The Mountains of My Life

"Bonatti was born in 1930 and was at his peak in the 1950s. He was extreme in who he was and what he did. He was climbing the cutting-edge routes—extremely difficult climbs—as a teenager with no gear. He would be in, like, a potato sack, doing the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses—which is a route that climbers today still idolise. Then he would be putting up these new routes that were completely elite, so extreme. He was such a gifted climber. He was just amazing. Well, alpinism was born when a lot of bourgeois Victorians were going out and climbing up these big peaks for sport—to get ‘first ascents.’ These were men and women, and they were quite often out with a local mountain guide from the area who had all the knowledge and experience, and would help them go out and do it. Walter Bonatti was born in Bergamo, quite close to the Alps, and he worked as a mountain guide himself. So he would take people out, did all these amazing climbs, and then in 1965 he just stopped. As though he had ‘completed climbing.’ And so he stopped. The book is a collection of chapters taken from a number of Bonatti’s books, translated and edited by Robert Marshall, an Australian who helped to clear Bonatti’s name in the 1990s, after years of controversy surrounding the events of the 1954 Italian K2 ascent. Each chapter centers on a particular climb and tells the story of it. It’s written in the first person, and you get privileged access into his mind. He’s very interesting, a very intelligent man. He became a journalist and photographer afterwards, and travelled the world as an explorer. So his writing is good as well. One of the interesting chapters is about the Italian K2 expedition in 1954, which was when they were there to get the first ascent for Italy as part of that nationalist—well, fascist—world conquest mission. He was young to be joining that expedition—in his twenties, still—but he had made such a name for himself and was climbing so well that they knew he was strong and experienced enough. This whole episode was really strange and controversial. Afterwards he ended up completely ostracised for telling his side of events, which when you read it was completely surreal. Essentially he was there working with a high-altitude porter to deliver oxygen up the mountain to help the two climbers who were going to the summit. Then something strange went on—they struggled to find the tent of these two guys. They would shout down, but wouldn’t show where they were. Bonatti and his porter were basically left outside overnight in the death zone in a storm. So Bonatti recounts all of this—the strangeness of it, the getting dark, the being up there with no tent or bivvy gear, digging a ledge out and having to save this porter’s life multiple times. He was in a desperate state, terrified, and just trying to launch himself down the mountain. It basically seems like the two were left out for dead intentionally. This is Bonatti giving his side of the story, what happened. After this, understandably, he didn’t trust other people and went off to do other climbs on his own. You get privileged access to these exceptional experiences and these controversies, and how it shaped him as a man. It’s beautifully written as well. Yes. With Bonatti you get a real insight into that. His psychology is interesting. He was probably a bit neurodivergent in some way. What was driving him to these absolute extremes? After that episode he went to prove himself by climbing this new route on the Dru, this big beautiful rocky peak over Chamonix. He spent six days solo on this face, in extreme conditions. He was completely driven, completely obsessed with having to prove himself. That climb now has iconic status in Chamonix, because in 2009—due to climate change—the ‘Bonatti pillar’ collapsed, and all that is left is an epic rock scar."