CONTRIBUTIONS > MOUNTAINEERING > LINO LACEDELLI 1925 – 2009
Lino Lacedelli Ph. www.scoiattoli.org
Lino Lacedelli 1954 ph. coll. Lacedelli
LINO LACEDELLI 1925 – 2009
The legendary Cortina Squirrel passes away
After Achille Compagnoni who passed away in May, in November it was the turn of Lino Lacedelli, the other member of the pair who’d conquered K2 on the 31st of July 1954. Lacedellli was born the 4th of December 1925 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, right in the middle of the most famous part of the Dolomites, and it was on these mountains that he started his long voyage in the vertical world.
It’s said that as a youth he escaped from his father’s watchful eye to follow, un-roped and in silence, a guide who was accompanying two clients on a route on the Cinque Torri. His alpine training was on his home mountains, repeating both classic and more difficult routes, then making prestigious first winter ascents, to then find success with his own first ascents, many of which are still appreciated by today’s modern climbers.
In 1946 he became part of the “Scoiattoli di Cortina”, the Cortina Squirrels, and it was with another legendary member of this group, Luigi Ghedina or “Bibi”, that he made his most important climbs such as the first ascent of the south-west face of the Cima Scotoni (with them there was also another Squirrel: Guido Lorenzi).
In 1951 the pair made the first repeat of Bonatti’s masterpiece on the Grand Capucin (Mont Blanc – at the time, one of the Alp’s hardest rock routes), in a single day. To be exact, in 18 hours, without a bivouac, an alien time, so much so that for a long time the diffident climbers of the western Alps cast doubt on the pair’s achievement.
This top-level performance won Lacedelli and Ghedina the call-up to the “national team”, not for football but for Alpinism, with Ardito Desio as manager charged officially by the government of Italy, the country with all the mountains, with winning the world championships which would be decided by a single match to be played in 1954 on the still-virgin K2, 8611 metres. Up to then there’d been 3 unsuccessful attempts by the Americans.
Desio knew how to deliver, and had his team play a game that was tactically perfect to win, but with devastating consequences for the team members. Following their commander’s orders, only two team members, with great determination, reached for the first time ever the summit of the planet’s second highest peak.
A fantastic success which catapulted Italian climbing to the top of the world and which helped to lift the moral of a country which had emerged broken from the Second World War. Their names, Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni, are written in all the history books. What wasn’t mentioned for 50 years were the not-quite-as-impressive details that underpinned their success, and the arguments that raged after Walter Bonatti had given his side of the story, revealing that he’d taken the oxygen bottles up for Lacedelli and Compagnoni to the last camp at 8100 metres and that, because of them, he and the Hunza Mahadi had been forced to bivvy in the open and risk their lives.
Moreover in the official accounts we read that Compagnoni and Lacedelli reached the summit without using oxygen, since it was stated that Bonatti had used it for himself. The true role of the summiteers was always denied as long as Desio remained alive. Only a few years ago, with the rewriting of history and the official recognition by the Italian Alpine Club (CAI), was the crucial role of Walter Bonatti for the expedition’s success acknowledged.
Without doubt, K2 made Lino Lacedelli one of the world’s most famous climbers, but it cost him a great deal of bitterness which was perhaps more painful than the amputation of a frostbitten thumb. His passion for climbing and exploration, though, continued to give him great satisfaction, as in 1959 with the first ascent of the Spigolo degli Scoiattoli on the Cima Ovest di Lavaredo or in 1960 with another difficult new route on the Punta Giovannina.
In 2004, at the age of 79, he went back to Pakistan for the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the first ascent of K2 and went as far as base camp. In the same year with Giovanni Cenacchi he published the book “K2. Il prezzo della conquista (The price of the conquest)” where, courageously if belatedly, he admitted the crucial role of Bonatti in the 1954 ascent and asked for Bonatti’s forgiveness.
In December 2004 the President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi nominated Lino Lacedelli Cavaliere di Gran Croce, Ordine al Merito of the Repubblica Italiana, awarding him the Medaglia d'oro.
Lino Lacedelli died on November 20 2009: just a few months earlier, Achille Compagnoni and Luigi Bibi Ghedina had also died.
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Cima W di lavaredo ph.Mario Sertori
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