Tomaz Humar - Prigioniero del Ghiaccio

The blow of the ice axe struck into the ice throws a few fragments of ice onto the climber. It is a small fragment destined to melt among the folds of his clothes.

The water soaks everything and, dripping, ends up sliding over the skin, running down the arms or into the gloves

It creeps into the collar, sliding treacherously down the back.  The cold of high Himalayan altitude chills the water faster than the heat of the body can manage to evaporate it. A shiver  runs along the nerves of the spine. This is just one of the unpleasant sensations of climbing at high altitude. We won't talk to you here about aching muscles, trembling arms or the fear of plunging into the void. This is the extraordinary and restless story of Tomaz Humar, an incredible story that goes far beyond cold and toil.

There are extraordinary lives that speak through deeds. The life of Tomaz Humar spoke firm and determined. There were no half measures. His life was a continual chase after the extreme. For Tomaz the only way to go beyond his own limits was to break with common sense, continually calling into question himself and the world around him. To do so he paid his price, and he paid it in life and with his life.
Humar died in November 2009, on the mountains he had always challenged. Yes, because for Humar mountaineering was a way of measuring himself against nature.
The book runs fast like a train without brakes, it slides by quickly exactly as the existence of this extraordinary mountaineer slid by. Everything seems written like a sort of great premonition. And if in Humar's life there had always been room for an underlying mysticism, then he probably already had an idea of what his end would be.

“From a deeply religious family, Tomaz had matured and changed his Catholic Christian faith into a form of pan-universal spirituality, which embraced the precepts of Buddhism and Hinduism. He was constantly searching for a relationship with an absolute and transcendent spiritual entity...”

An end he could never have avoided except by denying his own nature. This precise premonitory vision is present throughout the book, as if the author had a precise idea of the road Humar was travelling.

An energetic, strong-willed, determined man, at times impetuous in his manner, probably driven by an inordinate, selfish need for self-fulfilment. He puts himself through constant training and an unbridled search for the “new”. He ends up knowing his body perfectly, so much so that even when he badly breaks a leg this does not stop him going back to climbing with superb technique, like a true champion.

Constantly in search of fame, Humar ends up using new technologies to publicise his great feats. For this he draws the criticism of the mountaineering world, leaving the general public confused about Humar's true personality. One cannot, in fact, confuse his technique with the way he showed it off.
Humar is also very ambitious, and he shows it continually by calling into question those friendships and working relationships that might in some way stop him from reaching his goals.
At times we feel Humar the man as a cruel character; there are few personal quotations that we hear spoken in his own voice. Everything is reported, everything is constructed. His image is granite-like, like the hard and at times sharp rock he always measured himself against.

This book is the story of an impossible rescue, miraculously carried out on the Rupal face of Nanga Parbat. It is the controversial story of how Humar was saved by two courageous helicopter pilots of the Pakistani army. Picked up at an altitude of 6300 metres, Humar miraculously escapes the fury of the avalanches and certain death.

You can say anything you like about this incredible man, especially now that he has died tragically. Many will seize the chance to say that he had been defying every limit for a long time. What cannot be taken away is that Tomaz Humar moved the technique of mountaineering forward, and above all of that alpine-style mountaineering which still has so much need of research and exploration.

Masterfully constructed, the book builds a growing tension that draws in the reader, taking them by the hand on a journey through the time of a whole existence, of a life immersed in the recent history of a Balkan Europe still torn apart by war and economic hardship, overturned by profound political changes. We live all this through the words of the book, we live all this identifying ourselves with the existence first of the man, and then of the mountaineer-entrepreneur. Intense, gripping, painful, well written and translated even better. Thrilling, even if with a strong, bitter aftertaste.

By the same author, read also the review of Volevamo solo scalare il cielo.