Danilo Galante

Biography

Danilo Galante, born December 28, 1953, and died May 4, 1975, was an Italian mountaineer and climber from the Piedmont valleys, closely associated with the "Nuovo Mattino" generation. "Nuovo Mattino," the "new dawn" of mountaineering, revolutionized climbing in the 1970s around Turin, in the Susa Valley, and the surrounding valleys. It was a movement of young climbers who favored free climbing on rock, the search for new lines, and a more playful and creative relationship with the mountain, seeking out challenges without necessarily aiming for the summit. This relationship, above all, fostered a deeper connection with the mountain, breaking with the more conquering, traditional style of mountaineering. In the accounts of his contemporaries, Galante emerges as one of the most inspired and promising figures of this revolution, a prominent member of the movement despite his very short life. On May 3, 1975, Danilo Galante, roped to Gian Carlo Grassi, set off up the face of the Grand Manti, in the Chartreuse massif above Grenoble, on the famous Yannick Seigneur route. Light and passionate, they climbed in jeans and t-shirts, their hair held back by headbands. Danilo was wearing his first Pierre Allain climbing shoes; intoxicated by the vertigo, he felt as if he were flying. But suddenly, on that spring day, a cold and violent storm broke. The ascent became difficult, and the descent was worse than the climb. Frozen and soaked, the two friends climbed the last eighty meters of the ramp and emerged onto a Siberian landscape. "This is quite the training for Mont Blanc!" exclaimed Galante, shivering with cold. The mountain is white above 800 meters, on the Chartreuse ridge, there's half a meter of fresh snow, and it's impossible to find the descent route. All that's left is to bivouac under the stars, soaked to the bone, without down jackets, without anything. Anyone who falls asleep is lost. So they talk, trembling, battling the wind, until Danilo begins to lose feeling in his fingers. After a few hours, he stops talking, and at the first light of May 4, 1975, Grassi realizes he's holding an exhausted body. He shakes him to help him up, but after a few steps, Danilo collapses in the snow. Gian Carlo runs to find help, until he finds someone on the plateau. The rescuers rush towards the summit and find Danilo Galante frozen to death. His untimely death, at the height of those tumultuous years in climbing, a "vol spezzato," a broken flight, which abruptly ended this exceptional early career, has contributed to making him an almost legendary figure in the memory of Piedmontese climbers, evoked in current accounts and tributes. His memory remains alive, notably through the film "Cannabis Rock" (2005) by Franco Fornaris, presented as an explicit homage to Danilo Galante, where he is portrayed as one of the central protagonists of the Piedmontese climbing revolution of the 1970s, whose philosophy continues to resonate with current generations of climbers.