Ignazio Piussi

Ignazio Piussi, born on April 22, 1935, in Pezzeit in the Val Raccolana, Italy, is one of the great Italian mountaineers of the 1950-1970 generation. The youngest of ten children in a family where his grandfather Giuseppe and uncle Osvaldo were already local guides and mountaineers, he grew up surrounded by the mountains, working from a very young age on the family farm. Blessed with a powerful physique, he initially pursued competitive sports, practicing ski jumping and cross-country skiing with excellent results, then biathlon and even bobsleigh, before a serious shoulder dislocation in 1954 in Cortina ended this career and definitively led him to mountaineering. His first serious ascents took place while still a teenager with Lorenzo Bulfon and the Perissutti brothers in the Julian Alps, his natural playground. In the 1950s and 1960s, Piussi established himself as a top-tier climber, renowned for his strength, endurance, and economical use of pitons. He established landmark routes on the faces of Jóf Fuart, Cima Veunza, and, above all, Torre Trieste, considered his true masterpiece. After his military service in the mountain artillery, he worked as a lumberjack while continuing to open difficult routes and complete solo ascents, such as the Deye-Peters route on Torre Madre dei Camosci. Outside his native Friuli, he also proved formidable in aid climbing, distinguishing himself particularly in the Dolomites and on major alpine faces. Piussi's ambitions extended beyond the Alps: he participated in the first Italian expedition to Antarctica in the late 1960s, and then in the major 1975 expedition to Lhotse, led by Riccardo Cassin, alongside Reinhold Messner, among others. Messner would later say that Piussi was the strongest mountaineer of the 1960s, highlighting both his exceptional power and his rock-climbing prowess. Obsessed with the Eiger's north face, he attempted the famous Nordwand thirteen times, always thwarted by atrocious weather conditions, which…

Known for

Acting

Born

1935-04-22 · Pezzeit, Val Raccolana, Italia

Died

2008-06-11