K2, il nodo infinito

K2. The story, the experience of this book hinges on the wonderful and terrible mountain, the dream-mountain, the mountain above the mountain, similar to an immense crystal whose dazzling and mysterious regularity it evokes. Events are reflected in their infinite angles on the faces of this crystal: the K2 of the beginning; the thoughts and plans of Hermann Buhl who, in his presence, shortly before climbing Broad Peak and dying on Chogolisa in 1957, discussed the famous "Western Alps" style with the then twenty-five-year-old Kurt Diemberger; the immense northern edge that rises towards the sky like an infinite line; the words of Shipton, one of the first Western explorers to come to him, which enchanted Diemberger and enveloped him in an invincible magic; the attempt along this edge, life at his feet in one of the most remote corners of Sinkiang – where he returns, full of experience and pain, but also of love, in the last pages of the book. At the same time, the human relationship with friends is outlined, with Julie Tullis, the partner with whom, a few years ago, he founded the highest filmteam of the world and his relationship of solidarity with her. Finally, the tragic summer of 1986. Kurt and Julie found a real "village" at the base of the mountain, where the most varied personalities of mountaineering met, Maurice and Liliane Barrard, Benoît Chamoux, Michel Parmentier, Alan Rouse, Renato Casarotto, Agostino from Polenza, Gianni Calcagno, Tadeusz Piotrowski, Jerzy Kukuczka, Wanda Rutkiewicz and many others, as if they had made an important appointment. A tragic appointment: hopes, some successes, the first tragedies, a chain that seems endless and that assimilates the mountain to Russian roulette. The climb, by those who don't want to give up the last chance, the problems of many independent teams at high altitude, the dream of the summit becoming reality. Finally the storm, the shocking drama at 8000 metres, with no more food or gas - therefore no water - prisoners for five days in small tents, Julie "falls asleep" forever, then, little by little, her companions die too. The three survivors, on the verge of collapse, begin a terrifying descent into the blizzard, under the constant danger of avalanches, then onto the Abruzzi spur covered in verglas. Only two reach the base of the mountain alive. In the unspeakable effort of the descent, in an almost hallucinatory state, Diemberger feels that he is part of a whole, a sort of "perpetual motion", of an "infinite knot" that binds him to the harmony of the cosmos and that leads him to salvation - Is it Julie? He comes to ask himself - in any case something extra human, which directs him into a situation that no longer has anything human about it.