Mountain Clients

Cesare Maestri (senior UIAGM guide), the controversial Italian mountaineer, has failed to climb the Himalayan peak, Shisha Pangma (November 2002). Maestri is controversial because he a) claimed to have climbed, made the first ascent of, the Patagonian peak, Cerro Torre in 1959 (no trace of his supposed ascent, above a certain point – not even the bolts he supposedly placed with a hand chisle – could be found later by other climbers) and b) for returning to attempt the mountain again in 1971 with the aid of a petrol driven compressor and 400 expansion bolts (hardly climbing in the same manner as his claimed first ascent of the mountain).

In this second (failed) attempt, Maestri placed in exess of 300 bolts leaving the compressor, hanging at his high point some way below the actual summit. His controversial activities on Cerro Torre were documented in the film: ‘The Rape of a Mountain’, by Leo Dickinson. One will never know exactly the cause of Toni Egger’s fall; death.

It is probable that Maestri’s disgraceful actions, the bolting extraviganza on Cerro Torre, were responsible for the proliferation of expansion bolts against the wishes of the vast majority of climbers, in the world’s mountain’s today.