Simone Moro tells about the accident in Pakistan with Tamara Lunger

Where are you right now Simone, are you in your city Bergamo?

“Right now I’m in South Tyrol where my family lives and I’ve been here for two days before the total lockdown, as if I had “born” the imminent lockdown. Luckily my relatives in Bergamo are all fine”.

“Simone Moro domestic”, a great mountaineer like you, how does a great alpinist like you spend his days in quarantine locked in his house?

“Unbelievable to say, but I feel at ease. We mountaineers are used to waiting weeks or months, at -30/-40. I’m essentially used to waiting. In fact I could even go out because there is an exception to the decree for the training of professional athletes, but I don’t do it also to be consistent with the current situation. I train in the backyard with the beam and having been a climber I’m used to training hours indoors. I do traction, abdominals, stretching and I also train with my son Jonas, sometimes I use it as extra weight for lifts. I’m also writing my new book”.

You’re writing a new book, tell us more?

“I’m writing a new book that should be out in October, pandemic permitting. It will speak positively about my failures rather than my successes. As I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve realized that it’s also a bit of a metaphor for what we’re experiencing now with the coronavirus, very often you have to put up with it rather than always winning. It’s certainly not a book about falling into the crevasse, just to be clear.

What’s the relationship like now that you’re home with your family?

I’m also training these days with my son, who looks a lot like me. He’s 10 years old and he’s very sporty, while Martina is older: he’s 21, and he studies Oriental languages in Venice. I even had the idea of reconstructing the family tree of my family, and then we spend the evening telling the funniest stories and anecdotes. Now that I’m done with the part of my family, tomorrow I’ll start with my wife’s”.

You who have always travelled a lot and spent a lot of time during these years on the glaciers, when you came back this year in the same place did you notice big differences?

“Even though I am not a catastrophist, I think that in geological cycles there is always alternation, even if in this phase man has become an accelerator of this process that risks bringing this process out of control. If I compare the Karakorum glaciers I saw in ’88 or the Himalayas in ’92, I can tell you that in thirty years of expeditions I have seen a crazy change. The glaciers are 100m, 1km behind, but what is really happening massively is thinning. I’ve actually noticed that there at the base where the ice used to be there is now rock. Even thick and jagged glaciers like Gasherbrum are now all fractured.”

What about the incident with Tamara? How did that happen?

“Tamara and I took 18 days to find the passage in that maze of crevasses. There were days that we could only make 150m. It happened, when we arrived in the plateau, that in the crossing of a crevasse the strip of snow on which I was walking collapsed from under my feet. Tamara was in front of me and she was in an evening sky above me, so the rope didn’t go horizontally so I had the possibility of friction on the edge of the crevasse to cushion my fall. So she got yanked and flew, stopped on the edge of the crevasse and struggled like crazy to make sure she wasn’t pulled in too. I fell 20 meters, as if I fell from a seventh floor: the tear was very violent. Tamara fell and got caught and held on to her hand with the rope she was holding me on. Then when I realized that I had somehow stopped in the dark I managed to fix an ice screw to stop the fall completely; it was true, it was a mess and she couldn’t use one hand; two hours later I went out with the ice axes”.

From your story it turns out that because of global warming it is more difficult to climb in winter, while others claim the opposite, what about it?

“I can talk because I go on the Eight thousand in winter, others don’t. It may sound arrogant, but to date I’ve done 60 expeditions, 19 of them in winter. The weather is crazy, even crazier lately. Many expeditions with the best mountaineers in the world have failed this year. The Poles tried until the 80’s, then came a man from Bergamo who climbed them, and all with different companions. It’s true that today there are more accurate weather forecasts and better materials: but climbing the eight-thousanders in winter is always difficult, the cold is the same. It’s also true that today there are more people trying. However, the last feat is still mine in 2016 on Nanga Parbat”.

The question then arises: why climb in winter if it is so difficult? Are you reckless or brave?

“After my various experiences I decided and declared that I would dedicate my mountaineering career to the most difficult and unlikely form of “getting to the top”.  Climbing the Eight-thousanders in winter is a way to return to feeling like an explorer. You have a 10/15% chance of success.  It is a very clean, exploratory, ethically beautiful form of mountaineering. And yet I’m still here, I still have all my fingers and toes. Obviously I’m not just lucky, there’s a lot of reasoning and knowledge. That’s why I write a book about my failures. You have to fail to be a great explorer. You have to learn how to fail first to get to the top”.

K2 is the only mountain still untouched in winter. Up to this moment you had excluded this hypothesis because of a nightmare made by his wife, who had dreamt of your death trying to climb it. Recently you stated that you’re having second thoughts. Do you confirm this wish?

“I’ve waited all these 10 years for someone to try and succeed, and yet no one has succeeded. I’m not chasing records right now, I’ve already climbed four eight thousand in my life, so I don’t have that push. My career hasn’t ended yet, and I haven’t climbed it yet. K2 can be a new motivation. So I’ve opened myself up to a possibility. Then, of course, it also depends on what I’m being offered: if I have to climb with sherpas and fixed ropes then no because I’d be out of tune.