Climbing Philosophy
Walter Bonatti called his climbing philosophy "The pursuit with the extremely hard". He pulled off a fantastic number of audacious ascents plus more remarkably survived some horrific climbs that killed some of his associates. The underlying idea of his approach was to accept to climb the mountain hard as it is, with fair means and in the simplest and most aesthetic way possible. In an interview left to John Grace of The Guardian on 20 June 2001 he said : Modern equipment is so technically advanced you can climb anything if you put your mind to it. The impossible has been removed from the equation..
He always fiercely opposed to the use of the expansion bolts. Reinhold Messner shared Bonatti's approach and stated in the book The Murder of the Impossible that "Expansion bolts contribute to the decline of the alpinism".
In his book The Mountains of My Life Walter Bonatti writes:
For me, the value of a climb is the sum of three inseparable elements, all equally important: aesthetics, history, and ethics. Together they form the whole basis of my concept of alpinism. Some people see no more in climbing mountains than an escape from the harsh realities of modern times. This is not only uninformed but unfair. I don’t deny that there can be an element of escapism in mountaineering, but this should never overshadow its real essence, which is not escape but victory over your own human frailty.Read more about this topic: Walter Bonatti
Famous quotes containing the words climbing and/or philosophy:
“Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“While you’re playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)