Andreas Tonelli: When Falling Is Not an Option
In the heart of the Andes, a faastretch inissaid: Andreas Tonelli, Giovanni Mattiello and Luca Putzer were the first to set off tothe summit of Cerro Mercedtoriver, on províof of San Juan, and all the way down. For ten days, they faced ice, rocky deserts, thin air, and nights of hallucinations, in a fphysicalphysical and human challenge. The bicycle became an instrument of freedom, resistanceresistanceand and discovery.
A massive, untamed, and wild mountain. Ten days of discomfort, ten days without a safety net—like on a trapeze—ten days of intense suffering, a lifetime. The only thought, over and over again: keep going. The long journey is made by pedaling, climbing, scaling mountain ranges, riding them like the back of a dragon, bony and muscular. Ten days of dust and ice, of stars in orbit, of scorching sun and glacial air. Ten days of sharing. “Ten days of life, in its purest form.”
Who said deserts aren’t bike-friendly? Who said you can’t ride on ice? Who said adventure boils down to conquering the summit—heaven and hell, ten days of intense struggle, thin air, fitful sleep, dreams coming true, and the spectacular moonlight reflecting off the fresh snow?
Argentina, San Juan Province: Cerro Mercedario, the eighth-highest peak in the Andes, standing at 6,770 meters, which Andreas Tonelli decided to tackle, making him, his friend Giovanni Mattiello, and director Luca Putzer the first to climb and descend this immense mountain by bicycle—through “enchanted valleys, rocky deserts, and eternal glaciers” filled with “extreme challenges.” No one had ever dared to take a bicycle to the summit. No one had ever dared to look down into the abyss, grab the handlebars, and ride nearly 4,000 meters down to the base of the mountain. “It must be one of the longest and craziest descents in the world.”
“When falling isn’t an option,” we ride. When falling isn’t an option, when the wheels seem to spin on a tightrope over the abyss, we grit our teeth, look ahead, and enjoy it—as if there were no tomorrow. When falling isn’t an option, we still fall—and we get back up.
“It was the hardest thing we’ve ever done.” And they knew it from the start, from 2,900 meters up, from the moment they realized they’d have to carry their bikes, their gear, and their food—everything—on their backs. “You never know how or when the weather will change. We don’t know how we’ll react to the altitude. We don’t know the wind. The mountain is super, super challenging. We hold on to the good memories, but we forget when we threw up, when we got really sick, when we had hallucinations. There’s always something magical that makes us want to go back, even if it’s with a lot of pain.”
Overlooked in the shadow of the 6,961-meter-high Aconcagua, Mercedario was sacred to the Incas. “As they expanded their empire, they selected and chose certain mountains along their path because of their beauty and abundance of ice and snow. They saw them as the birthplace of water, which melted from the glacier, flowed down into the valley, and brought fertility to the land and well-being to the people.”
Andreas Tonelli likes to recall one of the fundamental rules of that civilization: “You cannot have an empire without peace, and you cannot have peace without equality—which, in those days, meant food for all.” To pay homage to these mountains, the Incas climbed them. Andreas followed in their footsteps through this “enormous and highly complex” mass of rock. “We are following in the footsteps of people who climbed it without any equipment, covered in mud, people with a very deep connection to the earth and everything around them, who climbed the mountain to pay homage to their worldview.”
His—Andreas’s view of the world—is also genuine, pure, and unambiguous. “If you don’t agree with my view of the world, we’re not meant for each other. I am a free man, and I want to be free. And I want to be free to share my view of the world and to share what I’ve seen with my own eyes. In the society we live in, people are more afraid of losing privileges than of sharing the truth. And that is a very sad society. That is how the system keeps us enslaved.”
It was his father, Ítalo, who instilled in him a sense of adventure and a sense of humanity, which inspired him to speak out against injustice. “Not just injustice that you experience firsthand, but also the injustices we see around us. He always told me, ‘Whatever you do in life, Andreas, I’m with you. If something makes you happy, go for it.’”
At some point, traveling became the “greatest school or university” of his life. “I learned as much in a school or university as I did in two or three weeks of traveling.” Exploring the planet as a “lifestyle” and, more importantly, as a “way to resist the stereotypes of this world, where everything is either black or white.” It isn’t. “They want to sell us the idea that we’re either on the side of good or on the side of evil. And traveling is an act of rebellion against this. I travel because I want to resist this system we’re living in. And the best way to resist is to see things with our own eyes and open our hearts, open our minds to other cultures, to other ways of life, and try to understand them. Why do these people live this way, or why do they think differently from us? You can only understand that if you travel.”
If you’re accompanied by a bicycle—like Rocinante, a steed of battle with its mane blowing in the wind—so much the better. Uganda or Lesotho, England or Italy, Morocco or Norway. “The bicycle is a magical instrument.” Arriving at an African village by bicycle is indescribable. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but within a minute, all the village children are gathered around us. Somehow, people understand that a bicycle is something humble. They know that without effort, you don’t get there.” There are no maps for the unknown. “The bicycle has opened up a new world for me. It takes me to fantastic people, not just fantastic places. And that, for me, is the essence of travel”—using your eyes as a “way to amplify,” to “broaden your horizons.”
Traveling, he says, is the best thing that could have happened to him. “The best decision of my life was to leave my office job,” says the 47-year-old multifaceted cycling tour guide, who began in 2003 with food and wine tours in Italy and has since added more challenging routes in Europe and demanding mountain biking adventures in various parts of the world (Lofoten, Morocco’s highest peak, Patagonia, Uganda, Chile, etc.)—always with a focus on the trails, “which take us to special places and help us meet special people.” “I have to have a deep connection with a place to be able to guide people there. I can’t guide people to a place where I don’t feel at home.”
He went to college—and enjoyed it just as much as sitting in an office—and took his first major solo trip at age 20 to South America, where he spent six months. Since then, he has undertaken several expeditions in South America, including climbing the highest mountain ever cycled to date (Ojos del Salado), Chile’s highest peak, Cerro el Plomo, and even attempted Tupungato, but fell ill during the ascent and had to give up. “They were fantastic experiences, but something was always missing—a stronger connection between the bike and the mountain.”
A few years ago, a Spaniard tried to ride a motorcycle to the summit of Cerro Mercedario. One crazy idea leads to another, and there was Andreas Tonelli, hooked on satellite images and the possibility of crossing the mountain by bicycle. “Cerro Mercedario is very remote and lacks infrastructure. Aconcagua is only 80 kilometers away and is full of people, full of commercial expeditions, full of helicopters coming and going. So I realized that this mountain’s fortune is to lie in the shadow of Aconcagua, which is, indeed, truly famous. And that’s where we can find things that are very, very beautiful. That’s exactly what my father taught me during the adventures I experienced with him. So we decided to go ahead and do something wild, something remote, something very difficult, and something that had never been done before. We stepped out of our comfort zone to enter a new dimension of a world where you have to fight, where you have to sacrifice all the comforts of our lives.”
Along with their 13-kilogram bike, featuring dual suspension and tire sealant—almost, almost ready for inhospitable terrain—the team carried two two-person tents (plus an emergency tent, which remained set up at base camp), very warm sleeping bags, high-altitude footwear specially designed for extremely low temperatures, and freeze-dried food. This is in addition to the filming equipment handled by Luca Putzer, a 20-year-old director and drone pilot who shares the same “humility and worldview.” “Mountains aren’t meant to be climbed with 15 people; they’re meant to share magical moments with people who think the same way we do.”
While half the world travels “in a very superficial way,” Andreas is among those who have decided to “do things that make sense, whether it’s political activism or climbing a mountain.” “At the office, I did things because my boss would say, ‘You have to do this and that.’ And often we say, ‘Oh, but that doesn’t make sense…’ You don’t have to do it. It’s very important to be free, not to have to listen to what the boss tells us. The more independent you can be, the freer you’ll be.”
In his backpack, he carries a weight “that was never a burden”—a Palestinian flag that he unfurls in the wind when he reaches the top of the world. Yet another adventure dedicated to the Palestinian people, the greatest inspiration of his life. “As I was climbing and suffering, I thought: ‘Andreas, think of those people, your friends in Palestine, the people in Gaza.’ And that gave me the strength to keep going. I don’t want people to think I went there to have fun and that I forgot about the genocide…”
Andreas Tonelli died on July 15, 2025, while cycling in the Dolomites, after falling 200 meters. He was 48 years old. As a tribute, Primitiva the article he had already written in its entirety—full of life and passion.
