The name of Walter Bonatti first came to my attention when hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc, a 103 mile (165km) loop of the Mont Blanc massif that’s also the route of the famous UTMB. On a picturesque hillside, to the southeast of the mighty Grandes Jorasses, we found our lodgings for the night - Rifugio Bonatti, an endlessly charming alpine hut. It was easily my favorite hut we stayed at, perhaps because of its stunning location but possibly for the wealth of interesting images from mountaineering history on its wall.
If I’m honest, I don’t remember if I found out that much about Bonatti at that point. But in the years that followed I started devouring mountain literature at a fevered pace and stumbled across The Mountains of My Life, a collection of Bonatti’s writings, translated into English by Robert Marshall. The book revealed a remarkable career in the mountains, one that’s virtually peerless. He is, simply, one of the greatest mountaineers the Earth has ever seen.
