Authors: Oliviero Gobbi, Gian Luca Gasca
Publisher: Rizzoli
Series: Passioni
Language: Italian
Price: €35.00
Pages: 240
Format: 18.5 × 25.5 cm
Binding: Hardcover
Release date: October 7, 2025
A mountaineer born in the city and a lifelong lover of the mountains, who dedicated his life to knowing them and helping others to know them. This illustrated volume offers a vivid and personal portrait of Toni Gobbi, a central figure in 20th-century Italian alpinism, reconstructed by his grandson Oliviero through words, family memories, and vintage photographs.
It is not only the story of a great climber, but also a fresco of post-war Italy — marked by a desire for rebirth, the economic boom, and dreams that reached upward, toward the summits. Born in 1914 and a graduate in Law, Toni chose to abandon a career as a lawyer to follow his true calling: the mountains. In Courmayeur he became a mountain guide, then ski instructor and guide trainer, earning respect and admiration in a demanding, closed world.
A quiet innovator and a forerunner of modern ski mountaineering, he reinvented the way of living and working in the mountains, transforming the guiding profession into a year-round vocation. Among his most famous achievements were several winter first ascents on Mont Blanc — including the Major Route, the first ascent of the Grand Pilier d’Angle with Walter Bonatti, and the 1958 expedition to Gasherbrum IV.
But his deepest legacy was his vision: “He was able to fuse the ancient craft of mountain guiding with modern marketing.” A charismatic, enterprising, and determined master, who still speaks to us today through the silences of memory and the steady step of one who knows where he is going.
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