The sad news just don’t stop. Italian ski mountaineer Carlalberto, called “Cala” Cimenti has been buried by an avalanche while freeriding on a mountain near the northern Italian resort of Sestriere. The 45-year-old and a friend with whom he was skiing could only be recovered dead.
Ski descent from Nanga Parbat
Cala had made a name for himself in the Himalayas and Karakoram. In summer 2019, he had scaled Nanga Parbat in Pakistan and had skied down from the eight-thousander. He then succeeded in the Karakoram in the first ascent of the 6,955-meter-high Gasherbrum VII. On the descent, his team mate Francesco Cassardo fell about 450 meters deep. In a dramatic rescue operation it was managed to get Francesco to safety. Cimenti had previously scaled the eight-thousanders Cho Oyu (in 2006), Manaslu (in 2011) and Dhaulagiri (in 2017).
Corona disease survived
In spring 2020, Cala was infected with the corona virus and was seriously ill. “My attention is fixed on the thermometer marks, on every breath that must not be worse than the previous one,” Cimenti wrote on Facebook at the time. He recovered. The Corona pandemic is “a threat that we should not underestimate,” Cala told me in July 2020. “But also we must not stop our life at all.” His life was the mountains. That’s where death has now taken him.
