Riccardo Cassin was one of the legendary Italian climbers of the twentieth century, born in 1909. In the 1930s, he made numerous first ascents of difficult alpine routes and is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of modern alpinism. Since he belonged to the prewar generation of climbers, he may seem a figure of the distant past. Yet even in 1975, at the age of sixty-six, he led a team of young Italian climbers in an attempt on the formidable South Face of Lhotse South Face, then considered one of the hardest problems in the world. He remained active on the front line of mountaineering long after the war.
This book was originally written in Italian in 1977, translated into English in 1981, and then translated into Japanese in 1983 by Tsutomu Mizuno.
In the preface, Cassin explains why he finally decided to write his memoir:
“Riccardo, why do you never write a book about your climbs? You began in the foothills of the Alps, then climbed in the Alps and the Dolomites, and later joined brilliant expeditions abroad. You have so much to tell.”
I was often asked this question, and though I had considered it from time to time, I never did so seriously. But after the failure on the South Face of Lhotse in 1975, while flying home in a military aircraft, the question began once again to trouble me. Ironically, it was then that I tasted, for the first time in my life as a climber, the feeling of defeat.
After countless successes and his first true setback, he came to recognize more deeply than ever that mountains are teachers beyond human understanding. He resolved to set down his long experience with the same burning blood and passion that had sustained his life in the mountains. Though written in the maturity of later life, the book overflows with youthful vitality.
Early Climbing Years
Cassin’s climbing career began on the rocks of the Grigna in Lombardy. At seventeen he moved to Lecco near Lake Como, which became his lifelong home. He gave up boxing, then his first passion, and rapidly climbed one short but difficult route after another.
Among his partners were Mari Varale and Mario Dell’Oro (“Boga”). To solve harder problems, Cassin had already begun to use pitons not merely for protection but as active aids to progress. Through Varale he met Emilio Comici and learned Dolomite techniques such as aid climbing and double-rope systems. Some critics mockingly called them “ladder mechanics.”
His attention gradually shifted from the Grigna crags to the towering vertical walls of the Dolomites.
Great Prewar Ascents
In 1935, with his young rope partner Vittorio Ratti, he made the first ascent of the southeast ridge of Torre Trieste. They bivouacked for several hours in a cave above an overhang, lying on lilies that smelled of resin.
He later wrote:
“In the calm August evening, the moon shone brilliantly, and above us the great tower rose in the darkness. For Ratti it was one of the happiest moments of his life. Now those hours seem even more precious, for he was later killed in the violence of war.”
It is a deeply moving tribute to a beloved companion.
Later they turned to the north face of Cima Ovest, racing German climbers for the first ascent. Through overhangs, traverses, storms, snow, and ice, they reached the summit.
In 1937, with Esposito and Ratti, Cassin climbed the northeast face of Piz Badile, enduring rockfall and storm bivouacs. Two climbers from Como who joined them tragically died from exhaustion and cold.
Then came 1938, his most glorious year.
He first set his sights on the north face of Eiger, but a German-Austrian party succeeded first. Cassin frankly admitted that while he rejoiced as a human being, he was bitterly disappointed as an Italian.
So he turned instead to the Walker Spur of the north face of Grandes Jorasses. Leading throughout, he opened the route now known as the Cassin Route. After the notorious Cassin Crack, ice corners, pendulum traverses, bivouacs, hail, and snow, the party reached the summit ridge in storm conditions on the third afternoon.
War and Aftermath
Soon war broke out. Cassin joined the anti-fascist partisans against Benito Mussolini and Nazism. During the fighting, Ratti was killed. Cassin himself was wounded but survived, later receiving the War Merit Cross.
After the war he held important posts in the Italian Alpine Club while continuing to climb and revisit great mountains.
K2 and the Greater Ranges
In 1954, Italy achieved the first ascent of K2 under Professor Ardito Desio. Cassin, initially expected to be climbing leader, had even reconnoitered the Karakoram with Desio, but was excluded from the expedition on medical grounds. Cassin believed this was merely a pretext and that Desio feared losing authority and glory.
In 1957, Cassin was chosen leader of the Second Italian Karakoram Expedition. With climbers such as Mauri and Walter Bonatti, the team made the first ascent of Gasherbrum IV. Though Cassin did not stand on the summit himself, the climb was among the hardest Himalayan ascents of its time.
In 1961, he led five younger climbers from Lecco up the South Face of Denali (then known as McKinley). All reached the summit. The descent was epic: illness, frostbite, slips, avalanches, and blizzard conditions threatened the team, yet everyone returned safely. Cassin wrote that this was among the greatest joys of his life, symbolizing brotherhood and unity.
In 1969, aged sixty, he succeeded on the west face of Jirishanca, sometimes called the Matterhorn of the Andes—an astonishing feat on a steep high-altitude wall above 6,000 meters.
Lhotse: First Defeat
Cassin’s ambitions then turned toward the greatest remaining challenge: the South Face of Lhotse. At an Italian Alpine Club meeting he lamented the lack of major expeditions since K2 and Gasherbrum, and proposed an expedition to the last great problem. Among the fifteen selected climbers was Reinhold Messner.
In March 1975 the expedition set out. But the face was collapsing with snow, ice, and rockfall. They shifted to an ice rib on the left side of the face. Avalanches destroyed base camp and scattered supplies. They regrouped, moved camp, and continued. On May 7 they reached 7,500 meters above Camp III—but another avalanche crushed the camp and ended all chance of success.
Thus ended the first failed mountain expedition of Cassin’s life.
Cassin’s Philosophy of Climbing
At the end of the book, in a chapter titled The Development and Aesthetics of Mountaineering, Cassin reflects on climbing ethics.
He notes that even the pioneers of alpinism did not hesitate to use artificial means: ladders, spikes, hooks, and other devices were employed by early climbers such as de Saussure and Whymper.
He writes:
“I personally began with free climbing. At first I used pitons only for protection, but soon I used them as direct aids. Only through double ropes and etriers was I able to open some routes in the Grignetta and the Alps that would otherwise have been impossible at the time. Many praised me—but many more condemned me, calling us ironmongers.”
Yet he opposed excessive reliance on pitons and rejected bolt ladders that remove the true challenge of climbing.
He concludes:
“The fundamental motive in confronting extreme difficulty should always be the pursuit of healthy joy and spiritual exaltation… Climbing gives satisfaction and rightful reward, but these are never medals or decorations. A true climber despises such honors.”
Poet of the Alps
Cassin continued climbing for decades. In 1987, at age seventy-eight, he reclimbed the Cassin Route on Piz Badile for the fiftieth anniversary of the first ascent. When media coverage proved inadequate, he climbed it again a week later so photographs could be taken.
He continued climbing into his mid-eighties—an extraordinary achievement.
He once compared climbers to poets:
“I am not much of a reader and have scarcely read poetry. But I know that poets seek to escape the gray reality of everyday life into worlds created by powerful imagination… Without some sympathy for poetry, one cannot confront the discomfort, fatigue, and danger of climbing—especially on great rock walls.”
He then describes clouds edged with gold, shafts of light striking rock like swords, the scent of mist rising in couloirs, immense ranges of peaks, the terror of enclosed Dolomite basins, and the beauty of bivouacs on the wall.
Those lines alone reveal Cassin himself as a great poet.
When he and Ratti returned from Torre Trieste, one climber shook his hand and said:
“On a seven-hundred-meter wall, you wrote a poem.”
At the time they laughed. Later, Cassin realized the man had spoken the truth.
For climbing itself—wordless though it may be—can become poetry.
Cassin belonged to the same era as Anderl Heckmair, yet he also became a model for later generations such as Bonatti and Messner. He was a rare mountaineer who transcended eras.
He died in 2009 at the age of one hundred. Few lives can be said to have embraced the mountains so fully and departed this world so magnificently.
He did not merely climb mountains–he gave them language.
English version prepared with AI assistance
(Originally written in Japanese)
Japanese version: