Ignazio Piussi

Biography

Ignazio Piussi, born on April 22, 1935, in Pezzeit in the Val Raccolana, Italy, is one of the great Italian mountaineers of the 1950-1970 generation. The youngest of ten children in a family where his grandfather Giuseppe and uncle Osvaldo were already local guides and mountaineers, he grew up surrounded by the mountains, working from a very young age on the family farm. Blessed with a powerful physique, he initially pursued competitive sports, practicing ski jumping and cross-country skiing with excellent results, then biathlon and even bobsleigh, before a serious shoulder dislocation in 1954 in Cortina ended this career and definitively led him to mountaineering. His first serious ascents took place while still a teenager with Lorenzo Bulfon and the Perissutti brothers in the Julian Alps, his natural playground. In the 1950s and 1960s, Piussi established himself as a top-tier climber, renowned for his strength, endurance, and economical use of pitons. He established landmark routes...