Andrea Lanfri recounts his ascent of Denali

On 26 May last, Paralympic athlete and mountaineer Andrea Lanfri, Ferrino's ambassador, reached the 6190-metre peak of Denali, Alaska, together with fellow mountain guide Luca Montanari, ascending along the classic West Spur route.

For Lanfri, it was a decisive step towards the realisation of his great dream: to climb the Seven Summits, the highest peaks of the seven continents. With this ascent, after those of Mont Blanc, Everest, Kilimanjaro and Aconcagua, there are in fact only two steps left to face to reach the goal. To complete the collection, 'only' Mount Elbrus (in the Caucasus) and Vinson, in Antarctica, are missing.

This is how Andrea himself tells us about the difficult and exciting experience on the Roof of North America.

Andrea, from your first statements it seems that this climb was really hard for you and your climbing partner. Compared to Everest, do you consider it more or less challenging? What are the characteristics of this mountain and the aspects that put you most to the test?

This is a question that Luca and I have also asked ourselves several times. In my opinion, they are two totally different things. I already imagined this before setting off and now, in the light of my experience, I can confirm it. In terms of physical commitment, Denali is definitely the most difficult mountain I have done so far in the Seven Summit project, while Everest was the most demanding in terms of mental toughness. This is because the Denali expedition took three very concentrated weeks, but still in a fairly limited time frame, while the Everest climb took us a total of two months and more. In such a long time it is more complex to keep motivation high and, in my case, to manage the problems related to the stumps and prostheses, trying to keep bruises, inflammations, blisters and cuts under control. At Denali I had to put myself to the test with a physical effort, but especially with the prostheses, which I was not sure I could withstand. One of the hardest moments, for example, was the return trip after making the summit, when we faced, with 13 hours of non-stop walking, the 25 kilometers of glacier that separated Camp 3 from Base Camp, with a very heavy backpack on our shoulders and sleds in tow. It was an important experience that made me understand so many things about myself and led me to explore the limits of my physical endurance.

At Denali, despite the difficulties, adverse weather conditions and initial doubts you chose to continue your ascent. Not an easy decision in such an extreme and potentially dangerous environment. What made you lean toward going ahead? How much did the fact that you were an already abundantly broken-in rope team count?

On this expedition I definitely started out a little tired, even a little "down" in terms of motivation, and despite the immense fatigue, I came back much much more charged!

In the previous months I had prepared myself very thoroughly, adapting my workouts to the kind of commitment I knew I would have to face: I had done a lot of running and biking, I had prepared myself for sled pulling by dragging tires uphill. In short, I had made a detailed program to arrive at my best for the event.

A week before departure, however, I began to feel sick, and for a day and a half I had a fever of 40. This disrupted all my plans, because it did not allow me to finish the preparation as I wanted, but, more importantly, this strange flu, even once the fever was gone, left me feeling weak for days. At the time of departure from Italy I was fine again, then upon arriving in Alaska, here came the nausea and weakness again. The first day of walking to the mountain was pretty tough, and knowing what was ahead of me, I began to have a lot of doubts about whether I could make it. However, with Luke we said to each other, "Come on, let's hang in there and see on the day...." Fortunately, as I climbed, I began to feel better and better, perhaps because, as I say, I went into "mountain mode," or perhaps because the various commitments - setting up tents, preparing sleds and backpacks, etc. - overshadowed the negative feelings. The fact is, once at altitude, I started to get pumped up and we were both really motivated and energized. But then came the bad weather to get in our way, but, once again, we found the right approach, keeping our focus without letting it discourage us, waiting for the right opportunity to attempt the summit, which eventually came.

I think the credit for the achievement comes so much from the rapport I have with Luca. Actually, we are not a particularly seasoned rope team, because together we have done "only" three expeditions, but we are both positive people who, if a problem arises, do not complain or get discouraged, but rather remain lucid and focused, looking for solutions and alternatives. Above all, we can then enjoy the experience, the fantastic places where we are and the adventure we are privileged to have.

Until the middle of last century, the great mountains of Alaska were perhaps an even wilder environment than the Himalayas and Karakoram. In your experience is this still the case today? How did you experience your encounter with the world of the Great North, even with respect to the myth of these places, which you probably also thrived on, reading about the adventures of explorers and early mountaineers?

Before I left, I had done a lot of reading about the Alaskan mountains and Denali, reading books and watching videos. Until you're there, though, it's hard to understand what it's really like to do an expedition in that kind of environment. It's a great environment, although totally different from the Himalayas, where climbers can take advantage of the great work of the Sherpas, which certainly simplifies a lot of things.

Of course, Denali is almost as famous a mountain as Everest; so here too there are many mountaineers attempting the summit, indeed I have to say that during the descent, in the section where there are fixed ropes, we had to stay in the queue, trapped behind so many other people, something that had not happened to me on Everest. The fact remains, however, that Denali is not really a mountain for everyone: it requires considerable ability to organize logistics on your own and an enormous capacity to endure fatigue. In short, it's a place where you meet only experienced climbers, whereas in the Himalayas, perhaps precisely because of the support of Sherpas that sometimes makes things far too easy, I've had people look at you and say, "Boh, has he already put on crampons at least once in his life?"

To go and do a mountain like Denali you have to be really convinced and motivated, otherwise there are really a lot of excuses to give up, to turn back! I think of the first night at base camp: we were only at two thousand meters and my thermometer read eight degrees below zero! I said, "Man, minus eight at two thousand meters and we've got to get up to 6200...."

It's really cold on that mountain. At night, especially in bad weather and windy days, the temperature would plummet: before I got into my sleeping bag I would take off my prostheses and in the morning I would find them completely white, covered with frost! For the first time, also in anticipation of the future expedition to Mount Vinson in Antarctica, I brought along Ferrino's Revolution sleeping bag, the -45 degree one, and it was a very good choice.

You are only two stages away from completing your Seven Summits, and you already have the highest peaks "in the bag." Is it safe to say that the road is now downhill?

On the way to completing the Seven Summits, Denali was definitely the mountain I was most concerned about in terms of weather, logistics and fatigue. This stage is also done, so I could say that yes, the road is now downhill from the point of view of mountaineering difficulties. There are other issues to take into account, though. Next year, for sure, I will find a way to do Elbrus even though the political instability situation there might complicate things. I think that will be a quick expedition, to be done in a few days, and I will try to climb it with my girlfriend or some friends. Then it will be Mount Vinson's turn. The goal is to be able to go there at the end of 2025 or in 2026, but there the big hurdle is definitely the economic one: an expedition to Antarctica requires really big amounts of money, and we will have to find ways to reduce costs as much as possible.

Often, when reporting on your climbs, the media dwell on the record aspect versus your status as a multi-amputee. How do you experience this kind of attention? Is it a look that captures the meaning that passion for mountains and sports has for you?

When I go to the mountains, when I climb, when I go on expeditions, hardly any people who are there and don't know me notice that I have prosthetics. This is because what I do there, I do very naturally.

After the illness, when I started going to the mountains again, I tried to do it not as a constraint, but as an experience where I move with the right harmony, the right feeling. It wasn't like that right away. At first I didn't like what I was feeling, because I felt like I was looking for solutions to forcibly do what I used to do and now, after the amputations, I could no longer do.

Little by little this feeling disappeared: I found my own style, I learned about the new characteristics of my body and how to use them to do the things I wanted to do in a harmonious and natural way. So now, when I am in the mountains, even to the eyes of those who see me I give the impression of being a "normal" mountaineer. If I don't have prosthetics in sight, no one notices the "trick."

Some magazines and journalists, when they tell about my climbs, put the emphasis on the fact that I am a multiple-amputee climber, but I don't like to push that aspect too much. Prosthetics for me are tools that allow me to achieve the goals I set for myself while continuing to do the things I love naturally. This is what going to the mountains is all about, and I think spreading a message of "normalcy" is the most important thing I can convey to others.