header
salto in alto

From adolescence on Carlo Alberto Pinelli nurtured a deep enthusiasm for light athletics. In his upper secondary school years, he won the Lazio provincial student championship in the high jump, and later took the prize for the long jump (FIDAL) spanning a length of 6.80-metres.

Compelled while still a young age to withdraw from competition sports due to injury, Pinelli went on to devote himself to a similar passion for mountaineering, principally among the Mont Blanc mountains and later in the Asian ranges of the Hindu Kush.

An "academic" mountaineer (CAAI) and mountaineering instructor, Pinelli has long been director of the "Paolo Consiglio" mountaineering school of the Roman Alpine Club section.

baba tangi free k2 From the 1960s to 70s he took part in 8 mountaineering-explorative expeditions in the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush, summiting various virgin peaks that included: the 7,350-metre Saraghrar Peak, an expedition led by Fosco Maraini in 1959 (F. Maraini: Paropamiso, 1960), to the Baba Tangi (6,513 metres), the Gokhan Sar (6,249 metres), the Koh-e Wakhan (6,400 metres) and the Koh-e Hillal (6,280 metres), the Windok (6400 metres). He acted as leader of all those expeditions with the exception of the first.

He led the famous Mountain Wilderness "FREE K2" ecological expedition in 1990, which cleared the world’s second highest peak of literally tons of trash and ropes left behind by earlier expeditions.

He led the Mountain Wilderness-organized mountaineering/humanitarian mission"OXUS – Mountains for Peace"in 2003, which reopened the upper valleys of the Afghan Hindu Kush to adventure sports, summiting the 7,490-metre Noshaq, Afghanistan's highest peak.

Over recent years Pinelli has organized and directed six "Environment - Friendly Mountaineering" courses in India and Pakistan, and two similar ones in Afghanistan, participation in which was reserved for local youth (of both genders) interested in qualifying for work as liaison officers, medium-height mountain guides, trekking organizers and mountain nature park rangers. Two former Afghan trainees were among the first of their nation in the summer of 2009 to reach the country's highest elevations: Mount Noshaq (7,490) in the Wakhan Corridor.

Carlo Alberto Pinelli returned in the summer of 2013 to the Pakistani Western Karakorum to run an advanced "Environment-Friendly Mountaineering" course organized by Mountain Wilderness International and the Aga Khan Foundation ( AKRSP), with the help of the Pakistani chapter of MW, the Pakistani Alpine Club and the Academic Italian Alpine Club. The course was reserved exclusively for young local (Gojal, Shimshal, Wakhan) mountaineers with previous high-mountain experience, and participants included 7 brave young women; during the month of May 2014, the best 13 of those trainees were offered an additional week of deep-snow and high-altitude training.

Pinelli also organized an environment-oriented course in the early spring of 2015 for trekking guides in the Tigray mountains of Ethiopia sponsored by the Italian Development Cooperation and by the Cultural Italian Institute of Addis Ababa .

At present Pinelli is leading THE SWAT PROJECT, organized in Pakistan by Mountain Wilderness International and the Italian Istitute for Studies on Mediterranean and the Orient.

During the spring of 2016 the President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan bestrowed on Carlo Alberto Pinelli the civil award "Sitara-e Imtiaz", in recognition of his outstanding work in the field of mountaineering, environmental protection, and training.




Mount Saraghrar (7350 metres)