Walter Bonatti 1930-2011

The hardest route I did at Chamonix was the Grand Capuchin, partly out of respect for Bonatti, and also because my partner did not want to do the Bonatti pillar on the Dru.

There are not many, if any, who can climb hard and yet write about it in a manner that inspires generations of climbers.

Oh yes, the great Bonatti. By the time I was 16, I had well devoured his literature. One of my great friends and climbing mentors introduced me to his books along with The White Spider. Serious reading under a head torch. We dreamed of our own high adventures in the Canadian Rockies where we too could nearly freeze to death in immense pain, endure hardship and contemplate the potential loss of a dear companion. He pretty much out lived them all and told about it with grace and reflection that was inspirational.

It's interesting how us older climbers all devoured the same influences, by reading Bonatti's books as well as Hans Harrar's The White Spider, and Desmaisons book.  They were they only outside influences we had here, because there was no internet then.  But yet our climbing here bears no comparison to each other.

From my perspective I was more influenced my the Mountain magazine, which was the only way to keep in touch with current European climbing developments. Everything I read about involved Michel Piola, and when I went to Chamonix to repeat his routes I had the honour to meet him on a climb, and shake his hand on my first day climbing, even though he could not speak English. 

I do not know how history views him now but to me he was the pioneer of modern alpine rockclimbing.

I felt that reading his achievments gave me an edge over what anybody else was doing here at the time.

Let's not forget about Tom Patey's-One Man's Mountains.

Additionally, I love to read about the hard drinking Don Whillans and the infamous Burgess Brothers who intertwine a good bloody nose from a pub fight with Himalayan achievements.