While the Fifth Battle on the Isonzo front came to an end, on the high mountains along the Italian front military actions were being organized that passed into history not so much for their conquests but for the way in which they were conducted. The battlefields were neither the Karst plateau nor the hills of the Julian Prealps but instead the peaks of the Carnic Alps, of the Dolomites in Veneto and those of the range of the Adamello between Lombardy and Trentino. This led to the start of the phase of the war which historians have called "the White War", evoking the perennial presence of glaciers and snow.
On the night of 26th March 1916 on the Carnic Alps an Austro-Hungarian battalion attacked the Italian positions on the peaks of Pal Piccolo and Pal Grande. The aim of this attack was to surprise the Italian soldiers (who were surrounded by metres of snow), to surround Freikofel and then to descend to Timau in an area behind the Italian frontline. The group of Alpine soldiers in the Tagliamento Battalion, taken by surprise on the "Trincerone", had to withdraw and to abandon their position. Despite the snowstorm and the darkness, this action was extended rapidly even on the nearby peaks, placing in serious danger the stability of the Italian front in this region.
The Italian reinforcements arrived on the next morning and for three days the battle raged unabated around the Mount Croce Carnico Pass. On 29th March the Austro-Hungarian soldiers realized that they would be unable to advance or to keep the new positions that they had conquered. As a result they turned back and the Italians could again occupy the Trincerone on Pal Piccolo although they lost almost one thousand soldiers.
A few days later important military actions took place on the eastern Dolomites, on the axis Mount Croce Comelico-Sesto-San Candido (between Cadore and Val Pusteria). The plan, coordinated at the end of 1915, envisaged the occupation of Passo Sentinella and Croda Rossa in the neighborhood of Sesto. This action should have taken place in winter to increase the element of surprise but the Austro-Hungarians put in a determined resistance. The battle only came to an end towards the middle of April with the occupation of the pass and of the Cima Undici. Croda Rossa remained, however, in the hands of the Habsburg troops.
At the same time, 220 Alpine skiers left Rifugio Garibaldi (an Italian base at an altitude of 2,550 metres above sea level) and carried three guns to the area around Rifugio Mandrone, the seat of the Austrian positions. Within a month the Italians succeeded in conquering the main peaks of the Adamello mountains (including Mount Fumo, 3,418 metres) and reached up to the head of Val Genova.
