Courmayeur Feeling Mountain

Friday 13 December:
Matteo Della Bordella, Italian mountaineer and climber

Matteo Della Bordella will be in Courmayeur on 13 December to present his new film Odyssea Borealis: four solitary figures kayak across the icy waters of eastern Greenland. They are mountaineers, explorers, but above all they are modern Ulysses in search not of a geographical homeland, but of a return to the origins of human exploration. Their Odyssea Borealis takes them 300 kilometres along a wild and inhospitable coastline, before they attempt the ascent of the inviolate north-west face of Drøneren, which rises 1,200 metres into the Arctic sky.

But why undertake such an arduous and dangerous journey? The answer lies in that primordial instinct that has always driven mankind to explore, to push the boundaries of the known. These four adventurers do not seek conquest, but the purity of experience. Like Ulysses, who faced monsters and storms armed only with his wits, they rely on their own strength, cunning and determination to overcome the obstacles that nature places in their path.

These ‘contemporary Ulysses’ do not return to Ithaca, but to an idea: the very essence of adventure. Stripped of modern conveniences, they immerse themselves in a world where curiosity is the compass and discovery is the true reward. They do not seek to conquer nature, but to understand it, to merge with it, to rediscover that primordial bond that modern man is in danger of losing.

Friday 28 March:
Marco Camandona, mountain guide from Valle d’Aosta

The protagonist of the second event, on 28 March, will be Marco Camandona, a mountain guide from Valle d’Aosta who recently completed the ascent of all fourteen of the world’s 8000 metre peaks on Gasherbrum 1, in Pakistan; at the Courmayeur Cinema, he will recount his exploits and his love of the mountains through images and films.

He has never used supplementary oxygen for his ascents. He is the 20th climber without oxygen to succeed in this feat.

Camandona reached the summit of Gasherbrum 1 together with his brother-in-law Dante Luboz; Abele Blanc, with whom Camandona started climbing eight-thousanders, was also part of the expedition. In 1996, the first attempt to climb Manaslu was made complicated by suddenly changing weather conditions; two years later, the mountaineer tried again, and from there, the achievement of all 14 summits: Camandona first flew the red Aosta Valley flag in 1998 on Cho Oyu (8,210 m) and Shisha Pangma (8. 048 m), which took the form of a speed ascent within a few days of each other; then in 2000 on K2 (8,611 m); in 2006 on Annapurna (8,091 m); in 2010 on Everest (8. 848 m); in 2014 on Kangchenjunga (8,586 m); in 2016 on Makalu (8,463 m); in 2018 on Lhotse (8,516 m); in 2019 on Manaslu (8,163 m); in 2021 on Dhaulagiri (8,067 m); in 2022 on Nanga Parbat (8126 m) and Broad Peak (8047 m).