ADAM ONDRA is the greatest climber of all time. PIETRO DAL PRA held Adam for his baptism of fire with multipitch climbing and has continued to follow his career as a friend, taking part in Adam’s relentless progression to unimaginable heights.

Explaining the ins and outs that led to their deep bond od friendship is no easy task. However, what is certain is that the two share a common trait: immense sensitivity and an awareness of the details that make us who we are, both in terms of rock climbing and the people that surround us.

ITAS Prize 2024 winner in the Mountaineering and Mountain Sports category
Mountain Book Award – 72° Trento Film Festival

Pietro is the author of this book which was written in complete harmony with Adam. Thorough to stories of their most memorable ascents, we touch on the crucial stops that have formed the protagonist’s career, getting to know his cultural background, passions, tastes, and way of living and understanding climbing.

The profound and unfaltering friendship that gave life to this book is also what makes it so valuable: recounting the life and career of someone like Adam couldn’t just be left in the hands of a journalist.

“Pietro has an ability to set the scene, as if writing the script for a film, and in the process conveying the greatest of truths:
what matters is the journey, the stops along the way,
the failures, and the tenacity more than reaching the finishing line.“

Erri De Luca, from the preface.

Pietro Dal Pra: Between the ages of fourteen and seventeen he became the youngest climber to make ascents of routes with cutting edge grades. At the age of twenty-one he became a mountain guide. In parallel with his profession as a guide, Pietro continued to spend time in the mountains, no matter the season, and in the Dolomites he would establish some of his most beautiful climbs, in a variety of climbing styles. Pietro’s approach to mountaineering is a clean one that is motivated by a desire to embrace the vertical world and not be driven by a need to reach arbitrary goals. Pietro has set himself limits and played with these so that ethics and style were always the utmost priority. His great achievements are simply a consequence of this approach. Among his many ascents some of the most notable are Zauberlehrling on the Cima Scotoni, one of the hardest solo climbs of all time in the Dolomites. In the Ratikon, in 1999, he made the the third ascent of Silbergeier in just three days, which remains one of the fastest ascents to date, and six years later he also grabbed the second ascent of the even harder route: Die Unendliche Geschichte. In Sardegna he made the first ascent of Hotel Supramonte, one of the most beautiful multipitch routes on Mediterranean limestone. Not only has he made many repeats of high-quality routes established by others, he has also opened new lines of extreme beauty and toughness on walls that he himself discovered. Only a few of these have seen repeat ascents, often remaining in the shadows due to a mixture of laziness in sharing details and a desire to preserve his intimate relationship with climbing, which brings him to speak little of his achievements.

Adam Ondra: His astounding ability to overcome the limits of what was thought to be possible in climbing has meant that he is widely regarded as the greatest of all time. No sooner had he taken his first steps as a child that he was climbing and never stopped to look back. Nicknamed “The Alien”, he embodies a mixture of magnetism, rigorous sporting ethics, and deep curiosity for the crags of the world. An eclectic climber who has excelled on the hardest single pitch routes across the globe, on the toughest multipitches, in bouldering and on the competitive indoor circuits of “plastic” holds. He is the first climber to reach the 9c grade with his route Silence, and the first to win a World Championship and a World Cup both in bouldering and lead climbing. Adam Ondra is truly unique, a hallmark of the present and a symbol of the future.ADAM the Climber