We investigate the behavior of a chain of bistable units with an heterogeneous distribution of energy jumps between the folded and unfolded states. For homogeneous chains, loaded by soft or hard devices, all units at each switching occurrence have the same probability to unfold and it is therefore impossible to identify an unfolding pathway. Conversely, the heterogeneity represents a quenched disorder from the statistical mechanics point of view, and is able to break the symmetry eventually generating an unfolding pathway. We prove that the most probable pathway is realized by arranging the energy jumps in ascending order. Hence, the mechanics of this system is able to implement a statistical sorting procedure. We quantitatively evaluate the identifiability of the obtained unfolding pathway in terms of the variance of the heterogeneous energy jumps and the temperature. This concept is applied to both deterministic and random distributions of energy jumps within the chain.