Prigioniero del ghiaccio

In August 2005 Tomaz Humar remained trapped on a narrow ledge at 5900 meters above sea level, during the solo opening of a new route in the center of the largest face in the world: the imposing Rupal face of Nanga Parbat (8126 m) . After six days, the Slovenian mountaineer finds himself without food, with fuel running out and under the constant fire of avalanches. In a very short window of good weather, three helicopters take off in an attempt to rescue him from the deadly fury of the face. All under the attentive and curious eyes of millions of spectators from all over the world, attracted by that story due to the audacity of the climb, the notoriety of the mountaineer, the very high risk of that rescue operation, and updated by the bulletins that the base camp posts hour after hour on the Humar website. Years earlier, with the collapse of the communist regime and the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation, Humar had been brutally enlisted as a soldier in a dirty war that he despised, forced to live in inhuman conditions and witness the brutal and heinous atrocities carried out systematically on civilians. "I discovered the worst part of humanity." Finally he succeeded in the impossible: he escaped, to return home to what had now become a new nation, Slovenia. Having started climbing again, in just a few years Humar became one of the world's leading mountaineers. Messner defined him: «The most incredible mountaineer of his generation». His lines are almost never repeated, judged by many to be suicide routes, which he nevertheless achieved without companions, not least the absolute first solo climb to the east summit of Annapurna (8047 m), after having climbed the south face. To tell his incredible story, Tomaz Humar collaborated with Bernadette McDonald, an established and award-winning writer. With this book McDonald was awarded the Kekoo Naoroji Award for mountain literature in 2008.