Riccardo Cassin is like the grandpa you always wanted—a big smile, a warm sense of humor, and two big, blue eyes in which you see reflected the snowy peaks of his past, mountains he remembers more meticulously than last night’s dinner. Today Cassin is 99, but his hand can still grip mines as strongly as if he were clasping one of Rifle’s slippery pinches. 

You might think that with him confined to a wheelchair, Cassin’s sprit might be broken, but when you ask Cassin how he feels, he smiles and says he is happy to be alive and that it was just four years ago when 30 minutes of push-ups and sit-ups were part of his morning routine. That is why at 85 he was able to climb the 5.10b Luna Nascente, in Val di Mello, Italy. 

From parents, to grandparents, to sons and grandsons of traditional or sport climbing, Cassin’s name resounds the world over for having created the “Ragni di Lecco,” a group of adventurous climbers that in the early 1930s, with a simple rope and some hand-made pitons, made climbing their Sunday mass, climbing near town on peaks like the Resegone (,1877 meters) and Grigna (2,177 meters), and a few decades later topping out the unreachable Mount McKinley via the legendary Cassin Ridge (1961). 

As the leading “Ragno,” Cassin conquered three of today’s most famous Italian north walls despite the limited equipment of the day—simple sleeping bags, hand-made crampons, primitive ropes, and steel pitons—the precarious climbing conditions, and long days on the wall. In 1935 Cassin made his first ascent of Cima Ovest di Lavaredo (Italian VIII°/VI°, A0 or 5.11d/5.9 A0) in the Italian Alps, a 500-meter line alternating overhanging sections with some more technical roofs, both requiring a large number of pitons. At that time, the ascent lasted over 60 hours, during which three terrible rainstorms lashed the wall, making snow condition very precarious. In 1937, Cassin climbed the Northeast Face of Piz Badile (Italian VI/V+ obligatory, or 5.9/5.8), in the Swiss Alps, at the same time rescuing two Italian climbers, Mario Molteni and Giuseppe Valsecchi, who had been stuck for a whole week on the 800-meter wall. 

But possibly Cassin’s most renowned ascent was his 1938 FA of the Walker Spur of the Grand Jorasses (Italian V+, or 5.7), a 4,208-meter peak that took 82 hours to defeat mostly due to the very frigid temperature and the technical chimneys often filled with ice. (The climb, along with the 1938 Eigernordwand ascent, is still known as one of the best lines opened between the two World Wars.) But Cassin is also well know for his multiple expeditions to the 8,000-meters giants, including Pakistan’s Gasherbrurm IV (7,925 meters), the 17^th highest mountain in the world, and to the Peruvian Andes to climb Jirishanca (6,126 meters).