A climbing legend is gone with the passing of Walter Bonatti, who died yesterday, September 13, at age 81.

Bonatti is a seminal figure of alpinism who pioneered cutting-edge first ascents of bold routes such as the East Face of Grand Capucin in the Mont Blanc massif in 1951 at just 21 years old, but he is perhaps best known for his integral role in the 1954 Italian K2 expedition and controversy.

The onetime leading British alpinist Doug Scott described Bonatti as “perhaps the finest alpinist there has ever been,” in his 1974 book Big Walls.

Bonatti was born in Bergamo, Italy, in 1930.  The son of a fabric merchant, he discovered climbing at age 18 and within a year made the fourth ascent of the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses.  In 1955 Bonatti spent five days soloing the southwest pillar of the Dru for its first ascent via the Bonatti Pillar, an ascent often dubbed one of the greatest achievements in alpinism.

Along with his fellow Italians Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni, Bonatti and his Hunza climbing partner Mahdi became entangled in one of mountaineering’s greatest debates. While attempting to carry oxygen tanks from camp seven to camp nine for Lacedelli and Compagnoni, Bonatti and Mahdi were misled by their peers and left to endure an open bivouac.  Bonatti and Mahdi survived and left the oxygen tanks for their companions, who managed the first ascent of K2 the next morning.  However, Bonatti was bitter at Lacedelli and Compagnoni, claiming they misled him as to the location of their tent, an act Bonatti later referred to as the “failed homicide.”  Bonatti fortunately emerged unharmed from the bivouac while Mahdi lost several fingers and half of both feet.  Mahdi never climbed again.

For more on the K2 controversy, see Rock and Ice’s interview in issue 183 with Lacedelli here.

Bonatti eventually grew disheartened with the climbing scene, writing, “The morals of the rat-race are found even among climbers, some of whom even go so far as to define their methods as ‘technical advances’ and—perhaps even more ingenuously—their dishonest compromises as ‘progress.’”

In 1965 he soloed the Matterhorn Nordwand in winter on the mountain's centenary year of its first ascent and then promptly announced his retirement from climbing.

Bonatti became a photojournalist for the Italian magazine Epoca (meaning "time"), and lived a quiet life in the Italian town of Dubino.

In 1998 he returned to climbing, only this time through writing, and published his autobiography The Mountains of My Life.  The book addressed his first ascents as well as the K2 controversy in great detail.

Walter Bonatti is survived by his wife, Rossana Podesta.

[Steve House holds the tire cover to his '84 Ford Van, which (in a nod to the "Clapton is God" graffiti that once appeared in London) he customized to pay homage to Bonatti. Courtesy of House.]

(See video below.)

[Video of Bonatti climbing the Dru.]