With Massimo it's better not to get him talking, yes... because once he starts talking he literally tears your spirit apart. I wanted to interview him in person so as not to deprive myself of the pleasure of getting to know him better... (I hate interviews by email... the ones that involve neatly packaged answers...). It turned into a rather long interview but... folks... I shed my fair share of tears over it...
Giorgio Carrozzini: Massimo, for people like me, who knew you first by reputation and only later as a person, you are a true legend of mountaineering. In cases like this, in journalism, you always risk asking only predictable questions, whereas what we'd like to do is have a chat to understand the nuances of the man and the mountaineer in you.
To begin with, you were born and live in the Castelli Romani. You even dedicated a Himalayan peak to the town of Frascati. Would you tell us about your roots in the area, in the hills, in the natural environment of the Apennines, which have often been considered second-division mountains? What do you think...
M. Marcheggiani: I say it's a deep injustice to divide mountains into first division, second division, third division and so on... Mountains are all mountains, whether they're high or low, rounded or bold, wooded or bare. And all this should be seen as good fortune, because anyone who loves mountains can find their own right dimension. If all mountains were like K2 or Cerro Torre, how many people would be cut out? Or, on the contrary, if they were all "rounded", today we wouldn't have mountaineering.
G.C.: The Apennines offer a lot...
M.M.: The Apennines really do offer a lot, from easy hikes to very hard climbs; I'm thinking mainly of the Gran Sasso, because this massif has truly spectacular faces, beautiful, elegant and of superb rock, and at the same time faces that are hard to reach, rugged, isolated, where you can practise "great mountaineering". It also has many paths that wind into beautiful valleys and lead to the huts, and let's not forget that the highest summit, Corno Grande, comes close to 3000 metres and is easy to reach. So here are Apennines that can give everything to everyone.
G.C.: One thing that struck me was reading that you started your activity rather late compared with what a mountaineering career usually is. A mountaineer puts himself through toil and sweat to savour a few small, priceless moments of joy. What was driving that twenty-six-year-old lad?
M.M.: From an athletic point of view I was well behind; mountaineering or climbing seen as a sporting performance is undoubtedly better if you take it up a few years earlier. Personally I discovered this absolute passion of mine at 25; I "woke up" a bit late (assuming I'm awake at all!), and since I started climbing completely self-taught, mine was a long process: it took me a long time to learn and understand mountaineering. From the very first moment I touched rock, though, it was absolutely clear to me that this was my path, and today, 36 years later, I'm still walking it. Even though I'm not a mountain professional, I practically live on it.
A few years ago, while I was being introduced at one of my talks, the person introducing me said these exact words: "...because Massimo Marcheggiani doesn't do mountaineering: Massimo IS a mountaineer!" I had never thought about it, and that statement struck me a lot because that's exactly how it is.
G.C.: Did you have a group of friends you went out with?
M.M.: In Frascati nobody did mountaineering; "mountain" was a practically unknown word. The nearest CAI was in Rome, which for me was as far away as America. Together with two friends of mine, with whom I took long walks and shared the mountaineering bug, we made ourselves heavy iron crampons, we made our own rucksack (unspeakable!), gaiters cut from umbrella fabric, and the rope was builders' rope bought at the hardware shop: we wanted to climb and nothing could stop us. So we made our own harness too, and improvised our first climbs at Guadagnolo, even in winter, in the snow.
So I grew up in the micro-cosmos of Frascati, my home town, to which, 20 years after I started mountaineering, I dedicated a peak in the Indian Himalaya, as proof and confirmation that mountaineering and mountaineers in Frascati had by then become a deep-rooted reality; in fact it was an expedition made up entirely of people from Frascati. We also had the support of the town council, which even gave us a financial contribution.
On this point I want to stress that it was the only time I've used public money. I've always paid out of my own pocket for the countless expeditions I've made to the Himalaya, Patagonia, the Andes etc.. Frankly, at the end of the day we go there to enjoy ourselves; they're our "holidays" and we don't do any social good, which is why it's inappropriate to ask our home councils for money, as many do.
G.C.: Why India in particular?
M.M.: In India I found my right dimension, both for the mountaineering and for the Indian people, whom I find absolutely fascinating, above all in the remote, still unspoilt villages of the far-flung Himalayan valleys.
I must say I've caught "India fever"; I've already been eight times to climb those fantastic mountains and I thought I'd had enough of it by now. Instead this year, when I had planned an expedition to the Karakoram (Pakistan), I'll go back to India again if I can; a friend of mine, Bruno Moretti, showed me a dream mountain and if we work out how to get there we'll attempt the climb. It's a breathtaking mountain and it's no accident that it's called Tiger Tooth, and the name says it all. Real Himalayan mountaineering is like that: exploration, high altitude, rock mixed with ice and glaciers, lots of hard work and no guarantee of success, and above all in complete self-sufficiency. Unlike others who look down on these features and go up "comfortable" mountains with fixed ropes, satellite phones and live web coverage, we prefer a genuine adventure.
G.C.: I've just finished reading your extraordinary book about Tiziano Cantalamessa; you reminded me of when people went to the mountains with Superga plimsolls on their feet. You told me you bought your first rope at the hardware shop. What did those moments of real pioneering taste like?
M.M.: Good question... describe a taste? How do you do that? I won't even try! You describe for me the taste of an "amatriciana", or of chocolate. If you like something you make it your own, you want it all the time, and that's how mountaineering is for me. I've been lucky enough to share mountaineering with people of great technical skill who at the same time were and are also beautiful, honest, fascinating people. More than anyone else, Tiziano was, a fantastic rope partner. Of course my mountaineering was very adventurous, especially in the early years when, self-taught, I made everything up as I went along, and so with a very strong and intense "taste" (but not describable). Meeting Bini, Cantalamessa, Delisi, Caruso and other very skilled mountaineers was very formative for me. At first I was very traditionalist in mould: heavy boots, strictly "plus-fours" breeches, a rucksack stuffed beyond belief, in short a rather dated idea, but then meeting and becoming friends, mainly with Bini, threw open the doors to a more fun mountaineering, lighter in every sense, which I made my own.
G.C.: Speaking of Cantalamessa and the book you wrote, what's happening around this event? I know you even presented it in a prison, it's incredible!
M.M.: You've used the most appropriate term: Event! Regardless of the quality of the book, and I'm not a writer at all, it's getting a great response; it's wonderful and very gratifying for me that at the many presentation evenings I'm doing there's always a huge number of people, proof of the affection still felt today, 13 years after his death, for the extraordinary person Tiziano was. In Ascoli Piceno it was a truly heartfelt evening: the big hall was packed with people, you couldn't get in any more, and everyone's emotion, without exception, was absolutely palpable at the words of Renata as she spoke about her extraordinary husband, and there was a deathly silence during the screening of my video. Then there was a completely unexpected follow-up: the governor of Ascoli Piceno prison, after reading the book, got in touch with us to present it and talk about it to her inmates. A truly powerful, hard, unique experience, going into a prison. Gates upon gates, meticulous checks, bars everywhere and then face to face with a whole lot of inmates who, who knows why, were very interested and attentive to my every word. What came out of it was a long chat with the inmates, curious about everything, about the figure of Tiziano, about mountaineering, and many questions were put to Renata. One of the prisoners had read the book and wanted to speak, and among other things he told Renata that he considered her a lucky woman to have been the wife of a man who, from the idea he had formed through reading, was unique.
G.C.: You were very much "self-taught"; I won't ask whether you'd do it again, but how did you manage...
M.M.: Now I have to use an unpleasant term, but since I "survived" that phase of experimenting on my own skin I have to say I'd do it again; but if I think rationally about the risks I was exposed to, my skin crawls: there wasn't the slightest certainty that the methods we invented would have worked in a fall. For example, not knowing the Munter hitch ("mezzo barcaiolo") we belayed by twisting the rope into coils which, through friction, "would have" had to stop any fall; fortunately we never had the chance to test it... but today, when I consider myself a bit of an expert and I'm also an instructor, I say that a good rock-climbing course with the CAI or with the Mountain Guides, where you learn the proper techniques, is an excellent solution for preventing accidents and enjoying this fascinating discipline to the full.
G.C.: I know you're giving a lot to the young people of the CAI Frascati Section. I've seen you at work in the mountains: you were "immanent" over the whole group; it was a detached kind of control, but you were there...
M.M.: I'm very proud of this; my eyes are on my rope team and at the same time on all the others, always watching how everything is going. Sometimes I feel I have to step in on what other instructors are doing, which is a bit unpleasant, but my only aim is to optimise things or find an alternative solution to any problems that may come up in the mountains. If anyone thinks it's showing off I'm sorry, but if a great day in the mountains risks turning into an ordeal and my interfering with another instructor can prevent it, never mind what people think of me: in all conscience I don't feel I can not step in.
G.C.: As well as the Himalaya, the ranges of India and Nepal, you've also pushed on to the Argentine Andes. Quoting a well-known film, we could say that "you've seen and lived things that we ordinary people could never even imagine..." Have these extraordinary experiences of passion for the mountains left you with something? Is there one experience that changed you in particular? In what way?
M.M.: There have been many experiences, but who knows why it's almost always the "negative" ones that teach you most. Let me see, what comes to mind is my first expedition in the Himalaya, where on the day we were going to reach the top of an unclimbed mountain I was struck by a sudden retinal haemorrhage, with the resulting loss of almost all my sight, a fright I can't begin to tell you... sorted out later in India with 8 injections into the eyeball, given to me over several days by an unsightly but very skilled Indian eye doctor. Perhaps on that occasion, accident apart, I tasted the flavour of adventure, of travel, of the unknown and of solving the most varied problems. I did my first two expeditions in total self-sufficiency: no porters, no pack animals, no Indian cook, by now a classic, carrying absolutely everything on our own shoulders through the deep Himalayan valleys, busting our backsides something awful and yet achieving little in mountaineering terms. Strategy to be rethought, obviously. Then there was Peru, Patagonia, India again, Pakistan, and every experience enriched my knowledge. In Patagonia with Tiziano I experienced the absolute peak of mountaineering and human adventure: it was a communion with everything, with the wind storms, with the isolation, with the high risk we ran on our climbs but always kept under control, but above all living together for two months with a man like Tiziano, just him and me, with the "perfect" rope partner. In my view it's the human relationship, around which all mountaineering turns, that makes this discipline great; from it I've learnt a great deal, what is truly important to me and how much you can do without ephemeral and frivolous things.
After the first expedition with Tiziano we did more, again in India and again in Peru, then to Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, with a terrible and formative experience because of an immense avalanche that almost killed me and another member of the expedition. Those were formidable years... and then the winter climbs, the summer ones and lots of others without a story, but each time with something new.
G.C.: Massimo, you don't seem to have lost the will to dream but... for the future...???
M.M.: The future is there, it's waiting over there. I've always pretended that the birth register didn't exist, and it seems unbelievable to me when I think... blimey, in September I'll be 60... it's not possible, I have to and want to do loads of things, I feel very strong, I have a lucidity and mental steadiness when I climb that still surprises me. Last summer I did some rock climbs with pitches that were anything but trivial, without being able to place any intermediate protection even for 20/25 metres. Very compact and very beautiful rock, on which I ventured, and without good mental steadiness I'd never have managed. Sometimes I venture onto a face navigating by sight: I set off, climb, traverse, turn, without following any specific route. In September, if I can, I'll go to the Tiger Tooth and try to climb it.
The future is there, it's over there, and I go to meet it, but it never lets itself be reached... luckily!
By Massimo, also read the review of his book Tu non conosci Tiziano... (You don't know Tiziano).