Walter Bonatti
Walter Bonatti was an Italian mountaineer, alpinist, explorer and journalist. He was noted for many climbing achievements, including a solo climb of a new alpine climbing route on the south-west pillar of the Aiguille du Dru in August 1955, the first ascent of Gasherbrum IV in 1958, and, in 1965, the first solo climb in winter of the North face of the Matterhorn on the mountain's centenary year of its first ascent. Immediately after his solo climb on the Matterhorn, Bonatti announced his retirement from professional climbing at the age of 35, and after 17 years of climbing activity. He authored many mountaineering books and spent the remainder of his career travelling off the beaten track as a reporter for the Italian magazine Epoca.
He died on 13 September 2011 of pancreatic cancer in Rome aged 81, and was survived by his life partner, the actress Rossana Podestà.
Famed for his climbing panache, he also pioneered little-known and technically difficult climbs in the Alps, Himalayas, and Patagonia. In 2009, Bonatti was awarded the first-ever Piolet d'Or Lifetime Achievement Award. He is widely considered as being one of the greatest climbers in history.
Life and career
An only child, born in Bergamo, in Lombardy, Italy, Bonatti spent his childhood in the Po Valley dreaming of adventure. WWII left his working-class family impoverished. His father was a fabric merchant, Bonatti took to gymnastics through a sports association in Monza. The physical strength and balance he developed here would prove to be crucial skills for Bonatti as a climber. At age 18, Bonatti started climbing on the Grigna, a rocky mountain of the Italian Prealps, where he spent the summer of 1948 climbing intensively.In 1949, within a year of starting to climb, he made the first repetition of the Oppio-Colnaghi-Guidi Route, a challenging climb on the South Face of the Croz dell'Altissimo long and rated UIAA V+. Soon after followed the climb of the Bramani-Castiglioni Route on the North-West face of Piz Badile, a second repetition of the Ratti-Vitali route on the West Face of the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey, a rocky mountain in the Italian part of the Mont Blanc massif and the fourth ascent of the Walker Spur on the North Face of the Grandes Jorasses in only two days and with limited equipment. This last route had been climbed for the first time in 1938 by famous climber Riccardo Cassin and consists of of rock-climbing with UIAA difficulty of IV and V and one step of VI+. The climb of the Walker Spur by the Cassin route is exposed to stone fall and ranks together with the North Face of the Eiger as one of the major climbs achieved in the Alps between the two world wars.
Bonatti had limited financial means and his first climbs were done with very basic equipment, including pitons that he had manufactured personally. During the first years, Bonatti worked in a steel mill and climbed on Sunday directly after the Saturday night shift. In less than two years since he started climbing, Bonatti had already joined the restricted circle of the best Italian climbers.
The early climbs
In 1950, he tried what would have been his first major achievement: the first ascent of the east face of the Grand Capucin, an unclimbed face of red granite in the group of Mont Blanc, together with climber Camillo Barzaghi. They climbed a few pitches before being forced back by a storm. Three weeks later, together with Luciano Ghigo, another attempt was made. After three days of climbing and three hanging bivouacs, they had reached the most difficult section of the climb, a vertical section of of smooth granite, but a storm again forced them to retreat.In 1951 the same team tried again to climb the east face of the Grand Capucin. They started the climb on 20 July in good weather conditions. In two days they got close to the summit but again the weather worsened and they had to spend a day on the face in a hanging bivouac. The next day, despite bad weather conditions, they managed to successfully complete the climb and return safely to the hut. A few years later, in 1955 and after completing the climb himself, Hermann Buhl stated that it was the "most difficult granite climb in an absolute sense". In 1952, Bonatti and Roberto Bignami opened the first route on the south ridge of the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey.
In February 1953, together with Carlo Mauri he made the first winter ascent of the north face of the legendary Cima Ovest di Lavaredo. A few days later they made the first repetition of the winter ascent of the north face of Cima Grande, climbed already in 1938 by Fritz Kasparek. Before the end of the 1953 winter, with Roberto Bignami, and in only two days, Bonatti opened on Matterhorn a new direct variant on the Furggen Ridge. In the summer of 1953, he achieved the first climb of Mont Blanc by the north gully from the Peuterey Col.
In 1954 Bonatti was assigned to the Alpine regiment and for four days each week he trained men to climb; for the other three, he was allowed to head off into the mountains on his own. With all his achievements he had become an unavoidable selection for the Italian assault on K2, which would rebound to his disadvantage.
K2
Bonatti was the youngest participant of the 1954 Italian expedition to K2 organized by Ardito Desio. As Bonatti said afterward at the age of 80: It was the era when European countries picked off the 8,000m peaks in the same way they had colonies 100 years previously. On 31 July, two members of the Italian team, Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni, reached the summit, securing the first ascent of K2 for the Italian team. However, years after the expedition Bonatti found himself accused and at the center of a bitter controversy based on conflicting accounts of events that occurred during the ascent. 53 years later, the Italian Alpine Club officially recognize that both Lacedelli and Compagnoni lied in their account of the ascent and that Bonatti's version of the facts was accurate.Along with Hunza climber Amir Mehdi, Bonatti had the task to carry oxygen cylinders up to Lacedelli and Compagnoni at Camp IX for a summit attempt.
However, Compagnoni had decided to place Camp IX at a higher location than previously agreed with Bonatti. Bonatti and Mehdi reached a point close to Camp IX but by this time night had fallen and Mehdi's condition had deteriorated. Bonatti knew that he and Mehdi needed the shelter of a tent to survive a night at this altitude without risk of frostbite or worse, but the Camp IX tent was placed at the end of a dangerous traverse across icy slopes and visibility was too reduced to get there. Bonatti saw that Mehdi was in no condition to climb further or make a return to Camp VIII and was reluctantly forced to endure an open bivouac without a tent or sleeping bag at and. This cost Mehdi his toes, while Bonatti was lucky to survive the terrible night unharmed.
Compagnoni gave the explanation that his decision to change the agreed site of the camp was to avoid an overhanging serac, but Bonatti accused both of having deliberately changed the location to make it impossible for Bonatti and Mehdi to remain overnight at that height, so there would be no way they too could attempt the summit themselves.
Bonatti was in the best physical condition of all the climbers and the natural choice to make the summit attempt, but Ardito Desio selected Lacedelli and Compagnoni. Had Bonatti joined the summit team he would likely not have used supplemental oxygen. Therefore, Lacedelli and Compagnoni's oxygen-assisted climb could have been eclipsed. Although the Bonatti-Mehdi forced bivouac was not anticipated, Compagnoni intended to discourage Bonatti from reaching the tent and participating in the final summit climb. On the morning of 31 July, after Bonatti and Mehdi had already begun their descent to the safety of Camp VIII, Compagnoni and Lacedelli retrieved the oxygen cylinders left at the bivouac site and reached the summit of K2 at 6.10pm. Ardito Desio, in his final report, mentioned the forced bivouac only in passing. Mehdi's frostbite was an embarrassment to the expedition.
Bonatti was later accused by Compagnoni of using some of the oxygen to survive his bivouac, causing the climbers to run out of oxygen earlier than expected on the summit day. Bonatti immediately claimed that he could not use this supplemental oxygen because both the mask and the regulator were at Camp IX. Bonatti brought evidence supporting his response that Compagnoni had lied about running out of oxygen en route to the summit. Although Bonatti's version of facts was supported by Lacedelli in K2: The Price of Conquest, Lacedelli contended that the oxygen had in fact run out. However, he attributed this not to Bonatti's alleged use of the oxygen, but to the physical exertion of the climb causing the use of more oxygen than expected.
For a long time, Bonatti was accused and vilified by a part of the climbing community but over time the growing amount of evidence in support of his version of the facts proved his honesty. Reinhold Messner, in June 2010, said: Bonatti was one of the greatest climbers of all time – the last true Alpinist, an expert in all disciplines. But more importantly, Walter was a marvelous, tolerant, loving person. He leaves a great spiritual testament: he was a clean man vilified for 50 years over what happened on K2, but in the end, everyone accepted that he was right.
In 2007, the Italian Alpine Club published a revised official account, entitled K2 – Una storia finita, that accepted Bonatti's version of events as completely accurate.
Bonatti tried to organize a solo ascent of K2 without oxygen the following year to put the record straight but could not get the backing, so he retreated to Courmayeur, where he became a mountain guide in 1954.
Aiguille du Dru
Many years later, Bonatti would write:In the August 1955, after two attempts frustrated by the weather, he managed to solo climb a new route on the south-west pillar of the Aiguille du Dru in the Mont Blanc Group. The climb, rated ED+ with difficulties up to UIAA VIII-, required six days and still today is considered a masterpiece of climbing.
After five days of climbing on a vertical rock offering very limited protection, Bonatti found himself stalled and faced with an impassable overhanging section. On the left and on the right the rock was absolutely smooth. Bonatti put together all the slings and small sections of ropes he had on him, attached one end of the rope in a crack, and swinging on the other end managed to negotiate the difficulty. This route, known afterward as the Bonatti Pillar, is considered still today as one of the greatest achievements in alpinism. In order to overcome long vertical sections and several overhangs, Bonatti had to adapt the techniques of aid climbing to the granitic rock formations of the Dru.
In 2005 a massive landslide completely destroyed the Bonatti Pillar route.