Cart
| Sease
| Sease
JOURNAL #1

GANASSA PEOPLE
MATTIA CONTE

SEASE JOURNAL

Land and Sea Stories

SEASE's Journal, a curated collection by Alberto Coretti - founder of Sirene Magazine - of inspiring land and sea stories from our ambassadors. Immerse yourself in captivating tales that feed your soul, celebrating the beauty and adventure around the world. 

GANASSA PEOPLE
living at the fullest

Confident, irreverent, unconventional. The Ganassa is a man with a strong and authentic character, facing life with intensity and charisma. A bold soul who fears no challenge, capable of leaving a mark wherever he goes. Our Ganassa man is Mattia Conte. His story speaks of the highest mountains in the world, climbs without oxygen tanks, and the desire to challenge his own limits.

MATTIA CONTE

Confident, irreverent, unconventional. The Ganassa is a man with a strong and authentic character, facing life with intensity and charisma. A bold soul who fears no challenge, capable of leaving a mark wherever he goes. Our Ganassa man is Mattia Conte. His story speaks of the highest mountains in the world, climbs without oxygen tanks, and the desire to challenge his own limits.

| Sease

MATTIA CONTE

| Sease
| Sease

Mattia Conte and the thin air of the 8,000-meter peaks

“There was too much wind to ski.”

  • Mattia knew it; the wind had become as familiar to him as a man of the sea, when he climbed the ratlines of the Amerigo Vespucci, or when he was spellbound by the impetuosity of Cape Horn, or when the whims of an unexpected summer storm in the Mediterranean would mess up his hair. In the mountains, it’s a whole different world, but he hadn’t lost that feeling of the wind that tells you what the day would be like even before you got out of bed.
  •  
It was another one of those too many winter weekends in Cervinia, where “no ski clubs for the kids and no slalom between the poles with the Master companions”. Once again the Alps had wanted to take a moment for themselves. Mattia looked at Monte Cervino standing tall in the blue sky, releasing, that day, an even more forbidden beauty. As had happened previously in his lifetime, nature was seducing him, again after 50 years, the mountains were calling him. He felt he couldn’t say no.
  •  
A guide accompanied him on his first ascent, breaking that last barrier that separated Mattia's fate from mountaineering. His first time on Monte Cervino included everything he had always desired. Effort, knowledge to learn, equipment to familiarize himself with, but most of all, out there, was a sliver of the planet still wild, and he wanted to be a part of it. Monte Bianco, less challenging than Cervino, was the second chapter of a book still to be written. Above 4,000 meters, the lack of oxygen was taking its toll, but by now, the horizon Mattia was looking at was that of the summits on the roof of the world, the 8,000-meter peaks.

| Sease
| Sease
| Sease

Even before being mountains, the 8,000-meter peaks are an exclusive club, one in which a fifty-year-old lawyer from Milan, more accustomed to the sea than to ice, would never have been admitted. The 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen tanks are even more exclusive. They only exist in the great stubbornness of the few who have attempted and succeeded. When Mattia revealed his intentions to the alpine guide, he felt his eyes scrutinized him deeply, and the response was: “You’ll never make it, you’re too old, you’re not trained and without oxygen you’ll die”. Harsh words to be respected, but which didn’t match Mattia’s self-perception. Ever since he had trained for gymnastics competitions at the Morosini Naval Academy or earned his law degree in just two years instead of four, he had measured his strength, both in body and mind. He knew himself; he was used to bivouacking on the edge of his limits: this was enough for him not to give up on his goals.

| Sease

Even before being mountains, the 8,000-meter peaks are an exclusive club, one in which a fifty-year-old lawyer from Milan, more accustomed to the sea than to ice, would never have been admitted. The 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen tanks are even more exclusive. They only exist in the great stubbornness of the few who have attempted and succeeded. When Mattia revealed his intentions to the alpine guide, he felt his eyes scrutinized him deeply, and the response was: “You’ll never make it, you’re too old, you’re not trained and without oxygen you’ll die”. Harsh words to be respected, but which didn’t match Mattia’s self-perception. Ever since he had trained for gymnastics competitions at the Morosini Naval Academy or earned his law degree in just two years instead of four, he had measured his strength, both in body and mind. He knew himself; he was used to bivouacking on the edge of his limits: this was enough for him not to give up on his goals.

| Sease
| Sease
| Sease

He started preparing in May, eight years ago.

Twice a week his alarm went off at 4:00 AM, he would reach Cervinia from Milan, climb to 4,000 meters and by 11:00 AM, he would be back at his desk in the city. “It’s not those who begin, but those who persevere”, the motto of Amerigo Vespucci: he had read it too many times not to have made it his own. At the beginning of October 2018 together with a sherpa, he was on the summit of his 8,000-meter peak, the Manaslu in Nepal (8.163 m). Without oxygen, because what helps you can also betray you, because there is a
history of Italians and Poles climbing without oxygen, but most of all, because after years of disentangling himself among parallel bars and rings, he recognized himself in that idea of a human being that Leonardo had drawn within a circle and square. That raw essence can be dressed, equipped, but if you attach an oxygen tank to it, you’ve lost it forever.


  •  
“I’m not a mountaineer”. Mattia just like a mantra, keeps telling everyone and himself. It’s his limit and also his strength. He knows he grew up with the alphabet of sheets, halyards, and hawsers; the language of fixed ropes doesn’t belong to him. He has become familiar with ice axes and traction cleats, but tracing a route on a wall is something else. He climbs where the silent eyes and hands of the sherpas have placed the ropes.
  •  
One day in Katmandu, on his way back, while having breakfast at the hotel, he hears someone calling him: “Oh, you’re Mattia Conte”. It was the Spanish climber Sergi Mingote. “On Manaslu, there were 250 climbers, but only three of us without oxygen. You were one of them”. This summer I’m going to do the Gasherbrum I and the Gasherbrum II (8.035 m). Do you want to come?”. With Sergi, same age, born in the same year and month, with three days of difference, it’s real friendship. It grew through training together in Cervinia and was cemented among the glaciers of Gasherbrum, Nanga Parbat, and
Dhaulagiri.

meters

"Come with me to do the K2 this winter?”

Again, Sergi raises the bar for Mattia’s goals. K2 is a poisoned mountain, one that no one had ever conquered in winter without oxygen. Once again, Mattia accepts the proposal, once again he wants to follow the rules he has set for himself. It’s not a challenge to the mountain, because mountains never challenge anyone, least of all K2. It’s not a challenge with others, in adversity, you almost always save each other and lose alone. He won’t do anything beyond what his body allows him to do, because reaching that limit with himself is the purpose of his game and it’s also the safest way to honor the promise he made to his two children and his partner: to return safe and sound.

  •  
Waiting for him, in January 2021, is an extreme environment where the wind blows at 50 knots, temperatures drop below -50°C, and often the difference between life and death is just a silly detail. The K2 base camp at 4,975 meters is where the more or less lucid madness of 22 climbers from all over the world merges into a small community. 

| Sease
| Sease
| Sease

Mattia’s plan is to reach the next camp as soon as possible to acclimatize to the lack of oxygen.

He climbs, he descends, but never enough for his body to adapt as it should. In summer you can train at altitude in the field and then climb when you feel ready. In winter no. The absolute cold and the terrifying wind don’t allow Mattia to adapt as he would have liked. But he knows how to listen to the lesson the mountain teaches him at the right moment. While a group of Nepalese climbers conquer the summit and others stubbornly venture into weather windows that are too narrow, he, without supplementary oxygen, reaches Camp 3 at 7,050 meters, and stops. He stops because his pace isn’t what the schedule predicted, because going further in those unstable weather conditions, could mean not coming back. And Mattia, instead, just like a freediver who, after a deep sea dive record returns to surface, goes back to base camp.

  •  
  • It’s his achievement! When you reach your limits, where you’ve gotten is much less important than how you manage to retrace your steps. Mattia, just like sailors do, listened to the advice of the more experienced, brought the necessary equipment, helped and was helped, and
    never let his mind stray from the promise he made to his children and partner.
    As they say on board: “One hand for yourself and one for the ship”. 
  •  
  • From K2 onwards, his 8,000-meter climbs will be in winter and without oxygen.

| Sease
| Sease
| Sease

to the next adventure...

Thanks for subscribing