Mountaineering, eight women conquer K2: the all-female expedition celebrates the “Italian mountain” 70 years after the 1954 victory

Eight women conquering the “Italian mountain”. Exactly 70 years after the first ascent of K2, 31 July 1954thanks to Lacedelli-Compagnoni and Walter Bonatti, one all-female Italian-Pakistani expedition at the end of July he will attempt to reach the top of the second highest peak in the world at 8,611 metres. In an adventure called K2-70, organized by the CAI that will see Agostino Da Polenza expedition leader, like Ardito Desio in 1954. Who will have one of the strongest mountaineers active today as Samina Baig, first Pakistani woman to conquer K2 in 2022 but also Everest and the Seven Summits. And on which Daniela Santanché, Minister of Tourism who spoke at the presentation today in Milan, also overwrites a nationalist message: “In 1954 it was a great global victory for Italy. The whole world talked about it. Now this mission will become a symbol of how important it is to liberate Pakistani women. And all of you will be part of our nation’s pride when you fly that flag.”

Among them, the eight mountaineers leaving for the Himalayas, rather Nadeema Sahar recalls that “climbing K2 is the dream of every Pakistani mountaineer. We women can do anything”. Anna Torretta adds that “we have been preparing for months and it is a great emotion to participate in such an inclusive project”. And Federica Mingolla sums up for everyone that the expedition will also and above all be “a lot of effort” given that up there it is the kingdom of thin air. Not that women have yet to demonstrate equal ability and equal dignity in mountaineering. Not even on K2, third in the tragic ranking made on the attempt-death ratio, much more difficult than Everest which sees every year hundreds of participants in commercial expeditions in single file under the Hillary Step, thanks to oxygen and Sherpas. Almost forty years have now passed since 1986 when K2 was climbed for the first time by the legendary Wanda RutkiewiczPolish, reached the top only half an hour before the French Liliane Barrardwho tragically disappeared in a blizzard as it descended, in that terrible summer where the curse of K2 affected thirteen mountaineers.

The “female problem” from a world that has been chauvinistic for too long like Western mountaineering has been “solved” some time ago. But in a country like Pakistan, even more than in neighboring Nepal, “the environment is not easy for women. There is great cultural resistance”, to quote Agostino da Polenza. Hence the idea of ​​the all-female expedition. And if on K2 “the weather is king”, the weather will be (has always been) the number one difficulty, also because the terrible passage of the “Bottleneck” was simplified with the collapse of the great serac. It is not yet clear whether the expedition will attempt using supplementary oxygen or not.

Samina Baig did not use it in 2022, who today sees the women’s expedition as a new signal “of the strong relationship between Pakistan and Italy”. And then there is Cristina Piolini who climbed the first eight-thousander, Shisha Pangma, in 2005. They alone already have an eight-thousander behind them among the eight women of the expedition, and this could be a point of weakness. But Baig and Piolini also guarantee a couple capable of reaching the top. The attempt is scheduled between July 23 and 26, the ideal window on K2.

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“K2 is also my mountain,” says Agostino Da Polenza who reached the summit in 1983. He has since led several expeditions here and has a profound knowledge of Pakistan, where he has long been involved in cooperation. He says his “masters are Ardito Desio and Walter Bonatti”that is, the two names who were not only there in 1954, the first as expedition leader and the second committed to giving the first proof of the legend he would become, but who also remained forever involved in the storm that K2 was for the Italians after the conquest of 1954. With that infinite wait to re-establish the truth about the contribution that Bonatti gave to the success of the national undertaking which the CAI admitted only decades later.

In that crossroads of destinies, poisons and legends that is always world mountaineering, today is therefore the time of women. Their names are the Italian Cristina Piolini, Silvia Loreggian, Federica Mingolla, Anna Torretta, and the Pakistani Samina Baig, Nadeem Sahar, Samana Rahim, Amina Bano. Da Polenza, who worked with Desio on the Pyramid project in the Everest valley, is also Bonatti’s second cousin. And the CAI is still there today as in 1954. The President Antonio Montanhe says that “a year ago we said to ourselves with Da Polenza: what are we doing for the 70th? We have to do something new. In a field wrongly considered masculine, we thought about women. Which are an excellence in this sector. And if K2 is the mountain of the Italians, we must also do social activities in Pakistan: mountaineering can also be a form of economic emancipation for Pakistani women.”