Lorenzo Pevarello

Achille Gadler was born in Trento in 1920. He was a mountain enthusiast and has been climbing the main peaks of Trentino since he was a boy. After the war he discovered ski mountaineering and became one of its promoters in Trentino. He climbed numerous four-thousanders of the Alps, and travelled through the Pyrenees and mountains all over Europe. This documentary is intended to be a tribute to this man, as shy as it is unforgettable, a Trentino man in love with the mountains, who silently taught how to understand and enjoy this fantastic natural heritage.

The film is about an experience lived by three Trentino mountain guides in the Pamir Alay Kirghizo chain (Ak-Su valley of Karavshin). The exploration expedition had its maximum expression in the ascent of the unspoilt west-southwest face of Pik-Slesova (4250m. a.s.l.) along the more than 1300m wall along a logical line with high difficulties in free and artificial climbing and with numerous bivouacs on the wall. The new route called 'Flame of the East' was dedicated to the Trentino mountaineers Alessandro Chemelli and Dario Bampi, who died in the Mont Blanc group the day after conquering the summit of Pik-Slesova.

50 years later, the Trentino expedition to the Patagonian Andes is remembered: the expediton members were Bruno and Catullo Detassis, Marino Stenico, Cesare Maestri, Luciano Eccher, Cesarino Fava and Tito Lucchini. This mission contributed decisively to open the path of mountaineering exploration in Patagonia. The documentary reconstructs the phases of the expedition, traces a biographical profile of the mountaineers and outlines the social, historical and mountaineering context of the Trentino of fifty years ago.