How to Lose Fear

The blinding white grandeur of Mont Blanc, soaring above the blue lake at Chamonix, has drawn alpinists to France for centuries. Since men first scaled Western Europe's highest peak in 1786, some 20,000 people have successfully climbed to the top (15,781 ft.), and 65 have died on the way. But in all those years, mountaineers mastered only four routes to the peak itself. Attempted but never conquered was a possible fifth way, the Grand Pilastre, a 5,000-ft. perpendicular wall of gripless, smooth rock and slithery green ice that looms over empty space toward the summit. Last week the Grand Pilastre was finally conquered in a fantastic three-day climb by Italy's Walter Bonatti, 27, and Toni Gobbi, 43. Awed alpinists compared it to the first four-minute mile.

No Conqueror. Nobody was surprised that hawk-nosed, blue-eyed Walter Bonatti had tried it ("I climb mountains because I am afraid of them, and conquest of fear is one of man's greatest needs"). Bonatti ranks among the world's finest mountaineers, is certainly one of the toughest. A Lombard laborer's son, he quit his steel mill job at 19 to become an Alpine guide and ski instructor. In 1954 he was the youngest member of the triumphant Himalayan expedition up K2. The next year he performed a fine one-man climb up Mont Blanc's Aiguille du Dru, survived six days and five nights while clawing alone up sheer rock and ice. Widely hailed by the Italian press, he replied: "I was no conqueror. I was alone, and the mountain awed me too much. I was full of worries and fear."

To go along on his Grand Pilastre attempt, Bonatti picked Toni Gobbi, a wiry, middle-aging former lawyer who long ago chucked his law career to become a master ice climber. By evening of the first day they had reached a 10,725-ft. jump-off site, went to sleep directly below the enormous wall of Grand Pilastre. Recalled Bonatti: "It looked bad. Our legs shook a little."

No Exit. At dawn they were climbing, Bonatti leading Gobbi by rope. Up they crept through a narrow funnel in the rock face that led to a dome where there was no hold and no exit. Unable to move or risk driving a piton into the rock, Bonatti hung motionless for an hour, finally gambled on lunging to his right, amazingly lighted on a toehold and handhold. In twelve hours the climbers inched upward only 1,000 ft., camped at dark on a precarious ledge. Throats parched, they longed for the water they had left behind in order to travel light (total equipment: 18 lbs.), listened to a stream rippling inside the rock out of sight.

Next morning the climbers came face to face with a rock cliff that slanted 50 yds. straight out at a 110DEG angle. "Absolutely unclimbable," said Bonatti. But there was no going back. Leaning out into 2,000 ft. of air ("the worst fear I ever had to overcome"), Bonatti finally found a tiny fissure in the rock. He pounded in steel pitons, and from them he and Gobbi hung backward over nothing while easing out from under the rock to reach the sheer green ice face above. There, with Ice Expert Gobbi leading, they climbed 2,000 ft. more, camped the second night on another inches-wide ledge in a freezing wind at 14,000 ft.

At dawn came the third big push, and the easiest, as they chipped ice steps and worked their way up, 400 ft. an hour. They had topped Grand Pilastre's crest by 10 a.m., climbed another eight hours over easier ground. At 6 p.m. they scrambled at last atop the great peak of Mont Blanc. They descended by an easier route. Next day, as European newspapers front-paged their feat, Walter Bonatti went skiing for exercise.

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