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First published as Montagne di una vita by Baldini & Castoldi International 1998

Photographs in Parts One and Three are from the author’s personal collection. Photographs in Part Two are reprinted with permission from Baldini & Castoldi International.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

The Mountains of My Life

Walter Bonatti was born in Bergamo on June 22, 1930. As a young man he dedicated himself to extreme alpinism, and from the age of nineteen to thirty-five he climbed a succession of increasingly difficult routes. By the end of the 1950s he was widely recognized as the best climber in Italy, and perhaps the world. In 1954 he played a vital role in the success of the Italian expedition that achieved the first ascent of K2, the second-highest mountain in the world. In 1965 he achieved an unheard-of-feat – the solo direct ascent of the Matterhorn north face in midwinter – after which he abandoned extreme mountaineering. For the next decade and a half, he visited the world’s wildest and most remote places, often travelling alone, as a photojournalist for the Italian magazine Epoca. He has been awarded medals for bravery several times by the governments of Italy and France, and has been made an officer of the prestigious French Légion d’Honneur. He has also been awarded trophies as a ‘Giant of Adventure’ in Germany and in the United States, and he is the author of more than a dozen bestselling books published in Italy on mountaineering and adventure. He lives in Dubino and Rome.

Robert Marshall, a native Australian, is a consultant surgeon at the Monash Medical Center and an honorary lecturer in anatomy at Melbourne University. A dedicated skier and hiker, he has skied extensively in Australia, Europe and America and, in addition to hiking in the Australian Alps, has completed many treks in the Nepalese and Kashmiri Himalaya, the South American Andes, and the European Alps. His fascination with mountains and mountaineers led him to take a particular interest in the life and climbs of Walter Bonatti, especially in relation to the prolonged K2 controversy. He lives in Melbourne.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Only two of my books have been translated into English: Le Mie Montagne (On the Heights) and I Giorni Grandi (The Great Days). For the past three decades these two volumes have made the English-speaking world aware of my climbs and, I had hoped, the spirit in which they were achieved. However, some years ago, I became aware that the translations were most unsatisfactory, and at times even conveyed the opposite of what I had actually written. I felt somewhat disillusioned by this, but also very annoyed, so much so I decided I would no longer allow these old editions to be republished. This meant I gave up the readership of half the countries in the world rather than accept translations of this sort.

But one day, unexpectedly, Robert Marshall appeared on the scene. Apart from being perceptive, as well as professionally eminent, he has some rather special attributes. Even before we met and became friends, he already knew all about me, and had read all the books I had written up to that time. He is a surgeon, a product of the immense, almost totally flat country of Australia. He was born and bred in Melbourne but takes a great interest in huge ice-clad peaks and those who climb them. This may seem rather contradictory, but I find it perfectly understandable because I too was brought up in the plains—in the Po River valley of Italy.

However, the remarkable thing about Marshall was this: he chose to learn Italian solely so he could read his favorite authors in their original language. And he got to know my language so thoroughly that he reached the point where he was able to set down in Italian—and very well too—a long commentary about the controversy concerning the conquest of K2 in 1954. Marshall had been highly influenced by the contents of my book Processo al K2 (Trial on K2), published in 1985. Until then he had known nothing about the facts of this affair, but it made him so indignant that, after a detailed analysis of all the evidence, he felt compelled to express his views very clearly and precisely. What he wrote was fundamental in establishing the historic realities of an exploit that had so many reprehensible aspects. For this reason I included the commentary in full in my last book K2—Storia di un Caso (K2—The Story of a Court Case), and it appears in Part II of this book.

More than this, after carefully comparing my original texts with their translations, he also reconfirmed the long series of errors in the English versions of Le Mie Montagne and I Giorni Grandi. This led him to undertake the self-appointed task of producing an English translation of the most significant chapters about mountaineering in all my books. These have all been collected into this single volume, appropriately titled The Mountains of My Life.

The shelves in Marshall’s home are full of books, in both Italian and English, about mountains and climbing. But to indicate how well my friend knows and understands me, apart from a basic affinity of character, there have been many years of friendly exchange of letters, not to mention numerous days of enthusiastic conversations on subjects that interest both of us.

I can think of no one better qualified than Robert Marshall to produce a faithful translation of these writings of mine and to comment on their contents.

FOREWORD

The Italian alpinist Walter Bonatti was the greatest mountaineer of his time, some might even say the greatest of all time. His career was relatively brief, lasting only from 1948, when he was eighteen, until 1965, when, at the age of thirty-five, he voluntarily renounced extreme climbing to become a photojournalist and adventurer. During that hectic seventeen years, his achievements were astonishing. Again and again, his remarkable feats established new benchmarks of human possibility. He climbed routes no one else had dared contemplate, often alone and, at times, in the worst weather imaginable. These exploits produced strong feelings among other climbers. His uncompromising stance on the ethics of alpinism made him more enemies than friends, and his dramatic climbs, sometimes associated with tragedy, often generated enormous public interest. Many of his ascents gave rise to furious controversy in the press—not only in Italy but also in France, Switzerland, and Germany. But all that time, unknown to Bonatti, he was becoming an even more controversial figure because of an unpleasant, long-running smear campaign orchestrated by his erstwhile companions.

Bonatti was born in Bergamo in 1930. He and a few of his friends became outstanding climbers as teenagers after World War II, and by 1949, armed only with the most primitive equipment, they were attacking the fiercest and most dangerous walls of the Alps.

They were all magnificent alpinists, but Bonatti was in a class of his own. He became the best-known climber in Italy when, in 1951, he achieved the “impossible” (for those days): he and a companion conquered the cast face of the Grand Capucin in the Mont Blanc massif—a vertical maze of smooth granite 1,500 feet high, studded with huge overhangs, which, at that time, made it an absurd project seemingly doomed to failure.

His ascents of the Capucin and of the most difficult north faces in the Alps—the Badile, the Walker Spur of the Grandes Jorasses, the Lavaredo in winter—plus many other classic routes, brought Bonatti’s name into the forefront of calculations in 1953 for the planned 1954 Italian assault on K2, the second highest mountain in the world. The best mountaineers in Italy were tested and retested and finally Bonatti was selected as one of the eleven climbers; at twenty-three he was the youngest of the group.

The expedition, sponsored by the Italian Alpine Club (CAI), and led by Professor Ardito Desio, was a huge enterprise intended to salvage Italian national pride after the disasters of the war by conquering an 8,000-meter (26,000-foot) peak, as the French had done on Annapurna in 1950, the British on Everest in 1953, and the Germans on Nanga Parbat in the same year. Failure was not to be tolerated, or even considered.

The summit of K2 was duly reached by Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli on July 31, 1954. Their support team was Walter Bonatti and the Hunza porter Mahdi, who carried up the oxygen bottles used by the summit pair. The original plan had been for all four climbers to spend the night together in a single tent at Camp 9, but what actually happened that evening forms the principle theme of this book; Compagnoni and Bonatti each had a different tale to tell, but the end result was that Bonatti and Mahdi never reached Camp 9, where the two summit climbers spent the night. Instead, they endured a storm in the open at 26,000 feet, unprotected by a tent, with neither sleeping bags nor bivouac sacks and with nothing to eat or drink. Miraculously they survived, and even more miraculously Bonatti escaped unscathed, though the unfortunate Mahdi lost large parts of his fingers and toes to frostbite.

When Desio’s victorious team returned to Italy to the plaudits of the entire country, Bonatti withdrew from the celebrations. For reasons he could not understand, his vital part in the conquest of K2 was ignored, even in the official film. As time passed, he found himself more and more at odds with his fellow climbers. Finally he was cold-shouldered completely, though no one had ever accused him of even the slightest misdemeanor. He had no idea why he was being ostracized; he became increasingly disillusioned and depressed and felt he had been betrayed by his comrades.

Finally, in desperation, to prove to himself he was not finished and his life still had meaning, he attacked in 1955 what was then regarded as the very essence of the unclimbable: the southwest pillar of the Dru. This peak is a stone waterspout 3,500 feet high that soars over the Arve Valley near Chamonix; Bonatti’s description of his climb is riveting. He climbed it alone: in five days of almost inconceivable effort, he clawed his way up the vertical and often overhanging face, his only companion a heavy sack. The “Bonatti Pillar” is now one of the classic routes of the Alps and forms an essential part of every young European climber’s education. It is a test-piece now, but it was then a sort of purgatory from which Bonatti emerged victorious and almost reborn.

He later tried to obtain financial support to allow him to return to K2, which he hoped to climb solo, alpine style, without oxygen. This concept was utterly ahead of its time, and everyone laughed at him. What he proposed seemed then to be absurd, though nowadays the best climbers of the new generation attack the highest mountains in the world in just this way. But in the 1950s the idea seemed absolutely preposterous. So Bonatti was compelled to restrict his activities to the Alps.

After the Dru, he threw himself into climbing ever more difficult alpine routes, sometimes with a companion but often alone. By the end of the fifties, he was universally recognized as the best climber in Italy, and had been invited by the Italian Alpine Club to take part in the next national project, the 1958 expedition to Gasherbrum IV in the Karakoram. He also climbed in Peru and Patagonia. Between expeditions, he went on climbing in the Alps, where his exploits set entirely new standards. In 1961 he was the central character in the Italian-French attempt on the Central Pillar of Frêney on Mont Blanc, where four of his companions died after the group had been stormbound for five days. Bonatti finally led the other two survivors to safety. The press had a field day, and wild accusations flowed freely in Italy. By contrast, the French government awarded him the Légion d’Honneur.

Just after this disaster and the subsequent publicity, Bonatti’s first book, Le Mie Montagne (On the Heights), was published. Among other matters, it dealt with what had happened on the summit day on K2 in 1954, and described this in a manner somewhat at odds with the official story recounted by Ardito Desio in his 1955 book La Conquista del K2 (The Conquest of K2), and by the climbing leader Achille Compagnoni in his book Uomini sul K2 (Men on K2). Desio and the Italian Alpine Club did not take kindly to Bonatti’s version. But the real reason Bonatti had been ostracized was never mentioned. Although he had never been accused to his face, he had been convicted by a kangaroo court in Pakistan, in 1954, unheard, of disloyalty and treachery (although this was not to become public until a decade later). Unfortunately, the leader of the K2 expedition, Ardito Desio, through a combination of misunderstanding and malice, came to believe that Bonatti had tried to sabotage the summit attempt. This is fully discussed in Part II of The Mountains of My Life. The publication of Bonatti’s autobiography in 1961 must have been seen by the establishment as a deliberate and calculated affront. Over the years, Bonatti’s fellow guides in Courmayeur, at the foot of Mont Blanc, always insular, became more and more unfriendly and jealous of his achievements. Ultimately, he became completely estranged from them, and resigned from the company. He climbed progressively more extreme routes, sometimes alone, sometimes with one of his still faithful friends.

Then in 1964, on the tenth anniversary of the ascent of K2, matters came to a head when two articles appeared in the well-known Italian magazine the People’s New Sunday Gazette, written by a reporter named Nino Giglio. These articles accused Bonatti of betraying Compagnoni and Lacedelli, of trying to steal their oxygen to get to the summit himself, and of deserting the frostbitten Mahdi on the following morning. He was publicly branded a liar, a traitor, a thief, and a coward. Bonatti was outraged, and sued the journalist and his paper for libel. His version of the events on K2 was finally vindicated when the case was heard two years later by a Turin Tribunal. The tribunal found in his favor, but he had made himself no more popular in mountaineering circles by dragging the matter through the courts. In the eyes of the establishment, he had sullied the image of Italian mountaineering and its crowning achievement: the first ascent of the second-highest mountain in the world.

In 1965, while the libel case was still pending, Bonatti, totally disillusioned by the small-minded, antagonistic ambience in certain Italian mountaineering circles, decided to make one last gesture as his farewell to mountaineering. In midwinter, alone, in a single push from glacier to summit, he climbed straight up the north wall of the Matterhorn, forging a completely new route—the “direttissima,” or most direct route: the path taken by a stone falling from the summit. This unheard-of feat was his tribute to the centenary of the first ascent of this most famous peak in the Alps by Whymper and his companions in 1865. As he inched his way up the treacherous, icy wall, the whole of Europe watched in awed disbelief. When he reached the summit on the fifth day, pandemonium erupted.

Regrettably, not everyone applauded: at a party held in Courmayeur to honor his achievement, Bonatti parked his car in the street, and when he returned to it, he found all four tires slashed to ribbons. There were obviously some people who felt very bitter about his fame. Those who had spread the story of his “villainy” on K2 had done their work all too well. After this, Bonatti abandoned extreme climbing. He changed his life entirely, and for the next fifteen years roamed the world as a photojournalist for Epoca, the popular Italian weekly magazine. His articles about the wild places at the ends of the Earth made his name even better known to the public than when he was a climber. During that period, he also published the second half of his mountaineering autobiography I Giorni Grandi (The Great Days), which ended with the account of his direct ascent of the Matterhorn north face.

His work with Epoca ended in 1979. Since then, he has lived quietly and devoted his time to writing books rather than magazine articles; he tends his olive trees, but has continued to give lectures and interviews from time to time. His photographs superbly illustrate his travel books: Adventure, I Lived with Wild Animals, Magic of Mont Blanc, My Patagonia, and The Last Amazonia.

But the whispers and innuendoes continued. Bonatti continued to be stigmatized by certain elements of the mountaineering world as a malcontent and a troublemaker. By the 1980s, his twenty-year-old victory at the Turin Tribunal had been forgotten and the official story still prevailed, thirty years after K2 was first conquered. So in 1984 he wrote yet another book, Processo al K2 (Trial on K2), in an anguished attempt to clear his name once and for all.

My own involvement in the K2 saga began at this point. I had been fascinated by Bonatti and his climbs for more than thirty years, but knew almost nothing of the accusations against him. It was not until I read Processo al K2 that I learned the precise allegations that had been made in 1964 and saw the transcript of the libel case. It was clear to me that Bonatti was telling the truth but that he had not realized the implications of the evidence produced in court, perhaps because he was too close to the problem. After considering all the facts, I arrived at my own theory of how the smear campaign against Bonatti had begun, and why it had persisted for thirty years.

So I wrote a commentary fully explaining my theory of what had happened near the summit of K2 three decades earlier. I thought Bonatti would be interested. As a lifelong admirer of Bonatti, and in the spirit of friendship, I sent it to him. There was no response.

Six months passed, and I had consigned the whole affair to history. I wondered whether my speculations had been judged absurd or presumptuous, had merely been ignored, or maybe just lost in the post. Then, to my great surprise and delight, a letter arrived from Italy. Bonatti had been in Patagonia. He expressed his amazement that an Australian, of all people, should have taken so much interest in such an arcane matter as what had happened thirty-three years earlier on K2. He was astonished he had never considered the evidence in the same light in which I presented it and he agreed that my interpretation of events was the only possible explanation for the whole affair.

I visited Walter in Italy the following year. He proved a most delightful and thoughtful host, and if I had ever had any doubts about his integrity, they could not have survived five minutes of his company. I have never met a more gentle man in all senses of the word, and am now very proud to count myself as his friend. To my great pleasure, he insisted that the commentary, together with my translation of his books, must be published together. Regrettably, this proved impossible at the time because Processo al K2, which I had found so convincing, had been greeted almost with indifference by the Italian public, and the bookstores were still stocked with unsold copies. The moment passed; the years went by. It seemed the truth about K2 would never be publicly recognized.

But there was to be one last crucial development. In 1993, in my own library of all places, in a 1955 Swiss publication, The Mountain World, I chanced upon two photographs that had been taken on the summit of K2 in 1954. With complete astonishment, I realized they confirmed Bonatti’s story. Here at last was documentary confirmation of my theories about what had happened on K2. It was extraordinary. Although I had seen these pictures at odd times in that same book for nearly forty years, their significance had previously escaped me completely. And, amazingly, no one else had ever noticed them either.

This discovery enabled me to play an active role, which I had never dared hope for, in clearing Bonatti’s name at last. In June 1994, a month before the fortieth anniversary celebrations of the first ascent of K2 were to be held at Cortina d’Ampezzo, the incriminating photographs were published in the Italian mountaineering magazine Alp, together with a summary of my commentary. These revelations caused a nationwide furor. The popular press took up the story in a whole succession of full-page articles, and the Italian public was told at last how shabbily Bonatti had been treated. Two years later, in 1996, Bonatti published an expanded version of Processo al K2, this time entitled K2—Storia di un Caso (K2—The Story of a Court Case). It included both the photographs and the commentary in full, plus comments from the press and mountaineering journals, which fully vindicated Bonatti. Despite this, the expedition leaders even now persist in their thoroughly discredited story.

The Mountains of My Life seeks to present a coherent picture of this remarkable mountaineer’s career, and of the pervading undercurrent of the disgraceful scandal that almost ruined his life, and the manner in which it was finally resolved.

If readers find the tone of Bonatti’s writing rather acerbic at times, they should remember that this great mountaineer brought to his profession a consuming passion that most people would find difficult to muster. In his extreme climbs, Bonatti dedicated himself to an uncompromising struggle with his own moral and physical capabilities. His victories were over himself, not over his mountains. His boyhood idols were the great mountaineers of the thirties, who accomplished their climbs using no more than a minimum of primitive equipment. Bonatti chose to use those same methods, and roundly condemns climbers who use tools that eliminate all risk and make success certain.

He always climbed for the sheer joy of the struggle and the thrill of emerging victorious against the odds, as indeed others have done in many other fields of human endeavor. But in mountaineering, unlike most other activities, an extreme climber on a great “mixed” (rock and ice) route puts his very life on the line, much as did the great explorers of an earlier age, whose survival depended only on their own powers and on their steely resolution. One can only sympathize with Bonatti’s frustration in finding himself roundly criticized, or even vilified, after some of his most audacious exploits.

It should come as no surprise to find that he deeply resents illinformed criticism of his motives and methods. But he has made himself a tempting target not only by his remarkable achievements but also by his spirited defense of what he perceives to be the moral essence of mountaineering.

The K2 affair, which forms the central theme of this book, is the best possible illustration of the shabby treatment Bonatti has been dealt by some of his contemporaries.

To summarize, Bonatti’s vigorous condemnation of some modern climbing techniques arises from his implacable stance on mountaineering ethics. He has always demanded that ascents must be achieved only by “fair means,” and regards some modern climbing equipment as unethical and unacceptable.

Men like Bonatti are blessed with great strength of character; the rest of us are apt to find them prickly at times. But they offer us a standard of dedication we would do well to emulate.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

The Mountains of My Life has been compiled from the publications listed in “The Mountaineering Books of Walter Bonatti,” which follows the text. The excerpts have been arranged and annotated to provide an integrated, chronological account of his most important climbs, the most significant of which was the dramatic bivouac at 26,600 feet during the first ascent of K2. That episode had far-reaching consequences, which form the underlying theme of this book.

PREFACE

Right from the start, the mountains were an ideal school for my development. Like many people, I had an inherent need to test myself and learn my own capabilities. So, as climb followed climb, I felt ever more alive and free—and fulfilled. Throughout my climbing career I always obeyed my innermost creative urges, but it was solo climbing, above all, that let me enter into the very spirit of the mountains and so come to recognize my own true nature and fully explore the limits of my ability.

Confronting harsh conditions alone, without support waiting in the wings, taught me to make my own decisions using my own standards and, appropriately, to pay for them with my own hide. Although distressing at times, solitude was an invaluable and often essential finishing school. I learned to know myself better as I made these internal voyages of discovery. But more than that, I came to understand others and the world around me. During these solo adventures, the very silence sometimes stunned me: but by “silence” I also imply reflection—listening to my own inner voice.

I have often wondered whether I was born a “loner” or became one. Although some of my experiences certainly disillusioned me about other people, my basic character was, and remains, that of a solo mountaineer. Whether they led to terror or exaltation, all my adventures started from the moment they took shape in my mind: converting them to reality was simply the logical outcome of that first spark of creative thought. For example, when I first thought of climbing the southwest pillar of the Dru solo, I found myself in a state of nonreality, where anything seemed possible, where accomplishing the climb was no more than a natural, inevitable consequence of its original conception. When you have extraordinary dreams, when you really believe you can make them come true, only then does your mind overcome the barrier of the “impossible.” Paradoxically, I came to understand that, in one sense, a first ascent is more “real” than the mountain itself. Others may climb your route, but no one else can have the same experience. That remains yours alone.

For me, the value of a climb is the sum of three inseparable elements, all equally important: aesthetics, history, and ethics. Together they form the whole basis of my concept of alpinism. Some people see no more in climbing mountains than an escape from the harsh realities of modern times. This is not only uninformed but unfair. I don’t deny that there can be an element of escapism in mountaineering, but this should never overshadow its real essence, which is not escape but victory over your own human frailty.

Fear has many aspects, and facing it demands self-control. For me it has often proved a spur to courage, including, if necessary, the courage to accept failure. Courage makes a man master of his own fate. It is a civilized, responsible determination not to succumb to impending moral collapse. But ill-considered courage can be stupid, dangerous, and meaningless. Certainly, at times, danger can give a certain cachet to events and become one component of adventure, but this steed must be kept on a very tight rein.

Undeniably my career was studded with highly dramatic experiences: I climbed at extreme limits for more than sixteen years. But for me, alpinism was not merely a matter of tragedy and suffering—as those who think I am a masochist may suggest. It brimmed with joy and exaltation; up there on the heights I lived through unique experiences. I also did many wonderful, safe ascents with a tranquil mind; but those climbs happened without incident and have not been included in this book.

Mountaineering always meant “adventure” to me—it could not and should not have been otherwise. I always wanted to lead the sort of adventurous life that is the true measure of a man—and I still do. I always refused any sort of organization or technical support during my climbs. Some years ago, for example, I decided to visit a still untouched, uninhabited land, the southern part of Chilean Patagonia—an area scarred by deep fjords entering from the Pacific Ocean and even today cut off from the rest of the world. My companions and I relied on our own resources, and enjoyed an enriching experience.

If I had wanted to undertake a sensational “exploit” down in Patagonia, I could have done as others do—arranged for air-dropped supplies, used radio links, electronic signals, and infallible satellite navigation instruments like the Global Positioning System to tell me the exact distance I had covered and how far I still had to go. But this would have been a sterile end in itself, confirming merely the accuracy of the technology used—an “adventure” that would have posed no problems, but also would have had no human interest whatsoever. A performance like that is based on a sort of illusion, and is no more than a confidence trick on the public—a dishonest “adventure” that seeks comparison with the authentic exploits of pioneers. But there is no real adventure in this sort of performance. Isolation, the unknown, even minor surprises are all missing, and these are what test man’s resources, ingenuity, and limitations.

Sophisticated equipment, advances in medicine, physiology, and other disciplines, dietetic and pharmaceutical products worthy of a space mission all have increased our powers and extended the limits of what is possible. So we must not confuse the achievements of today with the “impossibilities” of yesterday. Modern materials, for example, are now impermeable and extremely light. In the rarified air at 26,000 feet, drugs that alleviate muscle fatigue and improve cerebral function can now replace bottled oxygen. The “impossible” recedes further each day, so that at high altitude one can now confront tasks that would have been unthinkable yesterday. On the other hand, everyone is the child of his or her own generation, and although I know and respect this, I find it difficult at times to accept the logic of an era to which I do not belong.

Some ask what sense there can be in mountaineering today. Well, anything that expresses human values (and this includes alpinism) deserves respect. Mountaineering will survive as long as it manifests itself as fantasy, idealism, and, above all, the quest for self-knowledge. Contrary to some theories, there are no “modern,” “old,” and “future” ascents. All that exists is climbing, and this is no more than an ethical system devised to achieve its own aspirations. But let us not confuse mountaineering with mere virtuosity, nor adventure with what is no more than spectacle.

For my part, the mountains provided scope for my curiosity. But they also gave me a wish to live apart from restrictive and often disappointing social schemes, to move within a magnificent natural environment, to discover my own self, and to develop the kinds of qualities I have always striven for, such as honesty, consistency, responsibility, commitment, and disinterested goodwill. My disappointments came from people, not the mountains. I admire the ethics of many nineteenth-century mountaineers, but I have less regard for some of my contemporaries. I always regarded a ropemate as a sincere, loyal friend, capable of drive and decisiveness, leavened with a modicum of perfectly normal fear, and counted on knowing his intentions without need to ask—it was always much less important if, in the event, he turned out not to be a record-breaking master climber. Unfortunately, I didn’t come across many companions like that; instead, all too often, just when I thought I was in perfect harmony with someone, I would suddenly be surprised and disappointed.

I don’t wish to put myself forward as a model, but some people do agree with my way of thinking and living; I am very proud if I can be a reference point for them. Still, to see me solely as a mountaineer is only half the picture. Indeed, less than half, when one considers I dedicated my life to mountaineering with total commitment for only sixteen years. But we all feel the need to tell others about our own experiences, the more so as we get older, and if my achievements in the mountains prove helpful to others I can only feel proud and happy; nothing in life is more important. Sad to say, however, I felt compelled to get away from the mountaineering community in the end, to escape the aura of misunderstanding and cynicism I could sense all around me. In the mountains you develop spartan attributes imposed by nature, but these lessons are difficult to transfer to everyday life. This is an eternal conflict—at first the two lives seem similar, and it seems each should strengthen the other. But in reality the two paths diverge so much that often they are completely incompatible. The mountains taught me not to cheat, to be honest with myself. In one way, alpinism is a very hard school, at times it can be merciless, but at least it is honest. It can be quite difficult to reconcile these lessons with the everyday world. You must strengthen your will, choose what you wish to be, then be strong enough not to succumb to temptation and change course. You must pay a very high price to stay faithful to this agenda, but the spiritual legacy is in due proportion.

It is human nature to seek an audience, and fame can be very gratifying. Although fame per se means nothing, it is a great thing to be followed and respected. I would be a hypocrite if I denied the pleasure I have derived from success and the admiration of others, but I have always listened to the press with only one ear. During my climbing career, what I achieved in the mountains was news, but to me this was only marginally important. After the winter ascent of the Matterhorn in 1965, when I was still only thirty-five years old, it would have been easy to continue climbing, if only for the headlines. Instead, once I had achieved my goals, I abandoned mountaineering completely and turned my attention to other matters.

As the years passed, I came to realize more and more clearly that my true nature is to live adventurously in the widest possible sense. Once you develop a taste for exploration you inevitably always feel the need to go a little further. I have always had an innate desire to know and to understand—satisfied first through mountaineering, later by traveling solo all over the world.

I now understand better who I am and what I have accomplished in life. I know what I want from myself and from others. In my heart I perceive ever more clearly that you cannot be given goals by anyone else. This is my conclusion, after the peaks I have climbed, the places I have explored, and the successes I have achieved.

PART 1

THE CHALLENGE OF THE MOUNTAINS

CHAPTER 1

BEGINNINGS

When I was a child I used to get away from home on one pretext or another during the school vacations and go where I could watch the eagles fly. It really was so, because in those days eagles did fly in the skies of the Prealps, and a pair of these predators had chosen for their nest a rock just above the area where I played—Vertova di Valseriana, one of the valleys to the north of Bergamo.

Higher up the ridge was Mount Alben, the peak that, of them all, most triggered my imagination, thanks to its white limestone spires, which were often wreathed in mist. At that point in my life, Mount Alben was the best example of nature at its most austere that I had ever seen, and I used to idolize it with all the ingenuousness of a child, making it the very symbol of my aspirations to adventure. I was disappointed many years later, when from the heights of the Grigna I realized, seeing it from a distance, my fabulous Alben was lower and squatter than the peak on which I was standing.

I was still living in Monza in the years after the Second World War. They were hard times, too, for a boy with no prospects facing life in a defeated country. It was during those years that I came to know the Grigna, the slim rocky pyramid that overlooks the Brianza. And despite the fact that, in those days, I only went by the paths, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the spires and crests of that beautiful peak on which, with wonder and envy, I used to see climbing ropes at work. I would stand for hours on end watching those lucky people, then try to imitate them only a few feet from the ground on a nearby boulder.

One day my usual companion arrived with his mother’s clothesline in his knapsack. This was the first time I ever tied on to a climbing rope, but from then on I tried to put into practice what I had been watching.

A real, genuine climb was to follow not much later, thanks to a sympathetic chap called Elia who was to become a friend of mine. One day, at the foot of the Nibbio, one of the Grigna towers, Elia came upon me raptly watching the progress of a rope pair that was busy on the rock face above. It must have rather touched him because he came up to me, decked out in all his climbing gear, and, with the air of an expert, said, “How’d you like to try it?”

Five minutes later we were climbing up by way of the path to the direttissima, which took us to the base of the pinnacle known as the Campaniletto (Little Bell Tower). We roped up and, after giving me some instructions, Elia set off. However, after no more than ten feet or so, my new friend seemed to founder and run aground. I watched him as he tried to go on, bending first to one side, then to the other. He curled himself up, then tried again, and yet again. But he stayed right where he was, ten feet from the ground, as I watched in silence.

“My soles are slipping!” he said to excuse himself, then added, “I’ll try farther over to the left.”

He repeated the moves as before, as I silently urged him on and encouraged him with all the intensity I could muster, but with no better result.

Go on! I said to myself. Keep it up! Or my first climb is going to vanish into smoke!

In the end he came back down to the starting point. I was terribly disappointed and was about to resign myself to failure when, amazingly, Elia said, “Go on! You have a try with those boots of yours!”

I was in fact wearing a pair of enormous army surplus boots with square toes, tethered to my ankles by a wide leather strap.

If Elia couldn’t get up wearing climbing boots, I thought, how on earth will I be able to do it without a rope holding me from above? In spite of this, I wanted to try so much, I took his place. I don’t know how I did it, but I somehow managed to climb that first difficult pitch. Suddenly I felt I was at the center of a delirious dream. When the rope ran out, Elia, now held by me from above, was able to come up and join me, but just as we were about to change places he said, “Great! Why don’t you just carry on, right up to the top?”

And up to the summit I went. It was in this way I had my first encounter with a real rock face.

It was August 1948, and that first climb on the Campaniletto galvanized me. More climbs on the Grigna peaks followed, many of them, as many as I could accomplish between dawn and dusk on all the Sundays that followed.

I was now devoted heart and soul to rock faces, to overhangs, to the intimate joy of trying to overcome my own weaknesses in a struggle that committed me to the very limits of the possible. More than that, I came to know the satisfaction of passing where others had not been able to go. In a sort of direct communion between thought and action I discovered more and more about my own powers, my own limits. Perhaps I was repaying myself for what life had denied me in other ways, but it became clearer to me how up there, in direct contact with unsullied nature in an uncomplicated environment, I felt alive, free, and fulfilled—more and more every day. In this way I was discovering adventure, rich in everything that uplifts and exalts humanity. Above all, I was discovering my way of life.

As I gained experience, the climbs I attempted demanded ever more single-minded commitment. In this way I progressed from the easiest to the most difficult routes on the Grigna peaks. It was a brief but intense cycle, which lasted all winter and ended in late spring—that is, at the beginning of the real, genuine Alpine climbing season of 1949.

My usual companions, neophytes like myself, were Oggioni, Barzaghi, Casati, Aiazzi, and, later, Carlo Mauri. The great Alpine peaks we now confronted bore prestigious names that put them in the top rank of the grades of difficulty: the direttissima of the Croz dell’ Altissimo in the Brenta Dolomites, the north face of the Badile, the east face of the Aiguille Noir de Peuterey in the Mont Blanc group, and, in the same area, the Walker Spur on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses. A straight flush of successes for a nineteen-year-old lad, which was all I was then, less than a year after that first timid climb with Elia on the Campaniletto.

CHAPTER 2

BREGAGLIA:

THREE NORTH FACES

The major preoccupation of the thirties for all the best European climbers was the conquest of the six most difficult north faces in the Alps: the Lavaredo, Badile, Dru, Matterhorn, Eiger, and Grandes Jorasses.

The Badile (“shovel”) is a gigantic granite peak on the Italian-Swiss border, and its northwest face is indeed a smooth and almost vertical wall of rock closely resembling the back of an upturned shovel, including a huge central groove in its exact center that runs halfway up the wall toward the sharp transverse summit ridge. It was first climbed in 1937 by the great Italian climber Riccardo Cassin, accompanied by Esposito and Ratti. They succeeded in reaching the top on their first attempt, but it took them three days. Two Lecco climbers, Molteni and Valsecchi, were independently attempting the face, but were in difficulties and joined Cassin’s three-man rope^* after the first bivouac. All five reached the summit as a single team in a blizzard after two more terrible days on the face, but Molteni and Valsecchi both died from exposure soon afterward during the descent. These two young men were experienced climbers, and their deaths serve to emphasize what a serious undertaking the Badile was in those days. To climb such a face and survive took great skill and extraordinary endurance. Yet in 1949 Bonatti, still a teenager, tackled the northwest face of the Badile in his very first alpine season with his friend Barzaghi not so much as a goal in itself but as a training climb for the north face of the Grandes Jorasses.

Just beyond the Swiss frontier, on the borders of the Engadine, lies the most beautiful Alpine landscape I know: the Bregaglia, a typical Swiss valley where lush pastures, picturesque cottages, and dense conifers, overlooked by the rugged profiles of ice-clad mountains, typify the picture that has so often inspired painters of mountain scenery and is most eagerly sought by lovers of the Alps.

The whole Bregaglia is wonderful, but among the valleys that converge on it is one most dear to mountaineers, the Val Bondasca. It begins at the little village of Bondo on the left-hand slope, then rises, fantastic as a fairytale, to the foot of some of the greatest granite colossi in the Alps. What mountaineer has not at least dreamt of knowing the clear faces of the Badile, the Cengalo, Gemelli, Sciora, Trubinasca, and many other peaks? Some of them symbolize stages in the evolution of mountaineering, and I wish to speak of climbing three of their beautiful north faces, the memory of which binds me forever to these mountains.

The first time I got to know them was in July 1949, when I set out for the northwest face of the Piz Badile: a gigantic granite rampart 2,200 feet high that had first been climbed in 1937 and ascended only once since then.

Together with my faithful friend Barzaghi, I set out with all the enthusiasm of my nineteen years. At that age, with strong muscles and burning ambition, it was easy to believe no mountain obstacle could prevent us from succeeding. We didn’t know the area; it was the first time we had encountered granite mountains and, even worse, we had the unfortunate idea of reaching the Badile from the Val Masino—that is, on foot from Italy after crossing the extremely tiring Porcellizzo and Trubinasca passes. The principal reasons for this were a shortage of cash and a complete absence of passports. As if this wasn’t bad enough, we were also given confusing directions: “Take the first pass on your right after you’ve crossed the Porcellizzo,” my friends had told me. It actually should have been the first on the left, so we had to climb up and down four steep, difficult stony gullies before the fifth finally turned out to be the correct one.

At 2:30 P.M. on July 23 we reached the foot of the northwest face of the Badile, feeling like whipped dogs. We were so tired and discouraged that the sight of it had a deep impact on us. That accursed approach had cost us altogether the best part of eighteen hours: a forced march carrying very heavy rucksacks, plus a night in the open as boring as it was uncomfortable. This hard lesson was to prove very valuable in times to come, but that day it was a severe blow to our pride, although it could not induce us to give up our attack on the face.

The Mountains of My Life

The Mountains of My Life

AUTHOR’S NOTE

FOREWORD

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

PREFACE

CONTENTS

PART 1

THE CHALLENGE OF THE MOUNTAINS

CHAPTER 1

BEGINNINGS

CHAPTER 2

BREGAGLIA:

THREE NORTH FACES