Bonatti - Modern Classics the Mountains of My Life

WALTER BONATTI

Translated and Edited by Robert Marshall

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PENGUIN CLASSICS

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

This translation published by Random House, Inc., New York 2001

Published in Penguin Classics 2010

English translation copyright Robert Marshall, 2001

Copyright Baldoni & Castoldi International, 1998

The moral right of the author and the translator has been asserted

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

All rights reserved

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

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-141-95716-6

PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS

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 worlds 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 theprestigious French Lgion dHonneur. 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.

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 plainsin 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 Italianand very well tooa 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 K2Storia di un Caso (K2The 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 Marshalls 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.

W ALTER B ONATTI

Dubino, Italy, 1999

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 pressnot only in Italy but also inFrance, 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.