There is a very strong contradiction that can still be perceived today when walking on Baltoro glacier or admiring the cathedrals of the Trango Towers and the 8 thousand that surround it Concord: Gasherbrum III, Gasherbrum IV, Chogolisa, Broad peak and, at the bottom, the pyramid of K2. It is the contradiction between a nature that takes your breath away with its indestructible strength and the absolute inability of men to coexist peacefully and enjoy this beauty together.
A modern “Tatar desert”.
Even today the Northern region of Pakistan, Gilgit Baltistan and especially the border area with Kashmir, is strictly considered a "restricted area". A military zone, therefore, due to the never completely resolved conflict that saw Pakistan pitted against '47, as evidenced by the military camps transformed into garbage dumps and empty kerosene drums, as seen in Gore II, Concordia or the Army Camp of Paiju.
A “Desert of the Tartars”, with all its share of anguished expectations; in the words of the Belluno native and great mountain man Dino Buzzati (who wrote memorable pages on the Italian conquest of K2) that it shouldn't have been that different from what the participants in the expedition led by Ardito Desio discovered in the summer of '54.
How commercial expeditions transformed the K2 adventure
It's true: the mountaineer from Bolzano is right Tamara Lunger (who reached the summit of K2 ten years ago, in 2014, and lost her boyfriend on the mountain) to say that compared to the past the commercial shipments currently prepared by Sherpas have transformed the very way of approaching an eight-thousander. There is no longer that dose of adventure that is an essential ingredient of exploration and of the so-called "alpine style".
Yet, who during the 90 kilometers of trekking that separates the village Askole (last inhabited place reachable by Jeep in Baltistan) from K2 base camp he stops for a moment to photograph porters and mules loaded to capacity that emerge from a moraine of the glacier and compares those images with the photos of the '54 expedition and does not see all these differences. Now there are slippers and improvised rubber shoes to protect wearers' feet from the ice but the context made of poverty, fatigue and deprivation is the same even if today Pakistan has an increasingly rich middle class in a country that can even have the atomic bomb.
The peaks as trophies of power
More war e mountains as a sort of "sporting" surrogate for conflicts between sovereign states. Much has been written about the fact that Italy's Einaudi e De Gasperi (two mountain politicians on opposite sides of the Alps) “needed to plant his flag on K2” to be reborn, to shake off the pain and shame of defeat in the Second World War. But there's more. The multilateralism that the United Nations charter of 46 was trying to spread as an antidote to nationalism and new devastating wars had not yet planted deep roots. Each sovereign state had its own personal accounts still to be settled, be it the desire for redemption, the ability to emerge as a hegemonic power or open a new phase in postcolonialism like the United Kingdom where Queen Elizabeth began to reign.
La conquest of a peak, in short, as another way of waging war. No longer breaking through the sentry boxes at the borders or killing defenseless people but planting a flag where no one had ever set foot before. They began French with Annapurna on 3 June 1950 with Maurice Herzog, already active in the French resistance, who led the expedition to conquer the first of the 14 eight thousand peaks. Then they came English on 29 May 53 with the New Zealand beekeeper Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay on the highest peak in the world (8.848 metres) while on 3 June also the German with Hermann Buhl on Nanga Parbat (where the Hunza Amir Mahdi was a high-altitude porter who shared the night in the open at 30 meters with Walter Bonatti on 54 July 8100 to bring oxygen cylinders to Lacedelli and Compagnoni). Buhl had given the young Federal Republic of Germany back the honor it deserved by obscuring the Nazi flag flown by the Bavarian Anderl Heckmair on the North Face of the Eiger on 24 July 1938.
The Italian conquest of the legendary peak
Italy came fourth in the 8 race 31 July '54 but on the most difficult and insidious peak which for decades had already become the "mountain of the Italians” for the expeditions of the Duke of Abruzzi, Vittorio Sella and Desio himself. In fact, K2 had to be "conquered at all costs", this is the "mantra". Ardito Desio who led the expedition with an almost military attitude, avoiding, not surprisingly, including very strong climbers such as Riccardo Cassin in the enterprise who, due to their charisma, would have overshadowed the role of the expedition leader himself, exerting an undeniable influence on the other members of the expedition.
Desio was fully supported in his project not only by the CAI, the CNR and the CONI who invested a sum overall exceeding 80 million lire of the time, but by Prime Minister De Gasperi himself who promised Pakistani President Mohamed Ali Bogra, who was visiting Italy in the summer of 53, to start work on the construction of dams which were needed to guarantee stable supplies to Northern Pakistan of electricity. The Stars and Stripes expedition led by the American doctor Charles Houston, who had failed to conquer K2 in '53, wanted to try the following year but Pakistan bet everything on Italy and America was cheated.
The Italian legacy of K2
Listen today Agostino da Polenza, Chairman of the Everest K2 Cnr committee and main collaborator of Ardito Desio until the construction of the Pyramid observatory at the Everest base camp, that great trust that Pakistan placed in Italy 70 years ago was ultimately a good investment. There have been numerous programs over the years cooperation to the development of the Farnesina and various international organizations financed by Italy to support the population of Gilgit Baltistan, create a large K2 park based in Skardu, train a new generation of Pakistani guides and map all 13 thousand Pakistani glaciers, an inexhaustible reserve to give water to all of Asia.
The kisses that Da Polenza printed on the foreheads of the last two mountaineers of the Cai K2 mission last Tuesday 70 Federica Mingolla e Silvia Loreggian, upon their return, exhausted, to base camp after difficult days of bad weather and altitude sickness spent at camps 2 and 3 (unfortunately without reaching the summit) also wanted to say this: there are no more wars to fight, the mountain remains there, for one more time.
Beautiful and significant for a mission that wanted to be Italian but also to give back tribute to Pakistan, host country, see high-altitude carrier Ali Durani, by Hushe, equip the high camps for the Italians and then, in the end, reach the summit alone (for the third time) even if with oxygen. I saw Ali Durani well at K2 base camp when he diligently took note of all the instructions given by Da Polenza. He had a lot of shyness in his eyes but also an almost feline determination. A kind of snow leopard that, sheltered from every human eye, had only one desire: to become part of that snow, that ice, that rock.
