MILAN (ITALPRESS) – “I always liked hard work, even as a child. The easy route never appealed to me. That’s the way it’s been my whole life, I would say at least until K2 in the winter of 2020/2021, which gave me a certain bent. When you have that passion inside and you are so in love with something then you don’t feel the fatigue, you don’t feel like being home and you don’t want to be anywhere else but there climbing the most complicated peaks.” Interviewed by Marco Klinger, for Medicina Top, a TV format of the Italpress news agency, Tamara Lunger, one of Italy’s most famous mountaineers, spoke about her experience on the world’s highest peaks, amid great satisfactions and pains that marked her. Among her greatest achievements was climbing K2 without oxygen in 2014, but what happened about three years ago, also on K2, when five fellow climbers died, still remains impressed. Precisely in memory of one of them, JP Mohr, a solidarity project was born, ‘Climbing for a reason,’ which aims to teach Pakistani children in the Shigar Valley how to climb, with the purpose of making them have fun and at the same time to ensure a future for these young people starting from the morphological resources of their own land. Not only that, because starting from this trauma Tamara wrote a book, ‘The Call of K2′, in which she talked about the suffering and scars in her soul left by the dramatic ending of that expedition: ‘I already knew it could be the most difficult for me, then we lost five people: one died in my arms and with another I had a very strong connection – she confessed – It destroyed me, it was a big slap in the face and for the first year I didn’t want to know anything more about the mountain, then I didn’t know what goal to pursue to try to get out of this period. At that point I thought the only thing to do was to wait, and slowly something changed in me every week and I felt different. It’s been an intense journey.” Returning to her accomplishments and mountaineering career, Lunger recalled how the team is crucial: “Lately I’ve needed to be alone so much, but until K2 in the winter I was often around Simone Moro and we were a great team, we didn’t need to talk. I had several climbing partners, it’s more intense than a marriage, it’s tiring,” she explained, “If one person does something that bothers you, after two weeks you can’t take it anymore and after four you want to go home. It’s crucial to be on the same wavelength.” The conquest of peaks higher than 8,000 meters is one of the most emblematic and adventurous challenges in the history of mountaineering. These 14 mountains, all located in the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges, represent the extreme limit of human exploration. Here the lack of oxygen, freezing temperatures and dangers such as avalanches and crevasses test mountaineers’ physical and mental endurance. “Now I changed my life, I was given a major brake by what happened on K2 in the winter and I had to understand who I was,” he recalled. “I had doubts and questions about my life, it was the most difficult period. I was constantly afraid of dying, it was so painful for me. I had never been afraid before. From there on, always being afraid, I even thought that even walking on the sidewalk a crazy person could run me over. After this tragedy, I felt like I was imprisoned by these thoughts. And I decided to free myself from all that,” she recounted, “I know I could not be the Tamara I used to be, but I could not stay like that either. I signed up for paragliding competitions, so I made a path, I felt like a child again, and I recovered. We have to face our fears.” Recently Tamara was in Albania, on one of her many trips to discover different territories: “Every year I take a trip with my camper to see another country. There I did biking, paragliding, some canoeing, and rock climbing. At first I was worried, but instead I met simple people who no longer exist in Italy, and I fell in love with this place. I didn’t understand the language, but it was the eyes and the smile that spoke,” she concluded, “Sometimes I cried with happiness, I felt so grateful….
– photo taken from Top Medicine video -(ITALPRESS).
