Applauses for Renato Casarotto

Sometimes, remembering does not call for round-number anniversaries. There are occasions such as this one, on which it is anyhow allowed – there is a strong need – to go back to the past and bring at least a little bit of light upon what it was. So thanks to Alberto Iñurrategi and company, with their recent wonderful traverse of Broad Peak, we are allowed to talk about Renato Casarotto and his masterpiece (misunderstood? Yes, probably) on the North summit of Broad Peak in Karakorum. «There were many people on K2 that day – Goretta explained to us – and when Renato got to the summit, everybody clapped, they couldn’t help it». The eyes of those on the second mountain in the Earth were turned on the other side, towards that perfect ridge facing just North, where a sui generis poet had concluded the last verse of a solitary lyric. That lyric was worth time and struggle and had been begun again and again until the completion of the speech, until the 7550-meter high summit.
28^th, June, 1983, 6.10 p.m.: the Broad Peak North is no longer untouched. Renato Casarotto, on the seventh day of climbing without company, with around fifteen ice and rock pegs, two ice axes and a 100-meter rope, arrived where there is nothing left to climb. Beneath him, a 2000-meter longer route, giving several troubles on rock, ice and mixed terrain. It is the fulfilling of a month of hopes and disappointments, of an adventure started on the 22^nd of May, with the arrival to the base camp, and continued in the first days of June, with two failed attempts, stopped by the bad weather at 6100 and 6350 meters altitude.
We leave the word to Andrea Gobetti, quoting from the Cai’s (Italian Alpine Club) “Rivista mensile” (“Monthly Magazine”, March-April, 1984, pg. 137-140): «There follow pleasant whiles, time for the arrangement of supplies and equipments, time for long discussions face to face (between Renato and his wife Goretta, of course, Ed.), for cups of tea and smiles: unusual frames of daily routine in the Godwin Austen’s ices». Though, all of a sudden, the weather seems to improve and on the 22^nd of June Casarotto leaves: the goal is to reach the tent, at 6350 altitude, by the end of the day and from then on to never give in until the summit. That day the tiny shelter materializes only at 11 p.m.: actually, the weather is awful, but Renato is stronger than any obstacle. In the following two days he cannot gain more than 100 meters, but never mind: what is worth is to hold on (and hope).
The turning point comes with the wind: the furious one born in China bringing along the good weather. Renato: «All night long the wind keeps on blowing, tossing the tent about everywhere. I have been sleeping very little because of the agitation seizing me… I keep on getting up to check on the weather. The wind is still raging, but the sky is covered with…stars!».So our hero carries on and on the 28^th of June deals the decisive blow. Gobetti writes: «Extreme difficulties, beyond the expected, slow him down; clouds hide the upper part of the mountain and it is no longer possible for Goretta to follow her “little red point” until four in the afternoon, when she finds him already close to the destination.
The success and the applauses, as said, come little more than two hours later: too late, though, to go back to the tent. So it happens to Renato to bivouac open-air at 7500 meters, with not even a sleeping-bag, staying awake not to plunge: a fight with the sleepiness and the cold that lasted eight neverending hours – until 4 a.m. of the day after – extraordinarily similar to the one by Hermann Buhl coming back from the summit of Nanga Parbat. Modern, pure epic, that leaves Goretta with her heart in the throat – nobody answers the radio on the mountain – until the liberating vision: that little red point formerly ascending is now descending, little by little, along the route just overcome.
Casarotto is happy; the anxiety that was seizing him is finally fading away. He knows that dangers are not over yet (there are still three days of descent left), but the satisfaction is huge, according to Gobetti it has become «poetry among the peaks, the clouds and the seracs. And also the heights demon, the one always suggesting such remote ideas to Renato, has finally taken a little vacation».
This happened in 1983, twenty-seven years ago, when no mountaineer could boast all the Eight-thousanders in his pocket, and when mountaineering, the real one, after all was not that different from the actual one: which is to say, to give a clear idea, that what could have been for the Piolet d’Or then, so could certainly be also in 2010.

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Cover Photo. A flake dividing light and shadow. The upper part of the northern ridge of Broad Peak North (7550 m) soloed by Renato Casarotto from 22 to 28 June 1983 (very first ascent of the mountain). Photo: www.pakistanguides.com

Photo 1. Broad Peak North (right behind, such as to be mistaken with it, Broad Peak Central, 8016 m), with Casarotto’s route, as seen from K2. Photo: www.precipizirelativi.it

Photo 2. Renato’s tent at 6850 meters. Photo by Renato Casarotto

Photo 3. Climbing the ridge beyond 7000 altitude. Photo by Renato Casarotto

Photo 4. Renato Casarotto (1948-1986)

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Italian version