Word: direttissima
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...onetime dress designer for Dior and Balmain and an Air Force polar survival expert who became a noted Alpinist and the first American to conquer two of the most dreaded Alps, the Matterhorn and the Eiger, via their treacherous north faces, opened a school in Switzerland specializing in direttissima, an innovation that ignores the traditional zigging and zagging around danger spots for a damn-the-obstacles, straight-up climb to the top; as a result of a 3,000-ft. fall during the first direttissima attempt on the Eiger, successfully completed by the rest of the team three days after...
...Italy's Walter Bonatti, 34: the first successful direttissima-straight up-ascent of the 14,701-ft. Matterhorn's north wall; in Switzerland. Two days after 60 m.p.h. winds forced Bonatti and two friends to abandon a similar assault, he was back on the mountain, alone, inching up the ice-covered rock that leans slightly from the perpendicular (TIME, Feb. 26). It was four days before he finally staggered onto the summit, briefly embraced a wrought-iron cross, then started the descent to Zermatt and a hero's welcome...
...Drop of Water. For Bonatti, the trick now is to find new ways to climb the familiar old hills. And he had a really novel idea for the Matterhorn: a "direttissima" assault, straight up the mountain's ice-coated, practically vertical north wall, a climb that had been tried (without success) only once before-in the summer. It was, shuddered a Swiss guide, "the route that a drop of water would follow...
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