino mountains, the tourist development of the valleys and the Italianity of Trentino. The means to pursue these goals were: the construction of huts, the creation of paths, the financing of hoteliers, the organization of mountain guides, climbing of peaks and the publication of geographic and mountaineering writings.
First president was Prospero Marchetti, vice president Nepomuceno Bolognini. The members were summoned twice a year in a spring meeting and in at summer The congresses during which the mountaineering, geographic, naturalistic and historical reports were presented and the progress of the association was measured. The first congress took place in Madonna di Campiglioin 1872, in 1994 it was celebrated in Trento.
The SAT was not a group of mountaineers and hikers, but of a group of bourgeois irredentists who wanted to implement "cultural appropriation and the acquisition of material possession of the homeland". In fact, in 1874 the society was dissolved by the Austrian authorities for filo-Italian activities. Then, in 1877, it was renamed to Società degli Alpinisti Tridentini.
The nationalist character of the SAT led to the so-called refuge war, a clash in the mountain toponomastics, between the unaltered flags hidden on the peaks, and the constructions of "double" shelters built alongside each other. For example, during the inauguration of the Quintino Sella hut in 1906, the participants could observe the yard of the German competitor Rifugio Tuckett. But shortly afterwards the great war broke out and the SAT was dissolved again. Many of its militants were interned or forced to confine, others took refuge in Italy.
In 1920 SAT became a section of the Italian Alpine Club, maintaining autonomy. On January 7, 1921, the working subsection of SOSAT, a working group climber at the initiative of Nino Peterlongo, was formed, which in 1919 in Trento had founded a section of the Unione operai escursionisti italiani.
In 2012 SAT had over 27,000 members, divided into 82 sections and 10 groups. It has 34 shelters, 12 bivouacs and various support points and social huts, cares for the signage and maintenance of over 6,000 km of trails; Its alpine relief, founded in 1952, has 800 volunteers divided into 37 stations spread across the provincial territory with a cyanophilic and speleological unit.
The headquarters of the association is located in Trento in the palace Saracini-Cresseri, which houses; The SAT museum, The historical archive, The SAT mountain library, The SAT section of Trento, The SUSAT, The SAT Chorus, The Provincial College of the Alpine Guides, The SAT Rock Cluster and the Giorgio Graffer Mountaineering and Mountaineering School.
SAT operates voluntarily in the Dolomites and the mountains of Trentino.