The Mountains of My Life, written by Walter Bonatti is a 427 page memoir detailing his many ascents and the struggles to go with them, as well as the victories, and his emotions throughout the process of each. His climbing career was filled with many climbs including three North Face climbs on the Grandes Jorasses, the Matterhorn, and the Lavaredo, as well climbs on K2, which due to a semester of studying mostly Himalayan mountaineering, this seemed the most relevant. While reading this memoir, I noticed some similarities to Maurice Herzog in the language and in depth detail of each climb, and also the drama that came from his K2 ascent in the media and from his climbing companions.

Bonatti’s K2 climb was part of an Italian expedition in 1954, with the goal to be the first to summit the mountain. This climb while, being the first ascent in the end, did not involve Bonatti on the summit, and ended in a dramatic controversy that painted Bonatti the bad guy in this ascent. Bonatti was seen to be trying to summit K2 before the rest of his team, thus resulting in his team members to leave him and Amir Madhi at a separate camp nine from what they had earlier talked about. Leaving Bonatti and Mahdi at a different camp gave the other two members, Campagnoni and Lacedelli, a shot to the summit, while Bonatti and Mahdi ended up descending to camp eight in fear for Mahdi’s life, as he ended up with frostbite and amputated limbs at the end. The drama surrounding this climb seems to be something we have focused on a little this semester, with Herzog’s not all too factual writings, and Jon Krakauer’s account of his Everest expedition, but to read a memoir that gives the details into Bonatti and the Italian team’s K2 expedition, we see this prevalent in the climbing world. In a strange way, drama and controversy over climbing is rather understandable. Climbing a mountain and having low oxygen levels, low strength, bitter coldness, exhaustion, low food intake, and a competitive spirit, there is bound to be some lack of memory, and ability to twist a story for one’s own benefit, especially in 1954 with no use of recording devices to be able to show the world the true story. The way that Walter Bonatti was portrayed to the public as a selfish climber who gave no help to the suffering Amir Mahdi, was in the end recounted, and Bonatti was exonerated, although he did not feel so. He writes “ K2 has been a source of humiliation and suffering for me, but sooner or later, if it takes a hundred years, the truth will have to be recognized by those to whom the verdict of history belongs” (Bonatti, pg. 348). Bonatti has very strong opinions throughout this book, and rightfully so, as he feels the truth was not given, and also seemed to take away from his very successful climbing career in other adventures. He was still in the beginning of his climbing career at the time of this debacle, and has more to come. He writes on the attitudes of Compagnoni and Lacedelli: “But the pride I took in doing my duty did not abolish the bitterness it brought me— and not because I was not to reach the summit, as some people still insinuate. On the contrary, my intense bitterness lies in having discovered, especially after the event, how men can be so unpleasant that they can even lie to themselves” (Bonatti, pg. 349). The competitiveness lies in every sport and does not fall short in mountaineering, as the battle is literally an uphill climb until someone reaches the top first, mountaineering can contain the good and bad eggs that try to have a better story or a better adventure than the others, and Bonatti’s memoir contains both sides.

Another section of The Mountains of My Life includes his ‘Farewell to Mountaineering’ in which he writes on his life after deciding to end his climbing career. He writes extensively on the ‘impossible’ in climbing and at one point tries to analyze the impossible in relation to mountain climbing. He writes:

“if the ‘impossible’ is to retain its fascination it must be conquered, not demolished. The ‘impossible’ summits a mountaineer chooses to test himself against should be attempted by purely human means, not by resorting to destructive techniques that have much the same effect as a steamroller. Nor should one forget that the great mountains are the measure of the man who tests himself against them— otherwise they are no more than heaps of stone” (Bonatti, pg. 309).

This is especially an influential quote to me through reading this because it shows his mindset while climbing, which I think can give insight into many other climbers. The thought of impossible as being something a climber can conquer and summit a mountain, even if he or she finds the summit impossible, the thought can be conquered, and thus summit the mountain. He explains the mountains as a test on a man, the challenge to a man to make him stronger, in mountaineering and as he mentions throughout the memoir, his life as well. In the preface, he describes what mountains mean to him, and much like other explanations we have read this semester, Bonatti writes that mountains “always meant ‘adventure’” to him, and through this memoir as well as through the semester, it seem the mountains have meant the same to many, if not all, mountaineers (Bonatti, pg. xxiii). Bonatti writes “ mountaineering will survive as long as it manifests itself as fantasy, idealism, and above all, the quest for self-knowledge” (Bonatti, pg. xxiv). This idea of mountaineering that he puts forth, is in my mind one of the best ways to sum up the semester and all the readings we have examined about mountaineering. We have explored the fantasy of mountaineering through Mount Analogue, the idealism of mountaineering through many works including Mountains of the Mind, and Annapurna, and finally the quest for self-knowledge through Ortner’s work and many of the articles we have read. Mountaineering seems to be ongoing sport that can only improve with time, and give us more memoirs and stories to read and find our adventure in.

Bonatti, Walter, The Mountains of My Life. (London: Penguin books, 2001)