Ciao Ermanno Salvaterra, the great dreamer

For everyone, and forever, he will be remembered as the man of the Tower. As the Patagonian climber par excellence. This is true, for Ermanno Salvaterra is indeed one of those who shaped the history of mountaineering in Patagonia. He really is a legend of those mountains at the end of the world. Yet "Èrman" was also one of those who couldn't be defined easily, who shunned being labelled. He simply lived too many lives. Experienced too much, too out of the ordinary, during the intense and irrepressible 68 years of his life.

He was a great mountaineer (at times even solo). A ski instructor. An extreme skier. Mountain guide. Hut warden of XII Apostoli, the rifugio run by his family and where he spent his childhood growing up. He was a record holder, between 1988 and 1993, of the speed skiing Flying Kilometer - at 211,640 km/h a feat of sheer madness if you think of it. He directed 11 (award-winning) films which documented his undertakings. And he also put pen to paper; his last book "Patagonia il grande sogno", the big dream, dates back to 2021. His home was the Brenta Dolomites, so much so that Bruno Detassis, the legendary hut warden of Rifugio Brentei and acclaimed gatekeeper of this corner of the world, had porclaimed Salvaterra his natural heir. He certainly loved these mountains deeply. His entire life spent there, and the routes he established on these walls, are testament to this endearment.

However for Ermanno, by nature a restless and curious soul, they could not suffice. He searched for other spaces, other horizons. He needed to go beyond, even further still, and this quest for the unknown led him to Patagonia. And Cerro Torre with its sisters - as he called Torre Egger, Punta Herron and Standhardt - enraptured him forever. For him they represented the most beautiful mountains in the world. Wild and impossible. Shaped by that terrible weather and those exceedingly violent winds which forced him to endure indescribable storms. But this is precisely what he had been looking for. Little did it matter if this didn't reconcile with his character and his endless desire to climb, always and whenever. Patagonia was where his soul took flight.

It all started in 1981, with an attempt on Cesare Maestri's Compressor Route. The following year, climbing with Maurizio Giarolli, he reached the summit of Cerro Torre, once again via the SE Ridge. He then climbed Fitz Roy, Aguja Guillaumet and Aguja Poicenot with Giarolli and Elio Orlandi. In 1985 his masterpiece: the first winter ascent of Cerro Torre. With Paolo Caruso, Maurizio Giarolli and Andrea Sarchi, the four musketeers of Cerro Torre as they came to be known, he endured an epic 11 bivouacs on the wall prior to success. This was extraordinary team and even more extraordinary feat, carried out in an era when those mountains were genuinely remote and, quite simply, at the end of the world.

Salvaterra's love affair with Patagonia never ended. He established five new routes on Cerro Torre with various climbing partners. Infinito Sud in 1995 with Roberto Manni and Piergiorgio Vidi. In 1999, with Mauro Mabboni, he added a variant to the Compressor route. In 2004, with Alessandro Beltrami and Giacomo Rossetti, he made the first ascent of Quinque anni ad paradisum on the mountain's east face. And in 2005 he teamed up with Rolando Garibotti and Alessandro Beltrami to climb the north face via their El arca del los Vientos.

Salvaterra's infinite experience spanned, as a leading figure, forty years of Patagonian mountaineering history. An eternity. Four decades during which everything has changed, even those mountains themselves. Ermanno, for his part, never lost any of his tenacity, any of his proverbial stubbornness and his desire to fight to the bitter end that distinguished him from the rest. For all these reasons he may have appeared to be tough. Nothing further from the truth: Ermanno was extremely sensitive and a loyal friend like few others.

This year he wanted to return to "his" Patagonia, and he was on the lookout for a climbing partner. We don't know if he ever found one. Yesterday, on a hot day in the middle of August, Ermanno left us for good. He was climbing in his backyard mountains, on Campanile Alto di Brenta, when he fell close to the top of the Hartmann-Krauss route. It all seems so unreal, but it's true. His mountaineering will be missed but, above all, we will all miss him. Our thoughts are with his loved ones.

by Vinicio Stefanello

Kay Rush encounters Ermanno Salvaterra
Video by Vinicio Stefanello (Planetmountain.com) & Francesco Mansutti (Studio Due) for the Trento Film Festival 2008.

Video created for the WebTV section of the Trento Film Festival.