I've never read up on this and I have to say, that's fucking insane. Thanks for the share.
You are welcome. The alpine front, gebirgskrieg in German( mountain war) also known as "the white war" isn't very popular, even though it was probably the biggest mountain war in history ( or one of the biggest), during ww1 ~four-fifth of the Austrian-Italian front was formed by mountains.
I guess it's not known abroad, probably because the largest slaughters took place on the western and eastern front ( until the Russian revolution) and generally in the plains-field, maybe also because it was a war where sometimes nature imposed forced "breaks" on both sides (while i think on the western front and in the field-plains, big or small fights took place almost every day), due to the fact that in some cases it wasn't techically possible to get "near" the enemy, like for example during part of winter 1916-1917, which is considered to be one of the most snowy and coldest winter of the 20th century, if the weapons were "quiet" or their use was limited, on the other hand giant avalanches steamrolled entire columns of soldiers, outposts, trenches etc...
A studio named "Geosfilm" is making a movie about the alpine front that should be released in 2014, judging by the number of actors-figurants you can see in the trailer i guess they didn't have a great budget, so don't expect any big fight, i just hope the movie will be historically accurate.
The movie is called "Tränen der Sextner Dolomiten" "Tears of the Sexter/Sesto dolomites" trailer
The same studio was supposed to release another movie about ww1, but i guess that the project was cancelled because the trailer is dated 9 August 2012. Trailer --->
Probably the most "famous" movie is "Berge in flammen" " Mountains in flames/on fire" made by Luis Trenker in 1931
There are serveral books that talk about the war on the alps, but i don't know if you can find 'em translated in English, if you can and you are interested, i suggest this book
http://www.amazon.com/lunga-trincea-1915-1918-Valsugana-Panarotta/dp/8881300427 .
Found these books in English
http://www.amazon.com/The-White-War-Italian-1915-1919/dp/0465020372 ( guess they made a mistake in the tile, cuz the war ended in November 1918) and :arrow:
http://www.amazon.com/Battles-Alps-History-Italian-Front/dp/1607030373/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379879750&sr=1-1&keywords=ww1+alps