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"The most difficult exploration, but also the most rewarding, remains always the exploration of oneself."

- Alfonso Vinci, Notes from the log-books of the Shiriana Expedition, 1954

Alfonso Vinci (Dazio (SO), Italy, December 1, 1915 – Rome, April 12, 1992) was an Italian mountaineer, explorer, partisan, geologist and author.

He climbed many new routes in the Alps, the most notable were the north-west face of the Mount Agner in the Dolomites and the Spigolo Vinci at Mount Cengalo, both in summer 1939 just before the outbreak of World War II. Thanks to his mountaineering experience he could give an important contribution to the partisan struggle in Valtellina: as commander he kept contacts with allied headquarters abroad and helped many partisans to save their life reaching Switzerland across Valtellina mountain passes in winter 1944-45. After the war he emigrated to South America and began to explore the Orinoco region, climbing the Auyán-tepui with the explorer Fèlix Cardona in 1949 and discovering one of the richest diamond mine of Venezuela. He then returned to mountaineering, with the first ascent of the North face of Pico Bolívar in 1950, Cerro Quilindaña in 1952 and many other peaks in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, with the Panandina Expedition. But his name is mostly reknown for his two expeditions named Shiriana and Guayca (1953-55) in unexplored territories across the watershed between the river Orinoco in Venezuela and Branco River in Brasil, where he was captured and lived with one of the most isolated Yanomami tribe, the Samatari, who had never had any contact with the white man before. He authored many books about his adventures. He died in Rome aged 76.

Biography
He was born in an Alpine village in Valtellina, Northern Italy, from a sicilian father who involved the whole family in making and selling fireworks. As a boy, he showed a strong spirit of adventure and a natural inclination for study. He was a keen reader of Salgari's books, whose adventures he re-lived in his boyish games around the lanes of Como, where the family had moved after a fire destroyed the factory. After two years he left high school for assembling radio sets in a factory. Two years later, working by day and studying by night, he made up three years in one and achieved graduation in Classical studies, which gave him access to University. He studied Philosophy in Milan, ending with a thesis on Friedrich Nietzsche. He then undertook Natural Science studies, gaining in 1940 a degree majoring in Geology. As he used to say: “First the bread for the soul, then that for the teeth“.

Mountaineering and the war
During the University years he followed a course on mountain climbing and had very intense mountaineering activity. In the Grigna mountains, in the Italian Prealps, he had the chance to learn climbing from Riccardo Cassin, who said of him that he had determination and an uncommon physical strength. In 1934 Alfonso Vinci was already a rope team leader and repeated with his companions many difficult rock ascents in Val Masino (Valtellina) and in the Dolomites, as the Solleder route at the North-West Face and the Tissi at the Trieste Tower in the Civetta Group.

In 1937 he was called up into the Army and attended, as part of his Officer training, the Military School of Mountaineering in Aosta; in 1938 he was sublieutenant at Susa. Afterwards he continued mountaineering during his University studies. His most important first ascents in the Alps were accomplished between 1936 and 1939, thereafter a new call to Military Service and the war interrupted his mountaineering activity. His undoubtdely most famous and most often repeated route is the Spigolo Vinci at Mount Cengalo, an aerial corner of 350 m on very solid granodiorite rock: a climb of most modern conception. Other less known routes show a constant search for difficulties, coupled with the implementation of the most advanced techniques. The ascent of the North-West face of the Monte Agnèr, a dolomite wall of 1300 m, at the time still unviolated, performed in 1939 in persistent bad weather, gained him the Gold Medal for Athletic Valour (there were no repetitions of this climb for 40 years). Pitons, mainly artisan made, and hemp ropes were the basic equipment available; basket-ball type shoes with rubber soles were used to climb on granite, whereas soft shoes with pressed felt soles, were preferred on limestone or dolomite. In 1940 he was admitted to the Italian Academic Alpine Club.

As officer of the Alpine Corp he was sent to Albania in 1941. Returned the same year, he was employed as rock climbing instructor at the Aosta Military School of Alpinism and took part in the film “Rocciatori e Aquile” (Rock climbers and Eagles; Istituto Luce, 1942 ) shot at the Vajolet Towers.

The partisan Resistance
In September 1943, as soon as the news of the armistice broke out, Vinci abandoned Grenoble, where he was lieutenant of a skier battalion, and set off crossing on foot the Alps to reach the maternal house of Talamona, in Valtellina. Here he took refuge and started to organize the first Resistance groups in this valley considered strategic by the Fascist and German troops concentrated in the area as an escape route towards Germany. There the mountains gave refuge to hundreds of partisans, organizing guerrilla actions, sabotages, diversionary acts and robbery to gain arms and ammunitions. Being captured in an ambush, he managed to escape and from then on remained under cover. Vinci became soon chief of a Partisan Division of the Garibaldi Brigades (Brigate Garibaldi), known as Commander “Bill”. He was in charge of maintaining contacts between the National Liberation Committee located in Milan and Allied headquarters in Switzerland and helped many allied prisoners to reach Switzerland crossing the highest Alpine passes. He often acted as mediator, on behalf of Commander “Nicola”, to sort out conflicts between the various partisan groups in the area, animated by different beliefs: the Garibaldi Brigades, often chiefed by communists coming from the student and worker world of industrial northern cities, and the Justice and Freedom (Giustizia e Libertà) Brigades, more moderate, made up and chiefed by local people, with various political beliefs. In these very risky missions, he had his life saved for his being considered a native by local partisans. In the terrible Fascist round-up of November 1944, his Masino-Codera-Ratti Plan allowed hundreds of partisans, coming from Valsassina and Valtellina, to save their life escaping to safety into Swiss territory. Chased by fascist machine gun fire by all the way to the border, they managed to cross over during the night through Teggiola Pass at 2,500m, under prohibitive conditions for the cold and deep snow cover. Many suffered from severe frost-bite during a long march which left them prostrated. In February 1945 he was back in Italy, returned to reorganize the Resistance in Valtellina. He devised the strategy for the liberation of the Town of Sondrio, which took place on the 28th of April.

South America and the expeditions
In September 1946, having decided to try his luck in South America, Vinci boarded a ship in Genoa with a friend, destination Brasil. After a short stay in Brasil he moved on to Venezuela, where he carried out several explorations in search of diamonds in the Orinoco Amazon forest. In February 1949 he climbed the Auyán-tepui with the Catalan explorer Fèlix Cardona. In 1950 he discovered the richest diamond mine of Venezuela in the Rio Avequì, a tributary of the Orinoco. After three years spent in the forest looking for diamonds (“I am not going around to look for diamonds, but I look for diamonds to be able to go around”, he used to say) he went back to Venezuela and to his never forgotten passion for mountains and mountaineering. In December 1950 he accomplished the first ascent of the Pico Bolívar on the North glacier (4,981 m), and reached the peak alone, having been accompanied for the first part of the climb by Enrico Middleton Bentivoglio. He also made a film entitled “Pico Bolívar, North wall”. This first ascent created a great stir in the country: Vinci was not believed and the newspapers described him as a braggart. Not disheartened by this, he launched a challenge, inviting the local mountaineers to repeat the climb with him. The whole town of Mérida followed the enterprise; half way up, the local mountaineers decided to abandon the climb and turned back, while Vinci carried on, together with the swiss collegue Pierre Kiener, and reached for the second time the peak of the Bolívar (February 1951). Following this success he was celebrated as a national hero and was officially charged with the task of taking the bust of El Libertador all the way up the mountain and position it on the summit. This he did together with Giovanni Vergani and Franco Anzil in April of the same year. Together with Pierre Kiener, Vinci made two new first ascents on the Pico Bolívar: on the North ridge (February 1951) and on the Encierro glacier in March 1953. In 1952 he organized the Panandina Expedition (Expediciòn Panandina Italiana) which set off from Venezuela on the 20th of January along the Carrettera Panamericana aboard an old Lincoln motorcar, “at one time a very posh means of transport”, heading for Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, arrived in Argentina on the 18th of April. During the expedition various peaks were climbed, including the Nevado Alto de Ritacuba (5,330 m) in the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy (Colombia), the Cerro Quilindaña (4,878 m, 1st ascent), known as the “Ecuador Matterhorn” due to its rocky peak, the Nevado Caullaraju (the antepeak Caullaraju, 5,500 m), which was then renamed Nevado Vinci, in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru. For three years (1951-53) Vinci was Professor of Geology at the University of Los Andes in Mérida (Venezuela). With some University colleagues, including Alessandro Bernardi, botanist, and Pierre Kiener, chemist-pedologist, he organized (3rd August-15th September 1953) a scientific expedition to the Aprada-tepui (2,500 m), one of the highest peaks in Venezuelan Guayana. The rains prevented them from reaching the peak, but they explored the area studying its geology and collecting botanical specimens.

On the 3rd of November 1953 the Shiriana Expedition departed from La Paragua. Vinci's companions were Enrico Middleton Bentivoglio, Arturo Eichler and Jean Liedloff. They explored around the sources of some tributaries of the rivers Orinoco (Venezuela) and Rio Branco (Brasil). They ascended by boat the river Paragua, an Orinoco tributary, crossed the Monè Pass and descended the Sabaru as far as the Caura, another Orinoco tributary, following its course and that of its tributary, the Canaracuni, all the way to the Kirisuochi Savannah, at the foot of the Cerro Sarisariñama, a tabular plateau, which they climbed to its top in January 1954. On the 16th of March, after the departure of the other members of the expedition, Alfonso Vinci, together with Enrico Middleton, ventured into unexplored territories, home to the most savage and isolated Yanomami tribes who never before had any contact with the white man. The Samatari, (belonging to the family of the Shirishana or Shiriana) were one of these tribes. Vinci and Middleton went up the river Uana, reached the watershed between the basin of the Orinoco and that of the Rio Branco, and then crossed it going towards the Aracosà River. At this point they were captured by the Samatari and followed the tribe along the Aracosà and the Uraricoera River, until finally they managed to escape, retracing their steps and arriving at La Paragua on the 13th of May 1954.

At the end of October 1954 Vinci departed from Canaima with Giovanni Carmine on the Guayca Expedition to explore the areas surrounding the sources of some tributaries of the High Orinoco and the Rio Branco rivers. Setting off from Canaracuni, they went up the Merevari, whose waters flow into the Orinoco through the Caura, as far as the sources of the Camacuni river, reaching then the watershed with the Yevarehuri (tributary of the basin of Rio Branco) at the foot of the Sierra de Parima; they went down into Brasilian territory first along the Yevarehuri and later the Matahuri. Then heading up westwards they crossed the Sierra de Parima, going down again into Venezuelan territory as far as the shores of the Ocamo and of the Matacuni, both tributaries of the High Orinoco. They ascended the Matacuni all the way to the watershed with another big tributary of the Orinoco, the Ventuari, which they reached going down along the Euete. They carried out several explorations around the various tributaries of the Ventuari and attempted to climb the North part of the Cerro Marahuaca (2,800 m), the mountain where the indios Makiritari gather the special canes used to make their infallible blowpipes; due to a fire, they were unable to reach the top. They returned then to the plains along the course of the Ventuari, through the Mono Rapids, San Fernando de Atabapo as far as Puerto Ayacucho, where they arrived mid February 1955.

In March-April 1958 Alfonso Vinci, in the course of the new expedition “Alto Orinoco”, tried once more to reach the heights of the Cerro Marahuaca, but again without success. Having as companions two engineers, Emilio Albani and Ezio Cattaneo, he ascended first the Orinoco and then its tributary Cunucunuma right to the foot of the mountain, returning by the same route.

The family
On the 2nd of July 1960 at Wassenaar, in Holland, Vinci married Elisabeth Boon, daughter of the Dutch Ambassador at Caracas. They had two children: Federico born in 1962 and Ialina in 1965.

The last expedition
The last expedition was the crossing of Borneo from West to East, exploring the internal region of the Müller Mountains, home of some Dayak people, at one time famous headhunters (they say that the first explorer, a German by the name of Georg Müller, after whom the Mountains are named, found his death there). Alfonso Vinci, the engineer Albani and the agronomist Tealdi set off from Pontianak, in West Kalimantan, on the 9th of May 1978. They went up the Kapuas river, crossed the watershed of the Müller Mountains and went down into East Kalimantan along the Mahakam River, on whose rapids they suffered a boatwreck. After this they proceeded along the same river as far as Samarinda, where they arrived on the 12th of June 1978.

The geologist and the author
After the experience at the University of Mérida, Vinci dedicated himself to consulting activities in the hydroelectric and mining fields, travelling extensively in all continents, primarily in South America and South-East Asia, in the nineteen fifties for ICOS and from 1960 for ELC Electroconsult of Milan. As Chief Engineer, for ELC he carried out the geological studies for many water resources exploitation projects, including the Majes in Perù and the Itaipù on the border between Brasil and Paraguay. He continued this activity until the end of the ninteen eighties, when he was overtaken by the disease which caused his death in Rome on the 12th of April 1992.

The idea of writing books on his adventures was spurred by Fosco Maraini, who he met in Milan upon his return from the expeditions in the Venezuelan forests. The first book, relating the adventures of the Shiriana and Guayca expeditions, was published as “Samatari” in the italian edition (1955), translated into English and published by Hutchinson (London) with the title “Red cloth and green forest”. The book contains a description of habits and idioms of these populations, which has since been an important source for ethnographic studies. Subsequently other autobiographical books were published in Italian, two more on the south American experience, Diamanti (1956), which relates the events connected to the search and the discovery of diamonds in the years 1947-1950, and Cordigliera (1959), on the mountain climbs in the Andes carried out between 1950 and 1953, and many others, mainly on his journey experiences all over the world.

Climbs in the Alps
Listed are the most significant climbs of Alfonso Vinci in the Alps


 * West face - Castello delle Nevere/Moiazza 18-19 August 1936 – First ascent  with Paolo Riva and Camillo Giumelli
 * West-NorthWest face – Pizzo Ligoncio/Masino-Bregaglia Group - 11 July 1938 – First ascent with Paolo Riva
 * Vinci route - Punta Milano/Masino-Bregaglia Group - July 1938 – First ascent of the west wall with Paolo Riva
 * North-West face – Mount Agner/Pale di San Martino - 15-16 July 1939 – First ascent with Gianelia Bernasconi
 * East face – Punta Sertori/Masino-Bregaglia Group -14 August 1939 – First ascent with Gianelia Bernasconi and Paolo Riva
 * Spigolo Vinci - Pizzo Cengalo/Masino Bregaglia Group – 16 August 1939 – First ascent of the South-South West ridge with Gianelia Bernasconi and Paolo Riva

Climbs in the Andes and in Guayana
Listed are the most significant climbs of Alfonso Vinci in the Cordillera of the Andes and in the Venezuelan Guayana.


 * Auyàn Tepui – Venezuelan Guaiana – February 1949 - with Felix Cardona
 * Pico Bolivar - North face – Venezuela - 23 December1950 – First ascent with Enrico Middleton
 * Pico Bolivar - North Ridge - Venezuela – February 1951 – First ascent with Pierre Kiener
 * Nevado Alto de Ritacuba - Cocuy Sierra Nevada - Columbia – 25 January 1952 – with Franco Anzil, Valentino Mettler and Giovanni Vergani
 * Cerro Quilindana - Ecuador – 27 February 1952 – First ascent with Giovanni Vergani, Franco Anzil, Arturo Eichler and Paul Ferret
 * Nevado Vinci - Caullarajù - Cordillera Blanca – Perù – 13 March 1952- First ascent, with Franco Anzil, Valentino Mettler and Giovanni Vergani
 * Pico Bolivar - Encierro Glacier - Venezuela – March 1953 – First ascent with Pierre Kiener and Luis Ruiz Teràn

Books published
He authored many books, some translated in other languages.
 * Samatari – Orinoco-Amazzoni, Bari, Leonardo da Vinci, 1955
 * Diamanti (Diamonds) Bari, Leonardo   da Vinci, 1956
 * Cordigliera – Venezuela-Columbia-Ecuador-Perù, Bari, Leonardo da Vinci, 1959
 * Red cloth and green forest (english translation of Samatari by James Caldwell), London, Hutchinson & Co, 1959
 * Fiori delle Ande (Flowers of the Andes), Bari, Leonardo da Vinci, 1959
 * Dolomiti (by Alfonso Vinci and Emilio Frisia), Rome, Automobile Club of Italy, LEA, 1961
 * Occhio di Perla, Bari, Leonardo da Vinci, 1966
 * Orogenesi - Romanzo geologico (Orogenesis - Geological novel), Bari, De Donato, 1969
 * L'acqua, la danza, la cenere (Water, dance, ash), Milano, Rizzoli, 1973
 * Lettere tropicali - Taccuino di viaggio di un esploratore (Tropical letters - An explorer's travel notebook), Milano, Mondadori, 1982
 * Samatari – Orinoco-Amazzoni, Torino, Vivalda Editori, 1989, abridged edition of the volume published in 1955, ISBN 88-7808-202-3
 * L'altopiano del Rum, Divertimento andino, (The upland of rum, Andes entertainment) Torino, Vivalda Editori, 1990, ISBN 88-7808-207-4
 * Cordigliera - Lecco, Alpine Studio, 2015, ISBN 978-88-99340-04-9
 * Samatari - Lecco, Alpine Studio, 2017, ISBN 978-88-99340-41-4
 * Diamanti – Itinerari del Corriere della Sera – Storie di Montagna – vol. 12 – 2017.