Emilio Comici and the First Climbing Video Course
Today I would like to share what was probably the first climbing video course in the history of mountaineering, featuring an exceptional instructor: Emilio Comici.
The period footage, accompanied by a soundtrack very much of its time, may raise a smile today, but what is striking is how relevant Comici’s advice still is. Many of the principles he demonstrates are still taught to climbers today.
With this early instructional film—what we would now call a “tutorial”—Comici could even be considered a pioneer of multimedia climbing instruction.
I will not go into detail here about Emilio Comici’s life and achievements.
You can read more about Comici, Giordano Bruno Fabjan and their remarkable climbing partnership in The Heroic Age of Mountaineering.
For anyone unfamiliar with his name, Emilio Comici (Trieste, 1901 – Selva di Val Gardena, 1940) is remembered as one of the greatest rock climbers of his generation, an outstanding figure of the years between the two world wars. He became known as the “Angel of the Dolomites”, while the equally great Riccardo Cassin called him “the master”. It was said that Comici climbed as though he were dancing.
Comici once wrote (translated from the Italian):
“I see climbing above all as an art. Like dancing, for example, or playing the violin. For once you have complete mastery of technique, you can easily give expression to your feelings, just as in music and dance.
On difficult passages, I surrender completely to the sensation that I am living within the rock, and that the rock is living within me.” (from Emilio Comici, Alpinismo eroico)
Emilio Comici died in a tragic and almost banal accident in the autumn of 1940 in Vallunga, a side valley of Val Gardena. A memorial to the great climber stands at the foot of the Ciampac cliffs.
The accident happened on an easy training crag. As Comici leaned out, the cord attaching him to the anchor was severed, causing him to fall.
This was the sad end of the Angel of the Dolomites. His poetry still lives on today, on the walls and in the valleys of the Pale Mountains.
