The end of the 1960s mark a period of great change and transformation in society. In Italy, the economic boom brought a strong improvement in lifestyle, leading to the protests of Sixty-eight, until the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, on 12th December 1969, which left 17 people dead and 88 injured and marked the beginning of the “anni di piombo” (Years of Lead). The Americans succeed in landing on the moon on 21st July 1969, but the Vietnam War ties up resources and causes much discontent. We are in the midst of the Cold War.
(4.1 Vietnam war, moon landing and Piazza Fontana)
At the beginning of 1970, Toni is 55 years old and he is in the midst of his professional maturity. He is no longer a top mountaineer, but remains a member of the French GHM and the British Alpine Club. His sports shop in Courmayeur is a point of reference throughout the Alps, both for the products he sells and for Toni's own willingness to advise, listen and discuss with mountaineers stopping by. His activity as a mountain guide is intense and continuous, always carried out under the banner of prudence and with great attention to safety: in 24 years of activity, he has never a serious accident.
His main creature, the “Settimane Sci-alpinisitche di Alta Montagna” (High Mountain Ski-Mountaineering Weeks), have become an international reference in the field and during the season they employ, in addition to Toni, 4 guides and several porters. In the spring-summer of 1969, they involved 66 clients on various itineraries, 7 of whom took part in the second Italian ski-mountaineering expedition to Greenland (15th June – 8th July 1969). Its “National High Mountain Ski-Mountaineering School” enters its fourth year of activity, with the “introductory ski-mountaineering courses” and the “off-piste technique improvement courses” starting on 22nd February 1970 in Courmayeur. The programme for the “Settimane” of 1970 proposes 8 weeks (from the classic Haute Route, to the Dolomites, to the Dauphiné, to the Maurienne) and also, from 1st May to 9th May, the fourth extra-European expedition, the “ski-mountaineering Decade to Damavand (5770m) in Iran”.
(4.2 Toni Gobbi, Grand Combin Week 1962, Photo Gobbi family/Grivel archive)
Sunday 15th March 1970 is the start of the first Week proposed by the programme, the “Haute Route dei Monti Pallidi”, in its third edition, with the meeting point at the Costalunga Pass in the Fassa Valley in the Dolomites. Ten customers accompanied by Toni, Mario Senoner (from Val Gardena), Remo Passera (from Gressoney) and porter Mirko Minuzzo (from Cervinia) participate.
After the first two days of skiing, the group sleeps in the night of 17th March at the Kristiania hotel in Santa Cristina in Val Gardena. The goal for Wednesday 18th March is the ascent to Sassopiatto - Plattkofel (2955m) with the subsequent descent into Val di Fassa.
(4.3 The Sassopiatto – Plattkofel, on the right, and the Sassolungo - Langkofel, Photo Grivel archive)
The group sets off at 5.30 a.m. and around 10 a.m. arrives at the Giogo di Fassa, which at around 2300m marks the border between the Alpe di Siusi and the Val di Fassa. There they begin the actual ascent to the mountain. They ascend on skis up to three quarters of the way up the slope, then take off their skis to continue on foot and tie up in three roped parties. The first rope group is led by Toni and includes Camilla (known as Cicci) Turati (45 years old from Milan, the most loyal client with 22 Weeks and 2 expeditions in 16 years), Raffaele Polin (47 years old from Milan, in his second week) Antonio Moneta (48 years old from Milan, in his third), Mario Belli (21 years old from Varese, in his first Week) and is closed by the porter Mirko Minuzzo. The second rope team is led by Mario Senoner with three clients, and the last one is led by Remo Passera with three more clients.
(4.4 Ascent of the final slope of Sassopiatto on 18th March 1970, Photo Mario Belli)
Toni reaches the last summit of his life around lunchtime. The group stays on the summit for about half an hour, and as Mario Senoner recalls, "we ate, drank and gave geography lessons to explain the surrounding mountains to the clients."
(4.5 Summit of Sassopiatto on 18th March 1970, Photo Mario Belli)
(4.6 Toni Gobbi and Mario Senoner on the summit of Sassopiatto, around 1pm of 18th March 1970. It is the last photo of Toni Gobbi alive, Photo Gobbi family/Grivel archive)
Around 1.30 p.m. they begin their descent, on foot, retracing the ascent route. In the lead was Toni's rope group, then Senoner's and at the back Passera's. Mario remembers that moment very well: “I have seen many things, but that one left its mark on me, I still have it in front of my eyes. I was a little behind Toni's rope team and at a certain point I saw them sliding down the slope, together with a little bit of snow. I didn't see them start, ... they were sliding slowly and I thought they were going to stop, but they were giving each other snatches and accelerating each other." Toni tries hard to stop the slide and even breaks the shaft of his ice axe, but there is nothing to be done: the rope party slides for about 300 metres then plummets over a rockfall, disappearing from view.
(4.7 The ice axe used by Toni Gobbi on 18th March 1970, Photo Gobbi family/Grivel archive)
Mario and Remo calm their clients and return to the point where they had taken off their skis. There Remo stays with the group and Mario rushes off to find Toni's roped party. He finds them a hundred metres below: "I wouldn't wish this on anyone!" No one is covered by the snow, but the impacts against the rocks are fatal for Toni, Cicci Turati, Raffaele Polin and Antonio Moneta, who lie lifeless in the snow. On the other hand, Mario Belli and Mirko Minuzzo are miraculously still alive, although seriously injured. Senoner rushes down into the valley to raise the alarm and organise the rescue operations. The injured are evacuated by helicopter to Bolzano hospital: both are in shock, suffering head injuries and multiple lacerated contusion wounds.
Mario Senoner immediately returns to check the scene of the accident and finds just below the track of the ascent the sign of the breakage of a small wind slab, about 15 cm thick. A matter of moments and centimetres, with fate getting in the way. "Probably someone walked just off the track and dislodged the slab, dragging the other rope mates ... if it had been me, the same thing could have happened!" Remo Passera confirms to the press: "the tragedy is due to pure fatality." The bodies of Toni, Turati, Moneta and Polin are recovered by the rescue team only the following day, 19th March, and transported down the valley by sledges.
(4.8 Mario Senoner, 87 years old, shows the place of the accident on an aerial image, Photo Gobbi family/Grivel archive)
Toni's death is a thunderbolt for the entire mountaineering world and beyond.
Ruggero Pellin, guide and former president of the Courmayeur Mountain Guides Association, as well as Romilda's cousin, recalls. "Toni Gobbi died ... What? Who said that? It's not possible, it can't be ... the news arrived in a fragmentary manner and many of us didn't even know where Sassopiatto was. We gathered in the guide's office to ask what could be done and decided that someone had to go and see. The whole village was in shock." Renzino Cosson is a young porter at the time and has worked with Toni in the Weeks: "I was always amazed at Gobbi's death ... The prudence that he had no one else had, about everything and anything. Everything was calculated and had to be precise. If it happened to him, it can happen to anyone, you can be as experienced as you want but you need luck."
The memory of that moment is still vivid in those who experienced it, despite so many years having passed.
"I was annihilated. The idea that Toni Gobbi could die in the mountains was out of all sense ... he could die in a car accident, but not in the mountains!" recalls Leonardo Lenti, who at the end of the ‘60s was a young client. Giacomo Bozzi, son of Irene who was one of Toni's main customers, says: “Toni's death still moves me deeply, both because of my bond with Toni and that of my mother. I still remember as if it were yesterday the phone call from Cicci Turati's brother announcing the death of Toni and Cicci, a great friend of my mother's."
Renato Petigax was one of Toni's main collaborators from the late 1950s, both as a guide in the Weeks and in the Courmayeur shop. He does not participate in the “Haute Route dei Monti Pallidi” in March 1970 because Toni has asked him to stay in the shop, where there is so much work. He remembers well the afternoon of 18th March: “We were in the shop, a phone call came in, Gioachino answered. He turned around and told me 'Dad died under an avalanche'."
Maria Barbara, Toni's daughter, is about to turn 21 in March 1970 and is studying at university: "On 18th March, I had gone to Milan with my mother to place orders for the shop, in the evening we returned to Courmayeur and it was already a bit dark. We arrived home and all the lights were on in all the rooms. Mum said 'something must have happened' ... I even scolded her a bit ... but why does something have to have happened? We arrived at the garage and were given the news. We went up to the house and the parish priest, Don Cirillo, was there too. We immediately left for Val Gardena."
Toni's death makes the news and is reported in the main national newspapers on 19th March. On the front page of the “Corriere della Sera”: 'Four dead under the avalanche. They are the famous guide Toni Gobbi and three people from Milan."
(4.9 first page of “Il Corriere della Sera” of 19th March 1970)
On the front page of “La Stampa”: "Toni Gobbi swept away and killed with three students by an avalanche." On the same front page there is also a photo of Toni with the headline “Death of a mountain guide”. Inside, we find the articles, including the editorial “A legendary guide” by Carlo Moriondo, the beginning of which clearly conveys the public image of the man: “It is impossible not to know Toni Gobbi for those who barely know the mountains; and, once known, it is impossible not to admire him."
(4.10 first page of “La Stampa” of 19th March 1970)
An intense analysis and touching recollection is in “Il Giorno” of 20th March, by Giorgio Bocca, a friend of Toni and Romilda, entitled "The big Boss has paid in person". The beginning is peremptory: "The last mountaineering lesson of Toni Gobbi, the prudent one, is implicit in his death: whoever you are, however good you are, remember that in the high mountains death can also come to you."
(4.11 “Il Giorno” of 20th March 1970)
Brought back down to the valley on the afternoon of 19th March, the bodies are laid to rest in the church of Castelrotto, where family members and a delegation of Courmayeur guides led by the their president, Aldo Cosmacini, arrive. Transport is then organised and Toni's coffin arrives in Courmayeur on the morning of Saturday 21st March. The funeral chamber is set up in the Guides' Association headquarters. Pellin recalls: "It was the first time that a coffin was placed in the Guides' house. It didn't seem right to us to let him go, not so much us young people but the old guides who had known Toni kept him as if he were their son and brother, they wanted him there." The body is watched over in turn by colleagues. “La Stampa” of Sunday 22nd March recounts: "Throughout the day [ed: of Saturday], hundreds and hundreds of people came to pay their respects, not only from all over the valley but also from France and Switzerland.[...] More than 400 telegrams arrived for the family and the Courmayeur Mountain Guides Association.
The funeral is for the following day, Sunday 22nd March at 10.30am, officiated by Don Cirillo Perron, a mountaineering parish priest, who served in Courmayeur for 50 years from 1939 to 1989. It was he who married Toni and Romilda on 18th October 1943. From the sermon: 'We are here in our dear Church of Courmayeur, carrying in our hearts an immense sorrow for the tragic death of Dr Toni Gobbi; [...] In a photo taken on the summit of the Dent du Geant while I am celebrating Holy Mass, Dr Gobbi holds the chalice for me ... so that the wind does not overturn it ... his hands are confused with the hands of the priest ... on that day he was an offerer with the offering priest. Today he has become a victim offered to the ideal of the mountain. Passion demanded immolation, it is a law of all great human endeavours ... and immolation always comes to the most generous and Dr Gobbi was a generous man ... [... Yes, our dear friend Gobbi was rich in faith in that God whom he knew how to seek and contemplate in the whiteness of the snows, in the immensity of the glaciers, in the majesty of the peaks, in that Jesus God who wanted to be the viaticum and companion of his expeditions ...[...] so how do we feel that the words of Jesus 'I am the Resurrection and the Life, whoever believes in Me, even if dead, will live. ' Goodbye dear Gobbi, see you in God."
(4.12 The Church of Courmayeur, Photo Gobbi family/Grivel archive)
Ruggero Pellin again recalls: "Toni Gobbi's funeral was epoch-making, it left its mark. There were people from all over ... they were all here. All the 'crowned heads' of European mountaineering were there! The square was packed ... the procession to the cemetery filled up ... the procession lasted all afternoon." Leonardo Lenti also recalls: "Courmayeur was under siege at the funeral. The road from the church to the cemetery was all full ...”. On leaving the church, Toni's coffin is carried by Renato Petigax, Mario Senoner, Oliviero Frachey and Giorgio Colli, who were among Toni's main collaborators and who for the occasion, in homage to the 'Big Boss', wear the red jumper of the Weeks instead of the traditional guide's uniform.
From “La Stampa” of Monday 23rd March: “Three thousand people at Toni Gobbi's funeral”. We read in the article: “Three thousand people attended the solemn funeral. Forty wreaths and cushions of flowers, including that of the Prime Minister, Rumor, who had been Gobbi's schoolmate in Vicenza. [... ] Alongside the Mont Blanc guides were those from Matterhorn, Monte Rosa and Gran Paradiso, the delegations from CAI (Italian Alpine Club) led by President Chabod, from the Union of International Guides with its Secretary General, the Swiss Xavier Kalt, the mountaineers Maurice Herzog, mayor of Chamonix, Jean Franco, director of the French National Ski and Mountaineering School, Jean Bourdet, vice-president of the French Alpine Club, the seventy-year-old Armand Charlet, the most famous guide in France; and Lino Andreotti, from the Himalayan group, Dionisi, from the Gervasutti school in Turin, Cassin, Mauri, Compagnoni, Pagani, Frison Roche, Gala, from the Alpine Club of London, Ubaldo Rey from the K2 expedition. " Since the afternoon of that distant 22nd March 1970, Toni rests in the Courmayeur cemetery under a granite tombstone depicting the Peuterey ridge at Mont Blanc.
(4.13 tomb of Toni Gobbi, Courmayeur, Photo Gobbi family/Grivel archive)
Toni had created around him a world of collaborators, customers, enthusiasts and friends that he held together with his charisma and his vision of the mountains: the Weeks, the conferences, the meetings, the shop and everything else. With his death, this world disperses very quickly.
His closest collaborators (Petigax, Senoner, Frachey and Passera) decide to carry on with the 1970 Weeks programme, except for the Damavand expedition. In a letter sent to all of them, we can read: “When tragedy and sorrow disrupt our lives, the example and ideas of those who have been able to speak to our hearts must spur us on to the serene will to keep alive what is good and best that has been left to us. [...] To continue is not only to pay homage to the One who had begun, but it means recognising the validity of an idea, the depth of an approach, the continuity of a school. However, the activities of the Weeks do not continue beyond 1970: "no one had the entrepreneurial ability to take over the organisation, no one put together the characteristics that Toni had as a person of culture and at the same time of the mountains," explains Leonardo Lenti.
All of Toni's main collaborators continue to work as guides for all their life.
Renato Petigax is 90 years old and is the doyen of the Courmayeur Guides. Even today, he often dreams about the ski mountaineering of the Weeks at night.
(4.14 Renato Petigax, 90 years old, Photo Gobbi family/Grivel archive)
Mario Senoner explains: "There was nothing left for me but to continue this work, from which I got great satisfaction!” He also makes a career within the IFMGA, becoming President of the Technical Commission from 1977 to 1981. He is 87 years old and every morning he admires the Sassolungo – Langkofel and the Sassopiatto - Plattkofel from his balcony in Santa Cristina.
(4.15 Mario Senoner, 87 years old, on his balcony. In the background the Sassolungo – Langkofel and the Sassopiatto - Plattkofel, Photo Enrico Veronese for Grivel)
Oliviero Frachey becomes President of the IFMGA from 1977 to 1981. He dies in 1999 at the age of 71.
Giorgo Colli becomes the Technical Director of the Mezzalama Trophy, an important ski mountaineering competition, in the 1970s. He dies in 2014 at the age of 89.
Remo Passera, who escaped the accident on Sassopiatto, dies on the Castor (Monte Rosa group) in the summer of 1970: he is only 44 years old. Ironically, the accident is very similar to Toni's: a client slips and drags the rope party into the void. Also a citizen (from Vigevano), he had moved to Gressoney for love of the mountains and of a local girl, Yvonne.
As for the survivors of Toni's roped party, Mirko Minuzzo becomes a mountain guide and on 5th May 1973 he is the first Italian to summit Everest, together with Rinaldo Carrel, son of Marcello who had been Toni's companion in the 1957/1958 expedition to the Patagonian Andes. He dies in a car accident in 2004, aged 58. Mario Belli also survives another serious climbing accident in 1973 at the Pale di San Martino and a car accident in 1974. He dies of illness in 1994, aged only 45.
Many of Toni's customers continue to go to the mountains, but the world of the Weeks is forever gone. Giacomo Bozzi recalls: 'When Toni disappeared, the world fell apart for my mother. It was a great tragedy that marked and changed her life in a major way, reshaping this wonderful world of ski mountaineering in a violent way. She continued to go to the mountains and ski mountaineering with other guides but it was all different, they had little to do with Toni's world. No one ever again gave her the peace of mind, trust and relationship that he had been able to give her."
(4.16 Irene Bozzi and Toni Gobbi in the 60s, Photo Bozzi family archive)
The Courmayeur shop is run by the Gobbi family until the mid-1980s, but Toni's death comes so unexpected and painful that the subject becomes almost taboo. His daughter Maria Barbara remembers: “Since then, We talked very little about dad so as not to hurt mum, who was 49 and devastated. It was an unconscious, unreasoned decision, maybe even wrong because we never metabolised his passing." Romilda lives until the spring of 2008, keeping Toni's clothes, objects and documents in the house as if he had just left. She now rests next to Toni.
(4.17 tomb of Toni and Romilda Gobbi in Courmayeur, Photo Gobbi family/Grivel archive)
Marilena, Toni's younger sister, is 91 years old. She enjoys her three children and five grandchildren but every morning she greets Toni's photo, hanging in plain sight in her apartment in Vicenza.
(4.18 Marilena Gobbi, 91 years old, with the portrait of Toni, Photo Gobbi family/Grivel archive)
And what about ski mountaineering? Giorgio Daidola, journalist, writer and skiing historian, explains: “after 1970, ski mountaineering developed a lot, but not so much according to Toni Gobbi's model, which was almost forgotten except by some ski mountaineers on an individual basis. On the one hand, developments in equipment and technique allow for much higher downhill performance, hence also steep skiing and so on. Many proselytes are also attracted from the world of piste skiing, which is booming in the 1970s with the big resorts, but it is a hit and run model. On the other hand, the model that we could call 'of the tracksuits', which is a speed sport and is mainly about athletic ability. Gobbi's model, that of complete and organised adventure, of big crossings, is largely forgotten. What has remained and developed, however, is the aspect of ski travel, which he had first developed by taking clients to the Caucasus and then to Greenland, even if it is carried on in a way that is perhaps less organised than his own.”
While it is true that no one has fully picked up Toni's legacy, his “trace” has nevertheless inspired some of those who were able or willing to see it.
Giorgio Peretti was a client of Toni's in the 1960s, participating in four Weeks. "When I got the news of Toni Gobbi's death I was training for my ski instructor exams in Cortina. I had the feeling that a part of my life was gone ... I immediately went to Castelrotto, to see the bodies in the mortuary. I was very struck by Toni, who had his mouth open a little, almost as if to say 'what happened, how was it possible?' I spent an hour or so looking at him, and that's when I decided to be a mountain guide too, and to try to carry on his message ...”
In the 1970s Giorgio becomes a mountain guide and then a national guide instructor and organises programmes called 'The Weeks', including a ski-mountaineering trip in March each year to commemorate Toni. He is 82 years old and continues to go to the mountains and to ski.
(4.19 Giorgio Peretti, Adler Pass, May 2000. Photo Giorgio Peretti archive)
(4.20 Giorgio Peretti’s Programme of activites, Photo Gobbi family/Grivel archive)
Alberto Re has been a very active mountain guide throughout the world, as well as president of the Piedmont Mountain Guides and also of the Italian Mountain Guides. He is 85 years old and has recently published his biography “Horizon Mountains”, in which he remembers when in the ‘60s he visited Toni’s shop in Courmayeur with Giancarlo Grassi, driven by “the interest to meet the shop owner. […] Toni Gobbi very willingly dispensed information and valuable advice to the mountaineers.” He also writes: “Toni Gobbi was the first to perceive the importance of expanding the area of skiing, as an instrument of knowledge and to promote new perspectives for the work of the guides, anticipating and developing the ski mountaineering of traverses [...] in my opinion the maximum expression of the activity of skiing combined with mountaineering. [...] Even in expeditions, as a professional, he was the forerunner, accompanying a group in 1966 to Elbrus and in 1967 and 1969 to Greenland. [...] His way of carrying out his profession opened up new horizons in my projects."
(4.21 Biography of Alberto Re, Photo Gobbi family/Grivel archive)
Mario Senoner concludes: "Toni was great, but even the great die sooner or later. For me the consolation is that he looks down on us, waving his finger like in the famous photo."
(4.22 Toni Gobbi, Photo Gobbi family/Grivel archive)
Oliviero Gobbi. After a degree in physics and a master's in management, he worked for a few years as a strategic consultant in large multinationals before joining Grivel, his family business, of which he is now the owner and CEO. He loves all mountain activities, from mountaineering to ice climbing, from rock climbing to ski mountaineering, which he practices when he can. His favorite Grivel product is the one yet to be invented.
Back to The story of Toni Gobbi: from citizen to mountain guide
Back to Part 1 - The man: from the city to the mountains
Back to Part 2 - The mountaineer: from the Alps to the world
Back to Part 3 - The mountain guide: evolution of a profession
]]>Toni becomes a mountain guide in 1946, fulfilling his dream of transforming his passion for the mountains into a career. He will write to his friend Armando Biancardi: "Now that I'm really a mountain guide, I must always keep in mind that this is my profession and that therefore I have to get out of it at all costs an XY amount of money that will allow me to run my little family for another year, since I don't have fields from which to grow potatoes, apartments to rent to the "lords", woods from which to cut down plants ...".
If he is not the very first, he is certainly one of the first Italian mountain guides from the city. We shall remember that the profession was born between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century among the villagers who, experts of their places, began to accompany the "tourists of the time" to the mountains. The first mountain guides association in the world is the one of Chamonix (1821), the second is the one of Courmayeur (1850).
After the Second World War, with the first mountain guides from the city, the debate on the opportunity of this opening of the profession ignited. In the assembly of delegates of the CAI (Italian Alpine Club) in November 1947 (in those years the guides were part of the CAI itself), someone even goes so far as to propose excluding from the profession those who were not born and residing in an alpine valley. And it is another of the first Italian guides from the city, Gigi Panei (born in central Italy, a conscript of Toni and also based in Courmayeur), who criticizes this proposal of exclusion in an article in "Lo Scarpone" (CAI newspaper) of January 16th, 1948 "Citizens in mountain guides too", going so far as to argue that mountain guides from the city have now become even stronger than valley guides.
Toni also intervenes on the subject, with an article again in "Lo Scarpone" of June 16th, 1948, entitled "Defending the valley guides". Toni defends the qualities and strength of the guides from the mountains, but agrees with Panei on the possibility of having guides from the city.
His vision of the profession emerges clearly and strongly in his words. "I go so far as to admit (although I do not share this point of view) that a city guide can be allowed to work even without having to be forced to reside in the mountains ... [but] it should be made an indispensable condition - in our regulations - that the citizen who wants to become a mountain guide must undertake to "really be a guide", in short, to exercise the profession because being a guide is a public service and as such it must be regarded and exercised. [...] The aspiration of a citizen who wants to become a guide must not be - in my humble opinion - that of adding a patch to his jacket, but that of embracing and practicing a profession which in his eyes has become so spiritualized to be regarded as a true and proper mission, that is to say, to bring one's fellows to where their technique would not have taken them, but to which, on the other hand, all the aspirations of their feelings tend. [...] In short, yes, even citizens can be mountain guides, but only when they promise themselves to truly be guides, to carry out the activity of guides in all its marvelous and dangerous, terrible and highly poetic aspects. […] Only if we guides from the city truly exercise the profession, only then will we be able to understand our fellow valley dwellers, from whom our ignorance and incomprehension too often distance us.” In fact, throughout his life Toni maintains a profound respect for the mountain people, for their culture and traditions.
The passion for the mountains is central to his approach to the profession. Mario Senoner, one of his main collaborators, recalls: "Toni always told us that we shouldn't be the taxi drivers of the mountains, but we should pass on the passion to the clients!". In an interview with Rai (Italian national television) in July 1963, Toni explains the qualities that a good mountain guide must have: “he must have passion, because without passion one cannot be a guide. Secondly, he must be aware of his profession, that is, he must understand that the client entrusts himself to him and entrusts his life to him. Thirdly, he must have a technical capacity, let's say a technical maturity such as to face any mountain difficulty and especially to face the mountain in any condition".
Precisely this passion and this awareness lead Toni to always feel the responsibility of the client or the group upon himself, and he knows that it is up to him to show the way. His friend Giorgio Bocca would write in an article in "Il Giorno" on 20th March 1970 (two days after Toni's death): "... [he was] in the lead to trace the way, even if a strong young mountaineer was behind: if [the client] had entrusted himself to him, it was up to him to open the way".
With this approach and this vision, Toni concentrates and specializes his activity as a mountain guide on high-level routes, such as the south ridge of the Aiguille Noire du Peuterey, the Hirondelles ridge on the Grandes Jorasses, the Major and Innominata on Mont Blanc. “The kind of climbs I prefer? The big ones. I came and stayed in the Aosta Valley, in the western alps, for this very reason (besides Romilda!).” he writes in a letter to his friend Armando Biancardi.
By creatively fusing his city mentality with mountain culture, Toni becomes an innovator. Enrico Camanni, journalist, writer and mountaineering historian explains: “Toni Gobbi totally renewed the profession of mountain guides. I don't think he had it in mind when he started, but undoubtedly he had the characteristics, the skills, the intelligence and even the personal history to do it. [...] He brought a culture that was not that of a mountaineer, but that of someone born in Pavia, raised in Vicenza, who studied at the university, who saw many things before doing that job, and also saw many other environments, including those of the Dolomites.” First of all, he brings an entrepreneurial approach to his work: the client must be actively sought, not passively waited for, and then developed over time. Not just accompaniment: it must be the guide to propose new experiences. The approach is disruptive in an alpine world where the majority of guides passively waits for the client in the office. Ruggero Pellin, mountain guide and former president of the Courmayeur Mountain Guides Association and cousin of Romilda, recalls Toni's teachings at the guide course: "Go and find the client, don't wait for him to suggest you what to do, you are the one who has to suggest him. And be entrepreneurs of yourselves!”
Toni applies this entrepreneurial mentality to his great intuition which is to try to broaden the guide's work, aiming at all seasons. At that time guiding is a purely summer job that lasts about two months a year, concentrated on mountaineering ascents. Sport climbing and ice climbing do not exist yet, while skiing, for the mountain guides, is very limited. In fact, in the Regulations of the Courmayeur Mountain Guides Association of those years, article 26 reads: "The guides office will be open from the 10th of July to the 30th of September." All the guides hold other jobs for the remaining 10 months of the year. Toni senses the opportunity to expand into ski-mountaineering, a spring activity that can cover the three months from March to June and which can prolong the working capacity up to a more advanced age.
Giorgio Daidola, journalist, writer, historian and ski enthusiast explains: “Skiing arrived in the Alps at the end of the 1800s – beginning of the 1900s from northern Europe. The mechanized lifts didn't exist yet, skiing was a means of mountaineering in the winter, therefore ski-mountaineering! Only in the 1930s, with the first mechanized lifts, downhill skiing developed and eventually became a mass phenomenon. Ski mountaineering then remains a niche, highly concentrated on the mountaineering side, therefore on the ascent, and little on the descent. The practitioners are more "mountaineers" than "skiers". After the war, Toni Gobbi understands the importance that the playful pleasure of descending combined with winter mountaineering in a professional way can have in ski mountaineering, and he understands the scope of long traverses, which link several locations.”
Toni is not the inventor of ski mountaineering, but he is probably the father of professional ski mountaineering and of Italian ski mountaineering in general, as well as a great developer of itineraries and programs never seen before. In those years, a high level of skiing is not required to become a mountain guide (the courses were strengthened in this respect only in the 1970s), and there are few guides who offer ski mountaineering itineraries, mostly for one day.
We must note that in Toni's vision ski mountaineering is at altitude and certainly involves the use of skis but also of ice axes and crampons. Its normal field of action is the mountain above 3000 meters and its purpose is the realization of high-altitude traverses and the conquest of peaks. It starts in mid-March, the slopes are considered too dangerous before that date, and it's a complete activity. In fact, he writes: “a true ski mountaineer is someone who finds the pleasure of ascending, the joy of the summit and the satisfaction of descending. […] We want anyone who does ski mountaineering to do it completely, in all three parts”.
In 1951 he begins to offer to his clients the Haute Route Chamonix-Zermatt (developed by the French and the Swiss in the first part of the 1900s), extending the departure from Courmayeur and the arrival to Cervinia, and thus took shape in him the idea of creating other multi-day ski-mountaineering itineraries, real traverses to explore entire areas and massifs. This is how the "Settimane Sci-Alpinistiche di Alta Montagna” (High Mountain Ski Mountaineering Weeks) are born, with the patronage of the CAI Central Commission for ski mountaineering and, starting from 1961, also of the FISI (Italian federation of winter sports) Ski Mountaineering Commission. Starting from 1954, the "Britannia Week" is also proposed (which touches four 4000m peaks in the Swiss Alps and takes its name from one of the huts touched) and from 1955 also the Bernese Oberland week. In the following years, the programs will be enriched with another 16 itineraries throughout the Alps, all studied with care and attention by Toni, all of great interest for the territories explored and in any case with ascents ranging between four thousand and seven thousand meters per week.
With the exception of 1958 (the year in which he participates in the expedition to Gasherbrum IV), the Weeks will continue uninterruptedly until 1970, the year of his death, occupying him for the 3 months of srping, in which he arrives home on Saturday and leaves again on Sunday : Toni doesn't miss a single one of “his” Weeks, because the boss always has to lead from the front, as he always say.
From 1951 to his death in 1970, Toni guides more than one hundred weeks, and 314 clients complete at least one. 148 (ie almost half of the total) complete at least two, and of these, 49 complete at least 5. In 1966 alone, 94 clients participate in the Weeks! To understand the extent of the phenomenon, one can read the roll of honor of the participants: these are city clients, often professionals or entrepreneurs, mountain lovers but not necessarily mountaineers or climbers, many also foreigners.
With this offer, Toni manages to significantly broaden his customer base. Giacomo Bozzi, son of Irene who was one of the main clients of the Weeks, explains: “What still strikes me about that approach is the ability to bring people, ordinary mountaineers from the city to extremely important results.” According to Giorgio Daidola: "Toni Gobbi was a great trainer, who developed the skills of his ski-mountaineers, creating a highly loyal clientele." Leonardo Lenti was a young client of Toni's in the late 1960s: “he really had the ability to bring together these extremely heterogeneous groups of people, and also somehow to cement them. [...] There were people of profoundly different cultural levels and personalities, whom he managed to amalgamate with his being "the boss", unquestionably the boss. In the end they were all happy, very happy, it was truly a joy. And when everything had gone well he relaxed, and he was no longer the big boss, but everyone's companion."
How does he manage to achieve these results? In the words of Umberto Caprara, notary of Vicenza, client and friend of Toni: "The Weeks are the result of enthusiasm and organisation, of tenacity and planning, of abnegation and study: qualities that can coexist in an exceptional man like Toni, in which mountaineering culture and ability, spirit of sacrifice, will and organizational skills came together in the almost missionary vocation of guiding the greatest number of mountaineers to enjoy the wonderful secrets of the winter in the high mountains.”
In fact, organization is the basis of everything and it is an area in which Toni excels. He thinks of everything and plans everything, from the itinerary to the timetables, from logistics to equipment and food. All of this is rolled out with rigidly enforced strict rules, which everyone must comply with for the success of the Week. Again Lenti: “He was an extremely rigid, hard, severe, attentive person who controlled everything and who clearly knew everything about what was happening around him. He strongly scolded people who didn't behave exactly the way he wanted. [...] He exuded strength, firmness, decision, and at the same time extreme attention to those around him, to the people whose life and health was entrusted to him. He felt responsible for everything and everything and so he obviously tried to control everything.” In the words of Renato Petigax (one of his main collaborators): “The organization was perfect. He even made a list of what customers had to bring in their backpacks, and often before leaving he checked and had the useless weight dropped off.”
Giorgio Peretti was a client of Toni in the 1960s before becoming a mountain guide himself. He remembers the Weeks well: "Toni always walked at a slow and regular pace, always leaving the hut 2-3 hours before the other guides (who often almost made fun of him) to ensure that the group reached the top in ideal conditions for the descent . With this system, unlike other guides, he always brought his group to the end, with very rare exceptions. ”
For the ascent then, in every situation and with any client, the rule is clear: you climb for 50 minutes, you rest for 10. And the track is always that of the boss, as Lenti recalls: “The track both uphill and downhill was a duty strictly his, and everyone had to follow him without delay both uphill and downhill. This is both for safety reasons and not to disturb the aesthetics of the virgin slope. When he got to the bottom he looked at the slope he had skied on, he looked at the track and was clearly satisfied with the beautiful, well done track. ”
The Weeks are therefore a highly successful formula that everyone is very happy with, and which will leave indelible memories in the participants. This is the case for Mrs. Bozzi, for example, remembered in the words of her son Giacomo: "My mother used to tell of these beautiful moments in the midst of wonderful mountains, and then the whole human dimension linked to the great leader of these Weeks and to the people who were close to him ... therefore the guides, Senoner, Petigax, who were all characters of value and weight in any case, and also to the other participants."
The spirit can also be understood from Toni's words in an information brochure, which explains the number of participants: “Registration for each Week is limited to a maximum of 12 participants. This, as well as for understandable safety reasons, also to maintain that character of quiet, elegance, ease of accommodation and provisioning, complete fraternity among the participants which has always been one of the most welcome characteristics of the Weeks and one of the secrets of their success.”
This movement had no equal at the time, as Mario Senoner recalls: "Other guides abroad worked with ski mountaineering, but no one in Europe had such a complete and vast program, which touched so many clients and with so many offers."
The world of the Weeks brings many elements of great innovation to the profession of the mountain guide. In addition to the already mentioned extension of the work during the year, certainly also the offer of complete programs (not just single trips/days) but above all the work away from home, in a world in which the guides were mainly "experts of their territory" and in almost all cases they limited their action to their "home" mountains. Toni takes his clients all over the Alps, and, with great vision, even outside the Alps and Europe. Giorgio Daidola explains: “ski travel is the logical evolution of the Weeks and will be of great influence for those who come after.” In fact, the 1966 Weeks program is enriched with the proposal of the "double ski-mountaineering Week in Caucasus", from the 23rd of June to the 7th of July. It is reserved for ski-mountaineers who have completed at least two weeks and has as its objective, in the midst of the Cold War, the ski-mountaineering ascent of Elbrus (5633m), in the territory of the Soviet Union. There are 12 places available but in the end there will be 13 participants, accompanied by Toni, Renato Petigax and Giorgio Colli as guides. After an acclimatization on Mount Cheget-Tau-Tchana (4109m), on the 1st of July all sixteen expedition members (thirteen clients plus three guides) reach the summit of Elbrus! Toni writes in an article on the expedition: "Elbrus had already been ascended and descended with skis before us, however we believe we were the first ski-mountaineering group to have climbed it in such a significant number and we also believe that it is the first time that women can be proud of having made the ski-mountaineering ascent.” On the way back, not to forget the cultural aspects, the last two days are dedicated to visiting Moscow!
In 1967 the organization pushes even further and offers the "Triple ski mountaineering Week in Greenland", from the 15th of June to the 5th of July, into the Stauning, which offer (as stated in the programme) "a grandiose complex of and undoubtedly profitable ascents for ski mountaineering.” 9 places are available for ski-mountaineers who have completed at least two weeks, and they are all booked. It's a great experience for everyone, in a logistically difficult but fascinating environment. The group completes several ascents including two first ski-mountaineering ascents, a first ascent and two first traverses. In the final report, Toni writes that "Greenland also has mountains of notable ski-mountaineering interest and of great technical satisfaction for complete ski-mountaineers."
In 1969 the "Second Italian ski-mountaineering expedition to Greenland" is planned, from the 15th of June to the 8th of July. There are 7 clients participating. Among them, Leonardo Lenti who is only 24 and still remembers it as "one of the great experiences of my life."
The 1970 program even plans the "Ten-day Ski mountaineering ascent of Damavand (5770m)", in Iran, but unfortunately it will not be made because of Toni's death on the 18th of March.
With today's eyes, we cannot fail to notice a very innovative and absolutely avant-garde approach to "marketing". First, Toni has a full time secretary for his guiding job (not involved in the shop or bookstore). She helps him organize his work, manage clients and organize the Weeks. For the latter, every year he creates a very complete brochure of about fifteen pages for the presentation of the program. It contains the detailed schedule for each week, all the information on enrollment and costs, as well as lots of information in a format that today we would call "FAQ" (e.g. What are the characteristics of the weeks? How do you have to ski? What are the huts like? Who will provide the food?). With a view to promotion and retention, the golden book is always present, with the complete list of participants since the beginning of the project. An initial segmentation of customers is also very interesting (here the data from the 1970 brochure): "20% are young people between 18 and 25 years old, 60% are people between 26 and 49 years old, 20% % are enthusiasts aged between 50 and 65 [...] 18% are female ski mountaineers, 75% have previous ski mountaineering experiences, 25% instead come from piste skiing and are therefore at their first full ski mountaineering experience."
Each client is taken care of personally and Toni writes personalized letters to all of them to address the various offers and programs, with a view to developing skills and increasing difficulties. He also works on loyalty! As early as 1957, the organization awards the Weeks badge to participants who complete the programme. In the following years the badge becomes a pin, with special holes to pin the stamp of each completed week.
It is also interesting to analyze the costs of the Weeks, to discover that they are comparable to those of major mountaineering ascents, but with an activity that lasts a whole week and that has a client-guide ratio of 4-5 to 1.
Let's take 1961 for example: the price of the Haute Route Courmayeur-Chamonix-Zermatt-Breuil is 27,500 liras (the fee includes the organization, the guides and their expenses) to which must be added another 17,500 liras for meals, shelters, transport, for a total of 45,000 liras. The Oberland Week costs 30,500 liras, which become 50,000 if you count everything. It is useful to compare these costs with some climbs offered by the Aosta Valley guides: the Dent du Geant (normal route) costs 16,000 liras, Mont Blanc (from the Gonella hut) 32,000 liras while the Matterhorn (Lion ridge) 38,000 liras. Since 1963, a 15% discount is introduced for young people under 25 years. If we look instead at 1968, we find the Haute Route at 45,500 liras, with a Dent du Geant at 30,000 liras, a Mont Blanc at 55,000 liras and a Matterhorn at 50,000 liras. We note that starting in 1969 the fee for the Weeks also includes accident and civil liability insurance for the participants.
In addition to practice, Toni also works on theory and training.
In 1964, on his initiative and insistence, CAI established the qualification of "Ski-Guide": it can be obtained by guides who are already ski teachers or by guides who attend a special course (the first is in Courmayeur from the 3rd to the 10th of April, 1964). The Ski-Guide badge number 1 is precisely that of Toni, and he will be the one to direct all the courses. We shall remember that in those years skiing is very small in mountain guides courses! The Ski-Guide is thus authorized to organize ski mountaineering technique courses and ski mountaineering activities/programmes.
The world of the Weeks is also consolidated and affirmed through conferences of the participants. The first is in December 1955, in Courmayeur, to "go back to the best moments of our common activity based on the truest and most severe form of ski mountaineering, and make plans for the future" as stated in the invitation. The second convention is in 1956, then in 1958, then in 1960 and finally in 1965, on the 9th and 10th of October. “However, it was about time we all got together: we are by now not only a force in high mountain ski-mountaineering, but we also represent a school, a method, a system, a trend that can and must say something in the field of our favorite activity” reads the invitation. The aim of the conference is the formulation of a "Decalogue for the high mountain ski-mountaineer" in which all the principles of the activity are clearly outlined.
In 1967 he is commissioned by Fabbri Editori to take care of the part relating to ski mountaineering in "The Encyclopaedia of the Skier", helping to make the discipline known to the general public.
Starting in 1967, as part of the Weeks, he creates the "National school of high mountain ski-mountaineering" to better prepare the clients. The school operates in the month of March (the starting period of the Weeks) and also offers, in the summer, "Ice, mixed and mountain rescue courses."
Toni is also a great popularizer of his activity as a guide and mountaineer, holding numerous conferences throughout his career. When he is not in the mountains, he is often busy in his office preparing conferences, as well as studying new itineraries. The topics are varied and he always develops new ones according to the moments and situations.
He starts early, as evidenced by a letter to his brother-in-law Franco Pozzani (husband of his sister Rita) dated 20th April 1951, for the organization of a conference at the CAI in Thiene. Toni writes as follows: "The conference is entitled "Western Alpinism seen by a Dolomites expert" and lasts about 50 minutes, illustrated by slides in black and white and in colour. In this conference I explain the substantial differences between mountaineering in the Dolomites and in the western Alps. It is a conference that I have now successfully held in at least 50 sections of the CAI.”
With the development of his career, the activity of lecturer also extends abroad. In January 1962 he is invited by the English Alpine Club (of which he will be a member from 1965). On the 23rd of January in London and on the 26th in Liverpool he holds a conference titled "A mountaineer who became a guide" in which he tells his personal story, centered on his passion for the mountains.
Toni is also one of the first, if not the first, mountaineer and guide to create specific products for his activity. In fact, already in 1954, in the price list of his " Alpinist and Skier's Shop" of Courmayeur there is a section "Guida (guide) mountaineering equipment", in which he writes: "In this section I have listed all the mountaineering products and tools whose technical features and production have been personally studied and directed by me in collaboration with some of the best Italian manufacturers specialized in mountaineering equipment. These are items that, before putting them up for sale and recommending them, I have tested for several years, so that they can give the most ample guarantees of rationality, resistance and - what is more important - perfect compliance with the needs of modern mountaineering technique, both for the Dolomites and for the western alps. All “Guida” products (registered trademark) are original only if accompanied by the authentication tag bearing the handwritten signature and the progressive serial number."
We find many "Guida” products including high mountain and climbing boots, ski mountaineering boots (in collaboration with Dolomite), Italian hemp rope for mountaineering, windbreakers for mountaineering and ski mountaineering (with Merlet), down jackets, trousers, shirts, mountain sweaters, gloves, … up to bivouac tents.
Toni is not only a very active mountain guide, but also contributes significantly to the growth of the profession and its representation.
First of all, he always makes sure that the guides are properly paid. Senoner recalls: "Toni fought for the rates, he said that the guides must be paid adequate rates." He also harshly criticizes customers who try to underpay. This is how he vents in a letter to his friend Armando Biancardi: “.. the greatest cowardice, Armando, is that those pigs don't do it with me, but they do it with those of the guides who are the least educated. Those filthy people, who studied and grew up in the city, take advantage of the ignorance and difficulty of speaking of those poor fellows.
In 1946, having become a guide, he joins the Courmayeur Mountain Guides Association, and immediately becomes part of the President’s Cabinet. However, he will never accept to become president of the Association, despite being asked several times, in order not to disturb the delicate balance of the village and his excellent relations with the locals.
However, he immediately moves to a higher level: in 1947 he enters the President’s Cabinet of the Aosta Valley Guides Committee (today UVGAM), where he collaborates with Sen. Chabod (then president of the Committee) for the drafting of the regional law 28-9-51 n2 concerning the organization of guides and porters in the Aosta Valley.
In 1951 he joins the teaching staff of the Guide and Porter Courses of the Aosta Valley, of which he becomes Technical Director in the second half of the 1950s.
In 1957 he is appointed President of the Aosta Valley Guides Committee, a position he holds until 1966. In this role, for the centenary of the first ascent of Mont Blanc by the Courmayeur Guides, he organizes and coordinates the first ascent of a RAI television crew to the top of Mont Blanc in the summer of 1963. There he is interviewed and this is broadcasted on the August 13th evening news.
In 1965 he becomes the National President of the CAI Guides and Porters Consortium.
In this area, his greatest intuition is the creation of an international body that brings together the guides of all countries: the IFMGA (International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations. We read in the historical documents of the association: "the idea to unite all the mountain guides of the world in one single family probably grew from the idea of our unforgettable Dr. Toni Gobbi and Bernhard Biner from Zermatt, who had met on the occasion of the centenary of the Courmayeur Mountain Guides Association in 1950.” In the first part of the 1960s, the meetings between the various supporters of the idea (with Toni at the forefront) intensify until 1965, when they meet for the Zermatt mountain guides festival (the centenary of the first ascent of the Matterhorn) and find the conditions to move forward. The foundation of the federation takes place on the 15th of October 1965, involving Italy, France, Austria and Switzerland. Roger Frison Roche (guide and writer from Chamonix) becomes the president and the Swiss Xavier Kalt the secretary-treasurer. Thanks to Toni's contribution, Valle d'Aosta (as UVGAM) still has today its own representation in the IFMGA, in addition to that of Italy. Mario Senoner still remembers having often talked about it with Toni: "In the early '60s Toni told me about the possibility of bringing together all the guides under a single sign, all with the same badge with no more differences among the countries ... come on, maybe we can do it - he told me!" And so it was: today the IFMGA brings together 22 countries and over 6,000 mountain guides from all over the world.
Enrico Camanni concludes: “All this makes Toni Gobbi a new, modern mountain guide. He was a charismatic character who also knew how to tell the trade and make us love it, desire it. With his example he clearly said "I do it like this and it's a beautiful job."
Photo credits: Grivel archive, Gobbi family, Leonardo Lenti, Giorgio Peretti
Oliviero Gobbi. After a degree in physics and a master's in management, he worked for a few years as a strategic consultant in large multinationals before joining Grivel, his family business, of which he is now the owner and CEO. He loves all mountain activities, from mountaineering to ice climbing, from rock climbing to ski mountaineering, which he practices when he can. His favorite Grivel product is the one yet to be invented.
Back to The story of Toni Gobbi: from citizen to mountain guide
Back to Part 1 - The man: from the city to the mountains
Back to Part 2 - The mountaineer: from the Alps to the world
Go to Part 4 - The death.
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Toni approaches the mountains in the early 1930s, when he is just of age. He attends the “Giovane Montagna” group of Vicenza, a Catholic-inspired mountaineering association, of which he became president in 1936, when he was only 22 years old. It is almost a vocation, so much so that he wrote in a letter of 1945: “Spiritually (and I would be tempted to say also physically) one is born mountaineer; if you don't have what it takes, you can't become a mountaineer, neither through your own work nor - much less - through the work of others. [...] in this precisely lies its superiority [of mountaineering]: in being a continuous becoming, in being a spiritual and physical activity that does not suffer from classifications because all those who practice it are themselves creators of their own all subjective self-education and mountaineering mentality since the beginning."
He starts his activity in the Dolomites but already in 1937-38 he ventures with friends to the Western Alps, in the Monte Rosa group and on the Matterhorn. Starting from 1939, while remaining close to the Vicenza group, he begins to devote himself to greater climbs that would better refine his possibilities.
Shortly after he opens his first route: on Mount Pasubio, in the Vicentine Pre-Alps, the east face of Soglio Rosso which "almost cost the collapse of the entire Pasubio, so many boulders had been pulled down by him and his companion", wrote the his friend Gianni Pieropan.
Since the beginning, mountaineering is a shared activity for Toni, even if he understands and accepts the approach of the soloists, followed by other mountaineers. In a 1969 interview he will say: “By my principles and my feelings, I enjoy a mountain climb when I can share this joy with others. But if a mountaineer achieves maximum inner satisfaction by isolating himself, I can understand that he is making a solitary ascent. Especially if in this condition he enhances his competitive spirit. "
In 1940 he moves to Valle d'Aosta (link to article's part 1) and the center of his activity is moved to the west, but on 9th July 1943 he is back in the Dolomites for the first ascent of the "direct route" to the “Anulare delle Cinque Dita”, together with Alessandro Miotti, with difficulties of fifth grade plus. On modern guides, the route is described as “daring rock climbing in part very friable, very little repeated”. Ironically, it is a few steps away from the Sasso Piatto (Plattkofel) on which he will die in 1970.
Also in 1943 together with Miotti, Nicolino and Troi he climbs the Hirondelles Ridge on the Grandes Jorasses (4208m) tracing a variant.
In the summer of 1944 it is the turn of the "Gobbi route" at Pic Gamba (3069m) together with Augusto Frattola. It is the first time that the two climb together, but Toni decides to jump in despite the perplexities of his wife Romilda. On this adventure he will then write an article in Lo Scarpone, the magazine of the CAI (Italian Alpine club), concluding that at the top he will also find "the satisfaction of the husband who has won over his wife's arguments."
Many years later, his friend Sir Anthony Rawlinson will write that Toni “did not rate himself specially gifted as a climber. But by hard work, intelligence and fitness he made himself an acknowledged master of his profession." His determination and passion have always guided him. In an article in Lo Scarpone of 1944 he will say that “muscles are worth nothing without a heart that directs them and a passion that exalts them”.
In 1946 Toni becomes a mountain guide, but he continues the high-level mountaineering activity which, according to him, is essential for the proper preparation of the guide. Mountaineering will always be a complete and pervasive activity for him: "I tell young people that they must be able to understand not only the sporting aspect of the mountain, its rocks, its glaciers, its walls and its ridges, but also its flowers, its animals and, above all, its inhabitants to get to respect them as they deserve ”he will say in a 1969 interview.
Between the end of the 40s and the beginning of the 50s, my grandfather shifts his attention to winter ascents. “Winter climbs have always been my obsession, if only as a palliative to some of my Himalayan aspirations” he writes in his notes.
In those years, the definition of winter ascents is not univocal, and the climbs carried out in March are generally considered winter ascents. In fact, Toni writes: “A thorny topic is the period within which a climb can be considered a winter ascent. I have met various mountaineers on this subject, but none of them have given me an exhaustive answer, nor on the other hand do I know that there is so far an agreement - albeit tacit and due to custom - on these borders. It would therefore be desirable that on the occasion of some gathering of the most famous European militant mountaineers - similar to what happened two years ago in Chamonix for what refers to the graduation of the difficulties - a definitive word would be said in this regard. For my part, I think that there is only one criterion to follow, and precisely that winter ascent should be considered only the one in which are well present the factors 1 (the shortness of the hours of light available) and 2 (the intense cold) I mentioned. It follows that the dates of the calendar (21st December – 21st March) or those of the Alpine winter (1st December – 31st March) must be followed. I do not think it is possible to go beyond these dates, precisely because outside of them the importance of the two aforementioned factors is considerably diminished. "
On 24th March 1948 he makes the first winter ascent of the Hirondelles Ridge at Grandes Jorasses with François Thomasset, a mountain guide and brother-in-law of Toni (he is the husband of Elvira, Romilda's sister). “It was François who threw the stone and I couldn't help but pick it up” writes Toni.
On 26th-27th-28th February 1949 he makes the first winter ascent of the South Ridge of the Aiguille Noire du Peuterey (3773m) together with Enrico Rey, grandson of Emile Rey (1846-1895) known as the "Prince of the guides" and first ascender of the Aiguille Noire itself (1877), of the Aiguille Blanche (1885) and of the whole Peuterey ridge (1893).
In the story of the climb, Toni writes "The most beautiful hour of the South Ridge of the Noire is undoubtedly that of sunset, when the last sun with large orange brushstrokes chisels the granite ridge making it even more daring and harmonious [...] . The rock then comes to life, you seem to have it there at your fingertips, frank and loyal, sweetly warm under the caress of the last rays. [...] And it is a show that excites me and puts me in an imperious impatience to climb, to find myself above all on that route, I will do a thousand other routes but none as beautiful and exciting as this one. Because I went to the South Ridge in winter precisely out of the desire to find myself, at sunset, on its granite in the midst of that triumph of light, enjoying the last warmth of the sun on the rock. […] It was not the desire for a mountaineering affirmation that decided me to start at any cost, but the absolute need to climb, and to climb the South Crest of the Noire. "
On 28th February, Enrico and Toni are returning and fully enjoying the moment: "And then, despite everything, despite my hands are in a pitiful state, loyal to my traditions, I order the stop and I give myself a smoke of my pipe, the first and 'last of the day: it is the prize - and I taste it in every sense - that I invariably grant myself on the way back from each ascent: there is no saint who makes me give up this quarter of an hour of complete relaxation of the nervous and muscular system, of my whole self in short: the eyes wander freely around, the mind no longer worried about what awaits me later, lets its thousand thoughts run where they want, the pride of victory sings inside me and already the nostalgia for what has been creeps into my soul and makes him suffer sweetly, sweetly. "
At the beginning of March 1953 Toni meets his fellow guide Arturo Ottoz, and, as we read in his writings, "we find ourselves with our unconscious gaze turned to the glaciers up there and we understand that our sudden silence hides a sprouting of very similar projects. . No desire to disarm despite Arturo's 43 years and my almost 40, [...] the first rumors of an upcoming Italian expedition to K2: there is enough to find complete agreement on something really hard in an instant " . The two have never climbed together, but in Toni there is a strong "desire, curiosity, the pleasure of roping with Arturo." The chosen goal is the first winter ascent of the Major route on Mont Blanc. On Sunday 22nd March Toni and Arturo set off from the Torino hut, on skis “to guarantee us a less tiring and faster return from the summit”. With the aim of saving weight, Arturo shortens an old pair of skis and Toni takes those of his 8-year-old son. After a night at the Fourche bivouac, the two leave at 4:45 am to descend on the Brenva glacier and attack the route.
They alternate on the lead, and Toni admires Arturo's technical qualities: “I see that body, even if square, stocky, powerful, becoming elastic, light and extremely elegant; to become an admirable ornament of a natural wonder which is this white and airy ridge. On ice Arturo is truly a superior being. Precise: his abilities and his technical safety are inherent in his nature as a mountaineer […], but in him they are enhanced by his nervous calm ”.
At 20:30 on 23rd March 1953, Toni and Arturo are on the top of Mont Blanc (almost 16 hours after leaving the bivouac). "We hug each other in one of those gestures of friendship that you would try in vain to repeat on the plain; happy to finally get to know each other fully, to have lived the wonderful adventure together. We tell each other with a lump in the throat. The full moon floods the immense solitude and absolute silence that surround us with light. "
La Stampa of 26th March 1953 writes "On a peak of Mont Blanc from a vertical of a thousand meters - another daring mountaineering feat." In the article, Toni is interviewed, and he specifies that "You need to climb trusting in the grip of crampons and in God. Fortunately, the snow cover holds and the 12-point Superleggeri Grivel (link to the related article) work properly."
Unfortunately Arturo will die three years later in 1956, at the age of 47, under an avalanche right at the base of the Major route. Toni will dedicate the story of their winter endeavor to him: “This writing is dedicated to you, Arturo. Excuse me if in it I could only remotely echo the words of admiration and gratitude that I was able to say to you then, in the pure silence of the summit. […] I know well that the praises annoyed you as much as the acknowledgments were appreciated! Maybe that's why you wanted to stay up there. In order not to hear unnecessary praise on your coffin, satisfied by the acknowledgments that your moved climbing companions expressed to you, on the short square of the summit, in a moment of complete sincerity and profound gratitude. "
As predicted by Toni and Arturo, in the following months the Italians actually organize an expedition to K2, the second highest mountain on earth, conquering its untouched summit on 31st July, 1954. To his great disappointment and regret, Toni is not selected for this expedition. He will not be the only illustrious excluded: Riccardo Cassin will also remain out of the group.
However, my grandfather's mountaineering career is far from over, and indeed arrives in his golden period precisely in 1957-1958. In the summer of 1957 Walter Bonatti, who moved to Courmayeur in that year, walks to Toni's shop in Courmayeur and suggests that they tackle together the last great itinerary still to be climbed on the Italian side of Mont Blanc, the Grand Pilier d'Angle (4234m, a thousand-meter pillar that rises from the Brenva basin and rejoins the Peuterey ridge), which was a great aspiration of both. Toni does not hesitate and the two decide to leave, without however revealing their destination to anyone, except to Romilda (Toni's wife) who will have to keep a rigorous silence.
The Grand Pilier d'Angle is a hot topic of the summer of 1957: as reported by the Gazzetta Sera of 5th August of that year, two other groups are in Courmayeur ready to launch the attack (a French and a Swiss rope team), but Toni and Walter are the first to leave.
The two leave the Torino hut on 31st July at 2.30 pm and reach the foot of the Pilier d’Angle wall, where they bivouac. They have with them the bare minimum: "2 ropes of 41 meters (one 8.5mm and one 10mm), 35 pitons of all sizes, five wooden wedges, five aiders, two Grivel ice axes, a single pair of crampons, a bivouac tent and half a kilo of jam, sugar, chocolate, biscuits and powdered milk. No water bottles and no fire: we have to be as light as possible ”.
In the story of the climb, which will be published by Epoca magazine, Toni defines himself as "the old" and Bonatti "the young". At 6:30 am on 1st August they attack the Pilier, climbing until 8:30pm to ascend the first 300 meters. "Too little! Great route but the rock is too often a “traitor”. The old man smokes a pipe; then at midnight he sees a comet, wakes the young and they both admire it for half an hour, while it shines between Aiguille Verte and Grandes Jorasses. "
After the bivouac, on 2nd August they start again, "the rock has definitely improved, healthier, more granite and even - if possible - more overhanging: but the young and the old left in search of" nice and frank "difficulties and do not complain. The rhythm and the joy of the action are perfect: it was necessary, because now there is no pitch that does not have its good sixth grade passage, sometimes in aid climbing, more often in free climbing. " They tackle the crux, a 40-meter dihedral that Bonatti solves brilliantly. On top of the rock difficulties, they cut the residual wedges into strips, set them on fire and make water by melting the snow, with the addition of sugar. It is then the turn of the mixed terrain, before the new bivouac on another terrace.
On 3rd August they leave at 6:30am, complete the stretch that separates them from the top of the Pilier where they arrive at 10am. "the old reaches the summit and lights his pipe to hide the tears that run down under his glasses on the face because the young is enthusiastically shaking his hand and says, with a bright smile "Grigio, we have made it!".
It is then the turn of the stretch of ice, which is the final part of the Peuterey ridge. Toni and Walter arrive at the top of Mont Blanc at 6:30 pm, the feat is accomplished. They have used around seventy pitons, of which only 4 were left on the wall. They then go down to the Grand Mulets Refuge, where they spend the night, to go up the next day to the Aiguille du Midi then to the Colle del Gigante and down to Courmayeur (remember that the Mont Blanc tunnel will only open in 1965), where they will be welcomed by a party crowd.
In an article of 5th August in the Gazzetta Sera, we read that "The admiration that their endeavor arouses among all connoisseurs of the high mountains, among all sixth graders, is literally boundless." In his book Mountains of a lifetime ”, Bonatti will define this route as“ A difficult and elegant itinerary in a grandiose environment”.
1957 continues in style. Toni is called to participate in the Italian Expedition to the Patagonian Andes, directed by the entrepreneur Guido Monzino (son of Franco Monzino, founder of the Standa department stores) and made up of a large group of Matterhorn Mountain Guides, including Jean Bich, Camillotto Pellissier, Leonardo Carrel and Pierino Pession.
The group leaves on November 21st from Milan and for Toni it is the first time on a plane! Despite the courage shown several times in the mountains, the flight disturbs him. He writes to his wife: Once in Patagonia, the ascent is slowed down by bad weather, with snowstorms and the famous Patagonian wind, with gusts of over two hundred kilometers per hour. Monzino writes in the book “Italy in Patagonia”: “the power of this element [the wind] is always unpredictable; for over fifty days we hated the wind and loved the Paine."“Unfortunately it is as I feared, I suffer and I am not calm. […]. The first hour was hell, not the take-off that didn't make an impression on me, but that slow climb to reach the fixed altitude for the flight, 5000m. This damned plane never went up, never went up! Naturally within me the darkest forecasts: he can't do it, he can't do it! […]. I envied those who went by sea like never before. "
Once in Patagonia, the ascent is slowed down by bad weather, with snowstorms and the famous Patagonian wind, with gusts of over two hundred kilometers per hour. Monzino writes in the book “Italy in Patagonia”: “the power of this element [the wind] is always unpredictable; for over fifty days we hated the wind and loved the Paine."
Toni is the only "outsider" in the large group of Matterhorn guides and must politically manage the situation and group dynamics, in order not to be excluded and isolated from others.
The summit of Paine Principal is reached on 27th December, 1957, after a month of effort and three attempts, by Bich, Carrel, Pellissier, Pession and Toni himself.
"Yesterday 27th December we reached the highest summit of Cerro Paine which at our altimeter shoed an altitude of 3835m. [...] The victory came thanks to a day that was not beautiful but passable, thanks to the technical skills and the decision of Bich and, modestly, of the other 4, and in good measure thanks to my diplomatic action that finally managed to dispel that sense of animosity among the various members so that everyone's forces finally wanted the conquest. I'm happy. [...] Now everything is in place and everyone is intimately happy with the resolution and everyone agrees. Very sustained difficulties such as Major route on Mont Blanc (shorter, however, as ascent), I'm happy to have been in the game too. "
“My impressions of the summit? Peace of mind, a bit of pride for being one of the 5 to tread a ground never touched before by human foot, full of affection for the 4 fellow adventurers with whom we exchanged a brotherly and truly felt and happy kiss . It was after 5 in the afternoon but without concern for the return, which was full of calm and wonderful when at 10 in the evening, the difficulties ended, on the glacier plateau the moon, or rather the half moon, suddenly appeared behind an ice spire to illuminate the white expanse swept by the usual wind with a pale light. A truly unforgettable return, dear to my heart as an enthusiast of the most beautiful spectacles of nature. "
On 27th January, the group leaves Punta Arenas for Rio Gallegos, then Buenos Aires where a press conference and reception are held at the Italian Embassy. Then they continue their flight to finally arrive at Milan Malpensa airport on the evening of 5th February, 1958.
In those years, however, the great extra-European playing field is concentrated on the great ranges of the Himalayas and Karakorum. In 1950, the first 8000er is conquered by the French, Annapurna (8091m). In 1953 it is the turn of Everest at 8848m (British expedition) and in 1954 the Italians climb K2 (8611m). By the end of 1957, 11 out of the 14 8000er have been conquered.
In 1958, the CAI decides to organize a second national expedition to Karakorum, after the one on K2. The initial goal is Gasherbrum I (8068m, also known as Hidden Peak, still virgin), but the difficulty of obtaining the permits, then given to the American expedition led by Clinch which will reach the summit on 5th July, leads to a revision of the objectives according to a new approach towards a technically very difficult but terribly fascinating mountain, Gasherbrum IV, 7925m high and known as the “shining wall” thanks to its huge west face that shines and dazzles when hit by the sun.
Unlike the expedition to K2, the one to Gasherbrum IV is not based on strict rules and a strong hierarchical dependence on the expedition leader, but on the mutual esteem and trust of the group of mountaineers. It includes Riccardo Cassin (expedition leader), Walter Bonatti, Carlo Mauri, Giuseppe De Francesch, Giuseppe Oberto, Donato Zeni (doctor), Fosco Maraini (orientalist, cameraman and photographer) and Toni who is appointed deputy expedition leader.
The group leaves on 30th April, 1958 from Genoa on the ship "Victoria". Morale is very high, in fact Toni writes in one of the first letters to Romilda "your husband is quite crazy, but this time he is happy to be so: so rest assured that the world is ours."
In Suez the ship stops for a couple of days and the group of mountaineers take advantage of it for a visit to Cairo and the pyramids. The ship arrives in Karachi on 12th May, and Toni uses the two weeks of sailing to study English and learn how to swim in the onboard pool. He writes in a letter dated 8th May “just today, with the last swims, I can say I know how to swim pretty well. Everyone compliments me because they tell me that very rare are those who at my age can learn and add that in any case they have never seen anyone, including children, learn in 5 days ".
From Karachi to Rawalpindi, then they fly to Skardu and then up to Askole (3050m), the last village before the mountains, where they arrive on 4th June. There they organize the transport to the base camp, hiring almost 500 porters, in the midst of a thousand logistical and operational difficulties. On 15th June, from the Concordia circus (point of confluence of the glaciers in the area), Toni writes: "Now we have entered the heart of our mountains, and their vision helps us to find the strength to reach the longed-for day when, after firing all the porters, we will find ourselves face to face with the summit for which we have come here. Tonight we slept right at the foot of the Baltoro side of the Gasherbrum [...] in front of us is K2, Broad Peak, the Muztagh Tower, a whole crown of famous peaks that I no longer hoped to see. "
The group arrives at Base Camp, and there the climbers begin to work on the mountain. On 22nd June they set up Camp I at 5600m, then on 25th June they set up Camp II at 6100m. Toni from Camp II writes, on 2nd July: "Just know that I am in great shape and that with Bonatti and Oberto I set up, chose the place, made the itinerary of the Base Camp (5150m) and of Camp I (5650m), II (6150m) and III (6450m). Then with Bonatti I almost completely climbed the serac that leads to the East Col, reaching almost 7000m and solving one of the most important problems of the climb. [...] In short, until now I have been the point man, together with Walter with whom the agreement is perfect and with whom I share tent, hopes, thoughts and efforts. "
On 6th July they set up Camp IV (6900m) and on 9th July it is the turn of Camp V at 7200m. On 10th July and 14th July Bonatti and Mauri are engaged in the first two summit attempts, without success, then bad weather arrives and they all have to fall back to Base Camp.
On July 22, Toni writes from Base Camp: "Morally I am in the most perfect balance. I know that the team that will have to reach the summit is that of Walter and Mauri and I am fully and intimately convinced that it is right for them to have this satisfaction; In the first 15 days of the expedition, I cherished the possibility of being the one to share the joy of conquest with Walter, but having recovered Mauri, I understood with tranquility and a sense of reality that if mine could be a possibility (at 44 and you must not force) his was a beautiful and good reality and I retired I would say without burning regret, but with … reasoned regret. I have to keep in mind "the margin" and I kept it in mind, especially physically. " Bonatti and Mauri were born in 1930, so they are both 16 years younger than Toni.
On 24th July, a second assault on the mountain starts. On 25th July Toni writes: “Before starting the new attack, because it has already started yesterday morning, according to an organizational plan prepared by me and accepted by all without any discussion, indeed with very full approval. […] Everyone will think that Bonatti and Mauri, as they will be supported by all of us in the various camps and ready to help them and push them up, will succeed. I personally wish it with all my heart for a thousand and a thousand reasons: if only because I gave up the ambition to get up there myself, in order to see the plan I prepared and that, at the table at least, does not seem to make a wrinkle. On the other hand, we are all now ... in the second stage of implementation of the expeditions: finish it off as long as 2 reach the top, whoever they are. "
On 3rd August Bonatti and Mauri, helped by Toni and De Francesch, set up a sixth camp at 7550m. Toni and De Francesch descend, while Bonatti and Mauri unsuccessfully attempt the summit on 4th August and then again on 6th August: at 12:30pm they are at the top, where the Italian and Pakistani flags fly. The summit is a success for the whole team and the result of joint work. In Toni's 13th August letter we read: “I do not hide from you that I am intimately proud of myself, that I have the unconditional gratitude and recognition of Walter and Mauri for what has been done for them, and the clear admiration of all the others. " Then on 17th August: “Thank God we (and I can well say“ we ”) reached the top, by now we were almost desperate and we seemed to be under a nightmare that became intolerable every day”.
On 13th August the group leaves from Base Camp, and arrives to Italy on 3rd September (this time by plane), more than 4 months after departure. The expedition to Gasherbrum 4 is a great prestigious success for Italy. Suffice it to say that the 1958 route has not yet been repeated, and to date the summit of the mountain has only been reached three more times: in 1986, in 1997, and in 1999.
This expedition will be Toni's last great mountaineering success, who in the following years will focus mainly on the work of the guide and the shop.
Thanks to his exploits and his relationships with colleagues, Toni joins the main world mountaineering groups of his time.
Since 1948 he is been a member of the French GHM (Groupe Haute Montagne), the fourth Italian after Emilio Comici, Agostino Cicogna and Giusto Gervasutti. The GHM was founded in 1919 with the aim of bringing together the elite of mountaineers who carry out important routes on the great walls in the world and in general to support high-level French and international mountaineering.
Since 1965 he is also been a member of the English Alpine Club, which, founded in 1857, was the first mountaineering club in the world. It has brought together the leading British mountaineers for each generation and now has members in more than 30 countries. He has published the Alpine Journal since 1863, which is the oldest mountaineering magazine in the world. Initially open only to mountaineers, only in 1965 was the regulation changed to allow access also to mountain guides. The first guide admitted is Gaston Rebuffat, and 6 months later Toni is the second one, thanks to the introductory letter of 19th September 1965, written by his friend Anthony Rawlinson (1926-1986), passionate mountaineer, member of the Alpine Club (of which will be president in 1986) and senior British government official in the ministry of treasury, industry, the International Monetary Fund and the British embassy in the US.
“It gives me great pleasure to propose Dott. Toni Gobbi for membership of this Alpine Club. […]. He became a porter in 1943, and a guide of Courmayeur in 1946. During the next fifteen years he was one of the most active and enterprising of the Courmayeur guides, specializing in such routes as the South Ridge of the Aiguille Noire, Grandes Jorasses Hirondelles Ridge, and the Innominata and Route Major and Peuterey Ridge of Mont Blanc. […] He is also proprietor of a shop in Courmayeur. Not only is this an admirable equipment shop, but his unfailing willingness to advise and help guideless climbers of all nationalities has made it a ground meeting place and club room. Many of us owe much to his help. […] He is one of the most valued friends I have made through climbing. On the ground I regard him as entirely suitable for membership of this club and I am particularly glad that the changes in the rules about guides makes it possible to propose him.
His keenness to join the Club springs, I know, from a general regard for the Club and all that it has stood for. […].”
In the 1950s and 1960s, Toni becomes a friend and regularly meets the greatest mountaineers of his time, from Gaston Rebuffat to Lionel Terray, from Cesare Maestri to Kurt Diemberger and Riccardo Cassin. “I remember the frequent dinners with great climbers. Above all Terray was very nice, Rebuffat too but less! " remembers his daughter Maria Barbara.
In the end, why do we go to the mountains? My grandfather gave the most complete answer in an interview released a few months before his death: “Every man has his own answer. As in love or friendship, each of us brings to the mountain what he has, he asks for what he lacks. In my memories as a mountaineer I could divide my companions into three or four major categories: there is the one who finds in the risk of the roped party the surrogate for the exploits of war (a type, fortunately, quite rare); then there are those who need to measure themselves against an obstacle, to see to what extent they are able to overcome external difficulties and fear in themselves; finally there is the mountaineer who in the mountains chases a mirage, escape, silence, purity and sincerity of relationships, the joy of physical effort, and that kind of exhilarating charge, of subtle drug that has the air at four thousand meters. Personally, I loved and looked for the mountains for all these reasons, and one more: the fear of growing old, of witnessing the decay of my body, as one sees the immaculate slope wasting away when the tourist hordes arrive. The mountain helps me stop my youth. "
Photos: Grivel archive.
Oliviero Gobbi. After a degree in physics and a master's in management, he worked for a few years as a strategic consultant in large multinationals before joining Grivel, his family business, of which he is now the owner and CEO. He loves all mountain activities, from mountaineering to ice climbing, from rock climbing to ski mountaineering, which he practices when he can. His favorite Grivel product is the one yet to be invented.
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Antonio, known by all as Toni, Gobbi was born on 18th June 1914 in Pavia, in the heart of the Po Valley.
Exactly ten days later, on June 28th, in Sarajevo (about 1000 km from Pavia), the Serbian nationalist student Gavrilo Princip shoots and kills the archduke and heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary Franz Ferdinand, effectively triggering the First War world: the world will never be the same again.
Antonio was born into an upper middle class family and is the eldest son of Gioachino Gobbi, a lawyer, and Pierina Oliva, a housewife, both from Emilia. The craft of the law is in the family tradition. The couple will have three other children: Rita (1916-2011), Giuseppe (1920-2005) and Marilena (born many years later, in 1931).
With his sister Marilena, now 91, Antonio develops a very strong bond that will last a lifetime. "One of my earliest childhood memories is on the strong shoulders of my big brother" remembers Marilena "It was a mid-August of many years ago. I still see the departure at 3 in the morning, with the whole family. I was little, Toni must have been 18 years old. I had his strong hands around my ankles and I felt proud and confident ”.
The trip her sister tells about was simple, a ritual for many people from Vicenza on the day of the Assumption: they all went up together to the top of Mount Summano, still dominated today by a large concrete cross. “I remember his rhythmic step, always the same,” says Marilena. “I remember the way he put the backpack on his back and then the recommendations: stay straight, don't put your hands on my head, I'll hold you. Toni was the one who understood me, and he always treated me like a daughter. I miss him, even today when I am now old and many, many years have passed."
When Antonio turns 8, the family moves to Vicenza. He is a very energetic kid and also an excellent student, in short, he is gifted both in school and outside of it. A friend remembers him playing alone, in the inner courtyard of his building, challenging imaginary friends and dribbling air opponents until he meets the goal mirror. With his hair tousled, he exudes energy and confidence in his solitude because, as he would have explained as an adult: “A man that is respected must soon learn to be alone. Maybe we need to start when we are young, if we don't want to end up in anonymity; and then look into the folds of our misery. Because in serious moments, when life depends on the strength and serenity of our solitude, only then can you evaluate it ".
It was precisely in those adolescent years that Antonio began to be called Toni, as often happens in Veneto. And Toni will be for the rest of his life. "Even the Great Saint of Padua, if born in our day, would call himself Toni!" he will tell friends.
In 1934 my grandfather graduates from the Tito Livio high school in Padua and, following in his father's footsteps, he enrolls in the faculty of law. It is in the 1930s that Toni begins to discover the mountains, which beyond a few walks and some summer holidays, is not in the tradition of the Gobbi family. The Vicenza of those years is a hotbed of mountaineers, and Toni begins attending the “Giovane Montagna” group, a Catholic-style association, thus discovering climbing, skiing and also mountain running.
The departure from home often takes place by bicycle, because those are, in the words of his friend, writer and mountaineer Gianni Pieropan, “the years of cycle-ski-mountaineering”. At the time it was actually an almost obligatory choice, because few own a car and without it just getting close to the mountains is a real adventure.
“Dad always worried when he left for the mountains. Our mother let him go and didn't say anything, but inside her she kept a storm of images capable of quieting down only when he returned,” remembers Marilena. “After all, how can you prevent a lover from pursuing his passion? It would be like locking him in a cage”. The Gobbi family soon realized that this would not be the right path.
Toni knows of the restlessness and fear in which he leaves his family when he goes to the mountains. "I jump out of bed and open the window," he writes in a story dating back to June 1932. "On the horizon I notice an imperceptible strip of morning light. I go out, get on my bike and take a last look at the house. As I go towards the gate, I hear a window open, it is my mother who got up to see me leave, trying not to be seen. She doesn't want me to understand her concern for her. Now, in the dark, she will draw a sign of the cross to bless me and pray to the lord that nothing serious happens to me. I would like to go back to her, throw myself into her arms and kiss her. Tell her all the good I want her and apologize if I make her feel anxious. I would stop if she asked me in her dear voice. I take another look at the increasingly clear and distinct mountains, attracted by their irresistible charm, I pedal at breakneck speed towards happiness ”.
At the end of the 1930s, after years of activity with friends from Vicenza, Toni's approach to mountaineering evolves into a more individualistic dimension, with the aim of raising his technical level and maybe even making it a profession.
It is the twentieth century with its intense history that gets in the way of his projects.
After graduation, having ended the postponements granted for study reasons, Toni is called to arms and on August 31st, 1939 he enters the School of Officials of Bassano del Grappa, infantry weapon, alpine specialties. The next day, September 1st, Germany invades Poland, triggering the Second World War.
On April 18th, 1940 my grandfather is assigned to the Military School of Mountaineering in Aosta, with the rank of second lieutenant, as a mountaineering instructor. On 10th June 1940, Benito Mussolini announces Italy’s entry into the war. The next day Toni is mobilized at the "Mont Blanc" Battalion with the aim of defending the borders. On August 31st, the mobilization ceases, and he returns to the school. In those years Toni's activity is divided between the military profession (he is promoted to lieutenant in 1942), mountaineering (very intense activity in 1942 and 1943) and the search for a way to follow up on university studies (in November 1940 he begins the notary practice at the office of the Ollietti notary in Aosta).
The great peaks of the Western Alps fascinate Toni, but it is a beautiful blonde girl who conquers him.
Romilda Bertholier, seven years younger than him, is an elementary school teacher, enrolled at the University of Turin, faculty of Letters. The mountain is in the family tradition: Romilda is the daughter of a mountain guide (Prospero Bertholier, 1887-1976) and the sister of Elvira who is married to the Courmayeur guide François Thomasset. In addition, Prospero and his wife manage the Pavillon refuge, an important crossing point for mountaineers heading to Mont Blanc in the 1920s and 1930s. The Mont Blanc cable car (now Skyway Monte Bianco), of which the Pavillon is the intermediate stop, will only be inaugurated in 1947.
On 8th September 1943, once again fate got in the way, with the radio announcement of Marshal Pietro Badoglio. “The Italian government, having recognized the impossibility of continuing the unequal fight against the overwhelming opposing power, in order to spare the nation from further and more serious disasters, has requested an armistice from General Eisenhower, commander-in-chief of the Anglo-American allied forces. The request was accepted. Consequently, any act of hostility against the Anglo-American forces must cease by the Italian forces everywhere. However, they will react to any attacks from any other source ”.
With the armistice, almost everyone is looking for a way to return to their previous life, but not Toni. He chooses to remain at the foot of Mont Blanc and to marry Romilda on October 18th, 1943.
They will live a sweet and intense love story for a lifetime, as many letters testify. The union is cemented by the mountain, a great passion of both. Two children were born from their union: Gioachino in 1945 and Maria Barbara in 1949.
These are difficult years, but Toni has everything he needs to feel good: mountains, love and understanding. He begins to think that Courmayeur could become his final home. The village is full of displaced people and jobs have to be invented. Toni and Romilda try to invent themselves as teachers of a home high school. He teaches Latin, Greek and Italian; she teaches French and philosophy.
In November 1943 my grandfather Toni enrolls again at the University of Padua, Faculty of Letters, aiming for a second degree that he will not achieve but which testifies to a passion. Her sister Marilena still remembers Julius Caesar's "De Bello Gallico", which Toni had made her learn by heart! Toni will love writing all his life, and in 1950 he will even win a Saint Vincent prize for journalism.
My grandfather is in fact a sophisticated city man who embraces the cause of the mountains and represents the point of contact between these two worlds, an unusual position for the time. “He was a man of great physical and psychological strength, of weight, of culture. He had a statuesque face, a pronounced jaw and sharp features, but I remember the wonderful smile that exploded in this face cut in stone. You could feel his urban origin: when he put on a jacket, the jacket suited him! And he had an important, qualified speech ”: this is how he relives in the words of Giacomo Bozzi, son of Irene Bozzi, who was one of Toni's main customers and a friend of him.
Another friend recalls: “Even with the hard edges of a strong and proud character, he was allowed to exercise an undisputed superiority on a technical and human level; it was almost impossible to escape the charm and influence that emanated from his person and not be partially subjugated by it. You could perhaps not share some of his uncompromising opinions, but you could not ignore his inimitable consistency and the seriousness that he manifested in the principles."
He often knew how to exert his influence even with just his eyes. He had light gray eyes that could become cold as ice and freeze the interlocutor: "He inspired fear but also protection. You had to do what he said, but you knew he would take care of you,” his daughter remembers. This human side also lives on in the words of his sister Marilena: “The kindness he had with me ... his eyes when they looked at me gently, they caressed me”.
Then, when it was party time, he knew how to let himself go and loved to sing, especially the mountain songs during the mountain guides' parties. In the car, then, he let himself go too much, and that's where he gave his family the greatest worries. He had learned to drive late and often had excessively fast, jittery and jerky driving!
Returning to his relationship with the world of the mountains, his path is marked even before the war is over. Toni becomes a porter in 1943 and a mountain guide in 1946. In 1948 he becomes ski teacher and mountain guide instructor.
Joining the Courmayeur Mountain Guides Association, which was founded in 1850 and is the first in Italy and the second in the world (after that of Chamonix), is more difficult than expected because the regulation requires you to be native of Courmayeur or to be owner of real estate in the village. The problem is solved with the help of his father-in-law Prospero who will give him some land.
The citizen is so well integrated that in 1950 the Association, for the celebrations of its 100th anniversary, asks Toni to deliver the speech of thanks to his colleagues.
This result is by no means taken for granted, because in the 1940s Courmayeur was still a small mountain village at the bottom of a closed valley (the Mont Blanc tunnel will open only in 1965). In a context traditionally hostile to "foreigners", Toni manages to be accepted and appreciated thanks to a respectful and delicate approach. He will later write in a letter to a friend: “Always remember that in a mountain village where you intend to settle you must always, absolutely, consider yourself as a guest; and therefore behave like a guest in someone else's house. The hosts will, at a certain moment, consider you one of them, if you have shown that you are truly worth, that you have the right respect for traditions and the right passion for the mountains. It is also useless ... to tell and magnify what you have already done; they judge justly what you do, what you did, what you will do; and all this must be done with the head even before with the technique, with the due caution-even before with exasperated courage, with the due safety even before the understandable risk ".
Ruggero Pellin, mountain guide and former President of the Courmayeur Guide Association recalls: “He came from a city and not a peasant background. He showed up in Courmayeur at a time when, during and after the war, everyone had low ears. He had the intelligence not to force our world with his presence, but at the same time he brought a breath of fresh air, with education. He knew how to stay in our environment by making himself respected. He understood that Courmayeur could offer unique opportunities, and he was able to seize them, both in mountaineering and in commerce. "
In fact, in 1948 he opened the "Alpinist and Skier's Workshop", with the "Alps bookstore" attached (probably the first bookshop dedicated to mountain literature). The Gobbi shop will become an institution throughout the Alps and a natural reference point for all mountaineers passing through Courmayeur, both for the variety and selection of products, and, above all, for the presence of Toni himself and for the possibility of discuss with him and get his advice.
Photos: Grivel archive.
Oliviero Gobbi. After a degree in physics and a master's in management, he worked for a few years as a strategic consultant in large multinationals before joining Grivel, his family business, of which he is now the owner and CEO. He loves all mountain activities, from mountaineering to ice climbing, from rock climbing to ski mountaineering, which he practices when he can. His favorite Grivel product is the one yet to be invented.
Contributors to the writing of the article: Gianluca Gasca, Marina Morpurgo, Margherita Calabi.
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