Walter Bonatti

Walter Bonatti

Walter Bonatti in 1964
Personal information
Nationality	Italian
Born	(1930-06-22)22 June 1930 Bergamo
Died	13 September 2011(2011-09-13) (aged 81) Rome, Italy
Climbing career
Type of climber	Mountaineer
Known for	Solo climb of Aiguille du Dru
First ascents	Gasherbrum IV
Major ascents	List of mountaineering achievements
Updated on 18 March 2013.

Walter Bonatti (Italian pronunciation: [ˈvalter boˈnatti]; 22 June 1930 in Bergamo – 13 September 2011 in Rome) was an Italian mountain climber, explorer and journalist. He was noted for his many climbing achievements, including a solo climb of a new route on the south-west pillar of the Aiguille du Dru in August 1955, the first ascent of Gasherbrum IV in 1958 and in 1965 the first solo climb in winter of the North face of the Matterhorn on the mountain's centenary year of its first ascent. Immediately after his extraordinary solo climb on the Matterhorn Bonatti announced his retirement from professional climbing at the age of 35 and after only 17 years of climbing activity. He authored many mountaineering books and spent the remainder of his career travelling off the beaten track as a reporter for the Italian magazine Epoca. He died on 13 September 2011 of pancreatic cancer in Rome aged 81, and was survived by his life partner, the actress Rossana Podestà.

Famed for his climbing panache, he pioneered little known and technically difficult climbs in the Alps, Himalayas and Patagonia.

Son of a working-class family (the father was a fabric merchant), Bonatti soon started practising gymnastics in a sport association in Monza. The physical strength and balance he developed here would prove to be crucial skills when Bonatti was introduced to climbing at age 18. Bonatti started climbing on the Grigna, a rocky mountain of the Italian Prealps, where he spent the summer of 1948 climbing intensively.

During 1949, within a year of starting to climb, he made the first repetition of the Oppio-Colnaghi-Guidi Route, a challenging climb on the South Face of the Croz dell'Altissimo 250 metres (820 ft) long and rated UIAA V+. Soon after followed the climb of the Bramani-Castiglioni Route on the North-West face of Piz Badile, the second repetition of the Ratti-Vitali route on the West Face of the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey, a rocky mountain in the Italian part of the Mount Blanc massif and the fourth ascent of the Walker Spur on the North Face of the Grandes Jorasses in only two days and with limited equipment. This last route had been climbed for the first time in 1938 by Riccardo Cassin and consists of 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) of rock-climbing with UIAA difficulty of IV and V and one step of VI+. The climb of the Walker Spur by the Cassin route is exposed to stone-fall and ranks together with the North Face of the Eiger as one of the major climbs achieved in the Alps between the two world wars.