Tu non conosci Tiziano

«Tiziano was our Bonatti. Everyone loved him, men and women" writes Massimo Marcheggiani, his climbing partner. Tiziano Cantalamessa was, by all accounts, the strongest mountaineer in central Italy, compared to Bonatti also because, like him, he was "the man who always came back". He had an edge. As Alberico Alesi testifies: «Where the others gave up exhausted, he was just starting to fight. One of the reasons why I sometimes preferred not to go out with him, with all the affection I reserved for him, was because his presence canceled out the problems." This book, however, does not celebrate yet another mountaineer, but tells us about a man, his relationship with others and his way of conceiving the mountains, his irreverent, light-hearted, cheerful style in living the adventure. «I would never have written anything about him just because he was strong – continues Marcheggiani – As a mountaineer from head to toe, Tiziano was an extraordinary climbing partner for his humanity, frankness, sincerity, affability and above all overwhelming joy, with his which way to share something as strong and engaging as mountaineering in the truest way." He climbs Fitz Roy, opens a route on the Bhagirathi, only avalanches push him back to Italy from an attempt at a new ascent on the Rupal of Nanga Parbat. But as a good Ascolano, his chosen terrain was the Paretone del Corno Grande: it is there that since the early 1980s he opened several new routes and made incredible connections, conceptually twenty years ahead. The mountain won't stop him but a banal work accident in 1999.