Apertura senza fine

Year: 2011 Pages: 222 This is the faithful chronicle of a great mountaineering feat, one of the greatest non-European conquests achieved by Italian climbers. On 19 July 1961, the six members of the Città di Lecco-Alaska '61 expedition reached the top of the highest mountain in North America, McKinley (or Denali, as the local population calls it). Riccardo Cassin, the expedition leader, Gigi Alippi, Luigi Airoldi, Jack Canali, Romano Perego and Annibale Zucchi thus celebrate, in the best possible way, the 15th anniversary of the foundation of their Lecco association: the Ragni della Grignetta group. Even the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was enthusiastic about the first ascent of the South Face. From June 19th - when the first climbers touched the Kahiltna glacier - to July 19th, with the objective achieved, a month of ascents, adventures , cold, storms, mistakes, loneliness, expectations, commitment, friendship and heroic gestures... told in great detail but with a disarming simplicity. The descent into the blizzard at 40° below zero takes the six climbers for almost three days. Alippi gives his reindeer boots to Jack Canali, who has frozen feet, and then descends with only his socks down two thousand meters of frozen wall. They seem like ordinary things, they have to be done and they are done. Yet, precisely for this reason, the emotions offered by the news written by Riccardo Cassin bring us closer to the purest spirit of mountaineering.