ITALY IS mourning one its greatest sporting heroes, the mountaineer and journalist Walter Bonatti, who died in Rome on Tuesday aged 81.
Born to working-class parents in Bergamo, Bonatti had a precocious talent that made him famous by his early 20s, despite the privations of post-war Italian life.
His climbs on the Grand Capucin and Petit Dru above Chamonix are regarded as landmarks, while his first ascent of Gasherbrum IV in the Karakoram in 1958 with Carlo Mauri was a highlight of Himalayan climbing.
“He was among the greatest of all time,” British mountaineer Sir Chris Bonington said.
Bonatti’s life was overshadowed by controversy over the world’s first ascent of K2. Fellow Italian Reinhold Messner said Bonatti had left a great legacy in fighting for almost 50 years to tell the truth about that climb.
In 1954, Bonatti was part of a large expedition to K2 that sought to recover Italian pride after the second World War. His job was delivering oxygen equipment to fellow climbers Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni. However they were anxious that the young alpinist, then 24, should not try to share in their glory and so set their top camp higher than agreed.
As night fell, they shouted down to Bonatti and a porter, Amir Mahdi, to leave the oxygen and descend, but it was too late. Bonatti and Mahdi were forced to spend a night out in bitter conditions at 8,100 metres. Mahdi lost all his fingers and toes to frostbite.
Compagnoni and Lacedelli countered Bonatti’s outrage by accusing him of stealing some of the oxygen. Bonatti spent the rest of his life trying to clear his name and was exonerated when Lacedelli confirmed his version of events after Compagnoni’s death in 2009.
In 1965, he made a final great route on the north face of the Matterhorn and quit extreme climbing for good.