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\nAfter Achille Compagnoni who passed away in May, in November it was the turn of Lino Lacedelli, the other member of the pair who\u2019d conquered K2 on the 31st of July 1954. Lacedellli was born the 4th of December 1925 in Cortina d\u2019Ampezzo, 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.
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\nIt\u2019s said that as a youth he escaped from his father\u2019s 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\u2019s modern climbers.
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\nIn 1946 he became part of the \u201cScoiattoli di Cortina\u201d, the Cortina Squirrels, and it was with another legendary member of this group, Luigi Ghedina or \u201cBibi\u201d, 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).
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\nIn 1951 the pair made the first repeat of Bonatti\u2019s masterpiece on the Grand Capucin (Mont Blanc \u2013 at the time, one of the Alp\u2019s 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\u2019s achievement.
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\nThis top-level performance won Lacedelli and Ghedina the call-up to the \u201cnational team\u201d, 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\u2019d been 3 unsuccessful attempts by the Americans.
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\nDesio 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\u2019s orders, only two team members, with great determination, reached for the first time ever the summit of the planet\u2019s second highest peak.
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\nA 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\u2019t 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\u2019d 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.
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\nMoreover 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.\u00a0\u00a0The 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\u2019s success acknowledged.
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\nWithout doubt, K2 made Lino Lacedelli one of the world\u2019s 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.
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\nIn 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 \u201cK2. Il prezzo della conquista (The price of the conquest)\u201d where, courageously if belatedly, he admitted the crucial role of Bonatti in the 1954 ascent and asked for Bonatti\u2019s forgiveness.
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\nIn 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.
\nLino Lacedelli died on November 20 2009: just a few months earlier, Achille Compagnoni and Luigi Bibi Ghedina had also died.
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