Reinhold Messner
Grido Di Pietra

Reinhold Messner “Scream of Stone - Cerro Torre, the impossible mountain”

Corbaccio, 2009

A toothpick with a little caper on top, or as some would simply describe it, a phallus. It isn't very high: 3200 meters above sea level, but undeniably it is the most difficult peak in the world. It is the only glacier that is currently expanding, testifying to how the microclimate in that desolate part of the world lives a life of its own. Winds up to 200 km/h mean that in a few minutes the weather can change from sunny to a deluge, and those 1500 meters of vertical granite walls have been considered simply impossible for many years. Even just thinking of climbing it meant being ready for a straitjacket. The Cerro Torre.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, Italy had two crystalline talents destined to write the history of world mountaineering with completely different behaviors. The first was the Lombard Walter Bonatti; the decent man, respectful of the mountain, who on K2 in '54 had to endure disgraceful attacks for decades during Desio's historic Italian expedition. In truth, much of the credit for the success of that expedition was his, as he carried the oxygen tanks to over 8000 meters without using them and was forced to bivouac outdoors because Camp IX was moved by Compagnoni (the one who reached the summit) from the expected spot. An incredible number of "firsts", incredibly strong on rock and ice: a gentleman with total psychological stamina and strength.

The other is a rebellious, anarchic, and presumptuous man from Trentino who approached rock climbing at the age of 20: Cesare Maestri. By his own admission, mountaineering is an outlet he fortunately found; otherwise, who knows where he would have ended up. He wants to excel at any cost, the mountain is a way to exalt himself, to showcase himself, an enemy to respect and conquer, and he wants to be considered the best climber of all time. Iron physique for a rock climber capable like no other of soloing extreme walls of the time. When he threw away the rope while descending from the Crozzon di Brenta, everyone simply considered him an extraterrestrial and called him the "Spider of the Dolomites". He was excluded from the K2 expedition for physical reasons (in truth, they were probably character-related as he climbed solo and was not inclined to take orders from anyone). To prove his "physical ailments" after being excluded, he went to Brenta (his home) and did 2600 meters of climbing in 16 hours!!! He wanted to break the rocks with so much anger in his body.

In 1957, Bonatti and Maestri are on the “Torre”. Bonatti gave up a few hundred meters from the summit, Maestri didn't even climb: his rope leader, Bruno Detassis, ordered all members of the climbing team not to attack the impossible mountain. Bonatti never returned to that glacier, while Maestri became obsessed with it. He needed the most difficult peak: he hadn't been on K2 and the Marmolada, the Roda di Vael, and the countless solos weren't enough for him. He was enchanted and incited by an Italo-Argentinian Fava who urged and supported him, saying "the Torre is your bread and butter".

In 1959, with the very strong South Tyrolean ice expert Toni Egger, he returns. The weather is horrendous, and from the northern wall, from January 28 to 31, with a sound of expansion bolts that took 30 minutes to be hammered into the granite and extreme ice climbing, the two find themselves at the summit. Exceptional, unique weather conditions had frozen the wall, smoothing the slope and making their ascent easier, which Maestri described as a walk, albeit terribly dangerous and deadly due to the avalanche risk. On the descent, Toni Egger dies due to an immense discharge from the ice mushroom. After spending a night on the freezing wall without a backpack, distressed and almost hypothermic, Maestri descends using fixed ropes and falls a few dozen meters from the wall's start into the sea of snow the avalanche brought and is found almost dead and delirious by Cesarino Fava. It's February 3, 1959.

Fifty years have passed, and it remains the most controversial ascent in the history of mountaineering. At the end of the '60s, the British questioned the feat, and in '70, to silence rumors, Maestri decided to return, but he climbed from the east wall, where everyone else had failed. For him, the mountain must be tackled with all the technology available; he is not a purist like Bonatti, but an anarchist, and if clips are needed to beat the Torre, so be it. He carries a 100-kilo compressor to drill the Cerro in its final stretch up to the last ice mushroom. He tries to hammer out the route to prevent anyone else from climbing; he is a maniac in complete trance during the descent and only calms down after reaching the first camp. A sublime physical and climbing technique feat, especially for a 42-year-old leader no longer at the top of his form as he was ten years earlier.

Only with the passage of time and the advent of new materials, light-years ahead of the rudimentary and almost ridiculous climbing tools, clothes, and boots from the late '50s has someone managed to defeat the famous northern wall of the Torre. To this day, no pitons that Maestri and Egger supposedly placed have been found; after a certain height, traces disappear, and for this reason, doubts that this climb was a product of the survivor's imagination have increasingly grown. Today's Torre climbers say it is inhuman and impossible that the legendary Spider and Egger could have bested such a wall; he, outraged that his honor is questioned, dismisses accusations from these attacks.

Reinhold Messner, arguably the strongest mountaineer of all time, never climbed the Torre because he unabashedly says he's afraid of those walls and doesn't think he's good enough (he's been an extreme mountaineer, not an equally inhuman climber). He meticulously pieces together all the notes from the era, subsequent climbs, and firsthand accounts with the protagonists, reconstructing the story of this devilish mountain from '59 to 2008. From Casimiro Ferrari, who conquered the mushroom of "foamy ice" in '74 and is unjustly overshadowed in the Torre's history by Maestri, to contemporary Salvaterra (the king of the Torre). His opinion is transparently clear, almost redundant, and repetitive: Maestri is not a liar, he was one of the greatest ever, a loyal person. Simply, after the shock of his companion’s death and having risked his own life, his mind is convinced of something he didn't actually do with Egger: climbing the Torre. The extreme mountain can cause this. For this reason, when he returned in '70 and conquered the Cerro (for Maestri, the Torre ends with the rock and not with the ice mushroom that comes and goes), transporting that inhuman weight, he did not retrace the '59 route. His mind has prevented him from reliving that route because it knew it was impossible. If he were born a few decades later, he would have climbed it for sure, but in '59, even the extraterrestrial from Trento didn't have the technical means to overcome those walls, and just attempting it is proof of incredible courage, skill, and recklessness. Maestri, for his part, says that the '59 route was a product of luck and practically unrepeatable conditions, and in '70, he wanted to show that the Torre could be reached from the side where climbers of the time failed, and he narcissistically emphasizes that he used the compressor hundreds of meters above where everyone else had stopped proving his infinite class.

It is a story that is hard to believe could be true. It tells of the drive for the impossible, to constantly push one's limits, and the quest to become immortal. Vanity, courage, and madness mix in people ready to sell everything, incur debts just to prove to themselves and the world that humans have resources and capabilities that verge on the imaginary. Overcoming bivouacs on the wall at -30°, climbing icy seventh-grade walls with boots and ice axes from that time are of the incredible. Many people might feel disdain for how they played, and sometimes lost, with death or indifference at the deeds of these characters. Yet those who know they have a special gift seem to feel they have a duty: to try to raise the bar. It is so in all fields, and the story of Maestri and the Torre is just one of the most incredible demonstrations or stories. Regardless of what the truth may be, I invite you to read this book (and perhaps one from the person directly involved to hear both sides). I devoured the 300 pages in 10 hours and savored the terrifying photographs of the Torre. Maestri and Egger have nonetheless tied their names to that cursed mountain, and the mere fact that they attempted to climb it in 1959, because they believed they could do it, makes them immortal. If they eventually find an expansion bolt, the result of thousands of powerful hammerings where Maestri says he placed it 50 years ago, then everyone, but everyone, will have to bow to the boastful Trentino ahead of his time who used to say: “there are no impossible mountains, only men incapable of climbing them”.