Walter Bonatti (Italian Walter Bonatti; June 22, 1930, Bergamo, Italy - September 13, 2011, Rome) is a famous Italian climber.
Born in Bergamo, Lombardy. He is the founder of a new style of mountaineering, which is characterized by the passage of the most difficult routes in the mountains, often alone. Received the unofficial title "Mountaineer No. 1" in the fifties - sixties of the XX century.
Mountaineering achievements
He began his climbing career in the vicinity of Lecco, on the Grigny cliffs, where, as a 19-year-old boy, he climbed a number of difficult routes:
1948 - to the top of Grigny near Lecco.
1949 - climbed a number of the most difficult routes on steep alpine walls: diretissima on Croz del Altissimo in the Brenta region, Piz Badile along the Cassina route along the north-east wall, along the west wall of Aiguille nor di Pietri, Pointe Walker along the north wall of Grand-Joras.
1950 - Three routes along the eastern face of Mont Blanc solo (Alps).
1951 - first ascent of the East Face of the Gran Capuchin (Alps).
In 1954, at the age of 24, he received an invitation to the Italian expedition to Chogori (K2). During this expedition, he had to spend a cold night at an altitude of 8100 m together with Pakistani Amir Mahdi. They carried a supply of oxygen for the ascent to the summit and could not find a tent, which, as it turned out later, was erected by Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni in the wrong place where it was agreed. They did not react to the cries of Bonatti and Mahdi, and they were forced to spend the night in the open, in extreme conditions. Bonatti managed to survive this night relatively safely (which in itself is a feat), and his companion Mahdi froze all his fingers and toes. The next day, Lacedelli and Compagnoni, with the help of oxygen brought in by Bonatti and Mahdi, successfully made the first ascent to the second highest peak in the world and entered the annals of history as heroes. And Bonatti, instead of joining the first climbers, was forced to lower the frostbitten Amir Mahdi down. Walter Bonatti could not forget this tragic story all his life. According to him, that night he lost faith in the people around him, which left its mark on the entire mountaineering life that followed.
Returning from the expedition, in 1954 he makes the first winter ascent of the North Face of Pointe Walker. The following year, he makes the most difficult climb of the western face of Petit Drew alone, which caused a huge resonance in mountaineering circles.
In subsequent years, he made a number of striking ascents in various mountain areas:
1956 - Patagonia (Argentina), the first ascent of Cerro Moreno - Cerro Luca and Cerro Adela and the first attempt to climb Cerro Torre with Carlo Mauri.
1956 - Karakorum - first ascent of Gasherbrum IV (7980 m) together with Carlo Mauri.
1957-1964 - traveling around the world.
1965 - solo, Matterhorn, winter, first ascent (Alps). For five days, all news agencies in Europe were reporting from Zermatt about this ascent, keeping hundreds of thousands of listeners in suspense. Sir Francis Chichester, who sailed around the world on a yacht alone, expressed the following on this occasion: "Not physical strength and not honed mountaineering technique are the key to the success of Walter Bonatti, but only his not surrendering straightforward character and deepest volitional reserves!" Nine years later, Reinhold Messner was forced to retreat on this route, despite the fact that he was not walking alone. His words: "What this man did here alone is already beyond the border of the possible, it's just fantastic!"
Trips
At the age of 35, being at the zenith of fame, Bonatti suddenly stops actively walking to the mountains, switches to journalism, travel, photography, writes books in collaboration with Elena Trois, chooses one of the most perfect women in Italy - the actress Rossana Podesta - as her life companion.
The answer to the question why he so unexpectedly turned away from more mountaineering in 1965, Bonatti gave the following way:
“It was not unexpected. I was in the role of a wolf, driven by part of the climbing circles and the street press, but even this was not the impetus for making a decision. The main thing was that I just didn’t know anymore what more could be achieved with the equipment and the climbing technique that I owned in the Alps - and I simply didn’t have the money to transfer my activity to the Himalayas ”
Bonatti began to travel and explore the most remote places on Earth. He was published many times in the Italian illustrated magazine "Epoca", which won fame and recognition as a talented writer and photographer. Adventure in the wildest countries, most often alone and without any weapons, was nothing more than a consistent continuation of his mountaineering morality. Along with Africa, Antarctica and Oceania, he also visited the cold pole in Oymyakon in Siberia, bringing a hat with earflaps as a souvenir. He spoke very warmly of the Russian people, who are able to live even where the exhaled moisture immediately falls on the shoulders in rustling crystals.
Traveling around the world, he responds to opponents who criticize him for leaving:
“Instead of using mountains as a tool to expand our horizons, many in the climbing circles see ONLY mountains; they voluntarily pull blinkers over their eyes. What a pity that they become so insensitive, because it is the constant contact with nature and the associated perception that can bring so many pleasant and unexpected moments in the life of a climber. No, they only talk about mountains, they see only mountains, not seeing either people or nature behind them. A person needs mountains as much as sports, as well as art to rise above himself! "
Among his dear people belongs, first of all, the Italian actress, and also his wife - Rossana Podesta. After many years in Milan and Rome, he returned to his mountains of youth in Lecco.
... Day after day, the winds, replacing each other, do not give the slightest respite. Ice dust is swiftly rushing in the air - so dense that nothing can be seen within a meter. Occasionally a pale disc of the sun peeps out, but more often only the force of gravity makes it possible to determine where the earth is and where the sky is in this insane whirlwind of snow. There is a feeling of dull melancholy, a kind of cosmic fear. Days merge into the timelessness of loneliness. Only a watch could show the time of sleep and awakening, but what kind of awakening can we talk about if you can't even relax your muscles and nerves? All the worries and worries that have already been left behind are compressed into a debilitating oblivion, when you do not sleep with your eyes open. A storm roars outside. The seams of the tent groan, the fastening stakes creak. Everything trembles and trembles. It seems that the tent is about to endure, it will burst and fly away in a crazy tornado. In such conditions, you want to stay in the shelter endlessly, press it to the ground with your body, getting ready to eliminate the slightest slack at any moment ..."This is an entry from the Antarctic diary of the famous Italian traveler and journalist Walter Bonatti (1 On the travels of V. Bonatti see:" One on one with Marañon "(" Around the world ", No. 7, 1974), and" To the white peak of Rwenzori "( "Around the World", No. 8, 1974).). And it refers to the very first day of the expedition's stay on the sixth continent: the strongest blizzard that began the day before hid Bonatti and his companions in the tiny world of camping tents for five long days. However, you still have to leave the tents. And not only in order to strengthen the stakes or free the guy wires from frozen snow. You also need to have breakfast, lunch, dinner, which means every now and then make your way to a large tent, adapted for the kitchen. But there is nowhere to go: “The icy, scorching wind strives to knock you down. The gaze is lost in a cloudy veil, the eyes find it difficult to find landmarks. Every minute you stumble like you're drunk. Sometimes, in order to stay on your feet, you just have to lie down on a dense, elastic stream of wind, and if at this moment it suddenly changes direction, it is already impossible to resist ...
With the exception of these "feats", according to the travelers, "completely incompatible with the goals of travel," everything else is a tedious wait. For the whole day, it is not possible to throw a word with each other: it is also impossible to while away the melancholy together - all the tents must be under control. Only in the evenings, when two or three people gather in the kitchen tent, you can chat a little. Argue. And to weigh the chances: will it be possible to fulfill the plan? Indeed, along with tasks of a purely research nature, Bonatti set himself those that no one had ever undertaken before: to climb the highest Antarctic peaks. In 1958, however, New Zealanders Brook and Gunn climbed one of the peaks - Mount Huggins, 3733 meters high. However, most of the peaks remained unconquered.
The beginning of the expedition fully corresponded to the technical capabilities of our days. Two helicopters carefully delivered the travelers directly to the "place of work" on the high plateau of the Emanuel Glacier. Tents, food supplies, scientific equipment were unloaded. Having raised a cloud of snow dust, the helicopters soar up and disappear over the horizon. There are three weeks ahead, during which it is necessary not only to survive, but also to complete the planned research program. And ... in the evening, when the tents were pitched and it was time to pack into sleeping bags, the wind arose. Its growing impulses pounced with fury at the brightly colored synthetic houses, generously showering them with thorny ice crystals.
And the first losses in the expedition were discovered on the third day of the storm: the tent with scientific equipment could not withstand the onslaught. The storm crushed her and buried her under a thick cover of fresh heavy snow ...
It is quite natural that in the chronological series of the Great Geographical Discoveries, the conquest of Antarctica was in one of the last places. The extreme remoteness of the "white continent" from the inhabited places of our planet, the harshest climate for a long time were insurmountable obstacles for researchers.
The sixth continent was discovered by the Russian expedition of F. F. Bellingshausen and M. P. Lazarev on the ships "Vostok" and "Mirny", the direct goal of which was to pass as close as possible to the South Pole. There were still many kilometers, years and tragedies to the Pole, but the date of the discovery of the mainland itself was accurately recorded in the expedition's report and remained in history for centuries - January 16, 1820.
In 1841, the Englishman James Clark Ross, on two sailing ships, managed to penetrate the large Antarctic bay, now called the Ross Sea. The Erebus and Terror passed through the pack ice quite easily, but after a few days sailing along the coast, a giant ice barrier stood in the way of the ships. It was impossible to move further, and the sailboats stopped at a latitude of about 78 ° - a record for that time. In the distance, a chain of high peaks rose. The two largest were named Lister and Hooker, after Ross's comrades. For a long time this chain was one of the most serious obstacles on the way to the Polar Plateau. Nevertheless, having reached the southernmost point of Antarctica accessible from the sea, Ross pointed the way to the future conquerors of the sixth continent, who came here several decades later. These were the British Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Henry Shackleton and the Norwegian Roald Amundsen - he was the first to reach the South Pole.
On the morning of the fifth day, the wind began to gradually subside. The gusts became less frequent and weaker, and finally there was a complete calm. Outside it is 30 degrees below zero. The sun's rays are gradually making their way through the dense fog.
The hurricane was not in vain: part of the scientific equipment was out of order. I had to call a helicopter over the radio, and two members of the expedition went with the damaged devices to the base. Carlo Stokkino, an oceanographer and meteorologist, delved deeper into the research, while Bonatti and New Zealand mountaineer Harry Ball, who had long cast impatient glances at unconquered peaks, embarked on the sports part of the program.
The first mountain is Lister, the highest in the chain: 4023 meters. This is followed by Fake Lister, Hooker, Rucker, Gemini. An unnamed peak rises between Hooker and Rucker, and Bonatti calls it Julia's Peak, after his wife.
Climbing Lister took six hours. The path was not easy, but the climbers were rewarded with beautiful, unforgettable landscapes. “When I got to the top,” Bonatti writes, “I saw one of the most impressive pictures that nature has ever offered. The Antarctic Plateau is frozen in a kind of endless confusion. In the sparkling and silent infinity, as if on the border of existence, one could see several mountain ranges of lilac color - the color of distant distance. Above, in the cobalt sky, dominating the vastness, the huge sun shone - a red-hot sphere that described wide circles along the horizon and did not touch its line. The sun's rays, breaking against the white shield of Antarctica, give rise to a rapid alternation of shadows and highlights, completely giving no rest to the eyes, already sore in the cold. To the east rises the ghostly cone of the Erebus volcano. This smoking fiery mountain seems to be suspended in the sky, and the vast, iridescent space around it is nothing more than a frozen sea. "
Inspired by success, the very next day, more precisely, on a polar sunny night, because the exits were made at night, when the constantly changing weather calmed down a little, Bonatti and Ball climb Mount Hooker, and the next day - to Julia Peak. Rucker is next. The pale and ominous fog, which on the eve of a dense, veil covered all the outlines, receded, and the slanting rays of the low sun illuminate the trembling, fantastic forms created by the wind.
Mirages are found not only in sandy deserts, but also in Antarctic ones. Therefore, the upward body of the mountain is really seen by climbers as if torn off from the ground and immersed in a liquid, trembling mass. Bonatti explains this phenomenon by the sublimation of snow - its transformation into steam, bypassing the liquid phase, which creates the effect of refraction.
Meanwhile, the fog begins to thicken again, and you have to stick signal flags into the snow to find your way back. To get lost in such conditions would be to cross the threshold of the fixable. And finally the climb ends. “We are at an altitude of about four thousand meters. Seven o'clock in the morning. And again, finding ourselves on a newly conquered peak, we feel as if we have landed on an unfamiliar planet. The silhouettes of the neighboring mountains appear sharply and ominously. In the void below us, layers of whitish vapors stir. Sometimes the moan of the wind is heard. Frost tries to squeeze us into ice mites, and sore eyes can hardly withstand the onslaught of cold. Nevertheless, we remain here for a long time, stunned by this frantic beauty ... "
It is known that the ice shell did not always protect the sixth continent. In ancient times, the climate here was mild, even tropical. Then, according to one of the geological hypotheses, about 200 million years ago, the huge land was divided into parts that now constitute the continents of the southern hemisphere, and Antarctica began its drift towards the present "parking lot". Over time, the mountain peaks were covered with eternal snows. And while the Earth took on its present appearance, ice caps appeared at the poles. At the North Pole it is thinner. It covers the surface of the Arctic Ocean. But Antarctica clearly got a hat with many numbers more. She collected nine-tenths of all the ice on Earth. The thickness of the ice cover here averages two thousand meters, and in some places it reaches four thousand. Suppressed by this weight, Antarctica clung to the earth's firmament and fell silent. Powerful glaciers that furrowed the continent destroyed and wiped out all living things from its face. Somewhere in the depths, on the once green mountain slopes, there may be evidence of the former stormy life, but so far it is impossible to get to them.
It seems that no surprises can be expected from the landscape from Antarctica. And yet, back in 1903, Robert Scott, unaware of his future fate, made a sensational discovery during the first expedition. He discovered a zone of so-called "dry valleys" - vast spaces completely devoid of snow and ice cover - real oases in this white kingdom. Instead of crevices, hummocks and blinding snow, the eye meets rocks, boulders, sandy terraces, among which, here and there, despite the low temperature, streams from nowhere are laid channels. There are many hypotheses and theories regarding the origin of dry valleys, but nevertheless, this phenomenon has not yet been fully explained.
In one of the lifeless stone oases - in the dry Taylor Valley - Scott discovered another oddity, doubly incomprehensible. Among the moraine deposits, he came across several seal skeletons. An exceptional fact, considering that the distance to the nearest point on the coast was several tens of kilometers, and the height above sea level was more than a thousand meters. The seals embarked on a long, painful journey to find their death in the dry valleys. Why? What magnet pulled them here?
The Antarctic coastline is home to many different species of seals. In the summer months, they leave the pack ice and move ashore with their newborn offspring. But in the fall, before the sea is again covered with an ice shell, they return back, and each family takes care to ensure themselves an ice-free ice-hole - access to water, the only source of food. Usually seals orient themselves perfectly during migrations. But still ... what if some of them, knocked out of their way by the bad weather, lost their bearings and headed not towards the sea, but deep into the continent, towards inevitable death? As shaky as this version is, it could be a reasonable explanation for what Scott saw in the dry valleys ...
Such reflections haunt Walter Bonatti, and at the last stage of his expedition he decides to visit the dry valleys. They are located in the middle part of the Transantarctic ridge, descending to the Ross Sea between 77 and 78 degrees south latitude. Bonatti goes to these dead lands alone. Cold, lifeless stone landscape. Bare rocks cast wild, crazy shadows. As monuments of prehistoric times, figures of unprecedented animals, sculpted by the wind, rise above the ground. Bonatti found the largest accumulation of seal remains in the Wright Valley, at an altitude of thousands of meters above sea level and 60 kilometers from the coast. These were mainly young animals, which by the time of death were not even a year old, and radiological analysis later showed that they died from 100 to 780 years ago. The dry and harsh climate of these places prevents the decomposition of carcasses, the bodies of dead animals seem to be mummified, remaining for a long time: until the wind-blown sand does its job, leaving only "gnawed" white bones lying on the ground seized by the cold. And yet, some of the specimens found by Bonatti are perfectly preserved, time has not left traces on their skins. And in a number of cases, the stomachs of the seals turned out to be stuffed with pebbles - evidence (and this is another version) that the animals traveled all the way in search of food and eventually died of hunger. The nature of Antarctica has clearly drawn the line between life and death ...
As if challenging itself, nature has inhabited the ocean, washing a lifeless continent, exceptionally rich in fauna. Its representatives are perfectly adapted to life in extreme, as they say now, conditions. Here and there you can see fountains soaring over the water: these are whales that are attracted here by the abundance of krill. There is so much of it that usually cloudy gray or dark green waves in places seem to be painted pink. Schools of fish trying to escape the dolphins churn the ocean surface. No, no, yes, the fin of a predatory killer whale flashes by, ripping through the waves. And on the coast, seals lazily settled down to rest. The fish and squid dinner was probably not so meager: it would take many hours before they clumsily climb and hobble on the ice to throw themselves back into the water. Sometimes dazzling white or thawed rocky spaces are completely dotted with black dots - here are the possessions of the most "organized" birds - penguins. Sparkling frosty air bursts with the screams of myriad sea birds. They are also attracted here by the abundance of food - fish and shellfish.
Life, firmly established on the border of a lifeless space ... But it is not only these contrasts of Antarctica that attract the attention of scientists. The richest material for studying the distant past of our planet is hidden under the thickness of the ice. That is why today scientific stationary bases of different countries of the world are firmly established in Antarctica. One-time expeditions, like the indefatigable Bonatti expedition, every year try to clarify the "boundless confusion" of the ice continent. Today, as well as a century and a half ago, the land, once nicknamed "terra incognita", still attracts with its incomprehension everyone in whom the ardor of a researcher burns, in whom the heart of a romantic and a pioneer beats.
Alexander Suvorov
