He transformed his love for the mountains, his ability to do feats that were almost impossible as if they were normal everyday life, into a commitment to save the planet from the devastation to which man subjects it.
The American Tommy Cadwell, one of the greatest climbers in the world, thus opened the Cuneo Montagna Festival, which continues with many events until Sunday 19 May, Tuesday evening in a Sports Hall in San Rocco Castagnaretta, among 1,600 enthusiasts who flocked to hear his exploits but also what a man who has climbed the most difficult and smooth walls in the world has to say.
And there are essentially three messages to grasp: doing the things that make us feel good; nothing is impossible; and let’s help this planet of ours that we have made sick.
He does it in a calm manner, with words, some images, and with a convincing style because it is that of the anti-star par excellence. Cadwell has done things that no one has ever done, but he tells them without any fuss, without seeking applause and making them seem within everyone’s reach. Whether it’s the mountains of Yosemite, in California and that legendary “El Capitan”, whether it’s the impossible wall Dawn Hall on which he spent 19 days waiting for his friend Kevin Jorgesen to heal from a wound on his hand, at The Nose, or both the trip to Alaska with Alex Honnold, to save the Tongass forest, done without consuming fossil fuels and therefore pedaling thousands of miles for two months between Colorado, Wisconsin, British Columbia, then on a sailing boat before arriving in Alaska in the Devilstone chain, the well-known and feared “Devil’s Rock”, climbed like all the peaks of the surrounding massif.
And the message is clear by doing what one is capable of doing, like him the most incredible mountaineering feats, we can send messages and take concrete actions so that the environment is protected, so that the planet is not completely devastated, so that the mountains remain a unique place with glaciers, forests at the foot, rivers and lakes.
“Let’s change politics, let’s say things must change. And if they don’t listen to us, let’s keep fighting” the final message to an audience standing and applauding.
Tommy Caldwell began his Italian days on Monday at the National Mountain Museum in Turin which he wanted to visit and to which he donated his TC shoes, used on the legendary Dawn Wall which become an integral part of the collection of climbing materials of the Capuchin Museum . Then in Cuneo on Tuesday morning he wanted to climb the Andonno crag in the Gesso valley for three hours, before being present at the inauguration of the Festival which took place in the Hall of Honor of the Town Hall.
