La Via B

Since few weeks B is twenty-fourth, there is a route on the Grand Capuccin with his name, he has been distinguished in some important winter ascents in the Dolomites – the Tofana Rozes and the Tre Cime di Lavaredo. He is a point of reference for young climbers.

The previous year has passed through the drama of K2 with what ensued: the Italian expedition to the second highest peak on the planet is a central point in his biography with the incident that will chase more than others for his whole life.

He was marked by events, he still wearing sadness and a strong sense of disappointment and also frustration, his version has been silenced by official sources, it is not possible left shadows on the success of the mission, a triumph for the nation.

After K2, B feels isolated, abandoned from a certain alpinist environment. By indomitable spirit as he is, he goes ahead, turn the page and conceived the idea of climbing the south-west pillar of the Petit Dru.

It is a project that he has developed in 1953 when, with Carlo Mauri, he has failed an attempt to approach. Now he try again with three friends. Besides Mauri there are also Andrea Oggioni and Iosve Aiazzi.

Fate is adverse and a new failure is waiting for them, the weather conditions are prohibitive and they can not do anything but give up. B touches the bottom of the barrel.

“…this second defeat – he writes – it gives me a great moral depression which in reality is only the fateful last straw that breaks a glass too full of bitterness and disappointment…”

It is then, only then, that he starts the real transformation, B is ready to become a man. The man who will then be for the remainder of life. Decide on impulse, consciously decides, he will scale the Petit Dru and he will do alone.

Les Aiguilles du Dru could be seen as a single large rocky pyramid with three walls impervious. In fact its are twin summits separated by a small ridge, La Breche. Located on the French side of the Mont Blanc massif, reaching heights of 3754 and 3733 meters. The smaller of the two is the Petit Dru and its west wall has been for years one of the great achievements of mountaineering.

Climbing the Dru, B exceeds all the bumps and reaches an inner certainty that it will always make later, addressing the vertical walls of the sharp peak will reach the extreme awareness of its limitations.

After for him there will be new adventures, some tragedy (as the Central Pillar of the Frêney where he lose his good friend Andrea Oggioni), bid farewell to the mountains (with the memorable winter climbing of the Matterhorn) and then the new life as an explorer, the encounter with Rossana Podesta, the reaffirmation of the truth of K2, the last few years as a living legend and the end at eighty years old in a hospital clinic.

But what Dru and B reaches there, remains a point of reference, a lantern to really understand what it means to be a man.