He authored many mountaineering books and spent the remainder of his career travelling off the beaten track as a reporter for the Italian magazine Epoca.

This last route had been climbed for the first time in 1938 by famous climber Riccardo Cassin and consists of 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) of rock-climbing with UIAA difficulty of IV and V and one step of VI+.

[citation needed] In February 1953, together with Carlo Mauri he made the first winter ascent of the north face of the legendary Cima Ovest di Lavaredo.

However, years after the expedition Bonatti found himself accused and at the center of a bitter controversy based on conflicting accounts of events that occurred during the ascent.

53 years later, the Italian Alpine Club officially recognize that both Lacedelli and Compagnoni lied in their account of the ascent and that Bonatti's version of the facts was accurate.

Along with Hunza climber Amir Mehdi, Bonatti had the task to carry oxygen cylinders up to Lacedelli and Compagnoni at Camp IX for a summit attempt.

Bonatti saw that Mehdi was in no condition to climb further or make a return to Camp VIII and was reluctantly forced to endure an open bivouac without a tent or sleeping bag at 8,100 metres (26,600 ft) and −50 °C (−58 °F).

Bonatti was in the best physical condition of all the climbers and the natural choice to make the summit attempt, but Ardito Desio selected Lacedelli and Compagnoni.

Although the Bonatti-Mehdi forced bivouac was not anticipated, Compagnoni intended to discourage Bonatti from reaching the tent and participating in the final summit climb.

On the morning of 31 July, after Bonatti and Mehdi had already begun their descent to the safety of Camp VIII, Compagnoni and Lacedelli retrieved the oxygen cylinders left at the bivouac site and reached the summit of K2 at 6.10pm.

[9] In 2007, the Italian Alpine Club published a revised official account, entitled K2 – Una storia finita, that accepted Bonatti's version of events as completely accurate.

[citation needed] Bonatti tried to organize a solo ascent of K2 without oxygen the following year to put the record straight but could not get the backing, so he retreated to Courmayeur, where he became a mountain guide in 1954.

[citation needed] Many years later, Bonatti would write: Until the conquest of K2, I had always felt a great affinity and trust for other men, but after what happened in 1954 I came to mistrust people.

[10]In the August 1955, after two attempts frustrated by the weather, he managed to solo climb a new route on the south-west pillar of the Aiguille du Dru in the Mont Blanc Group.

[12] After five days of climbing on a vertical rock offering very limited protection, Bonatti found himself stalled and faced with an impassable overhanging section.

In order to overcome long vertical sections and several overhangs, Bonatti had to adapt the techniques of aid climbing to the granitic rock formations of the Dru.

In December 1956, together with his partner Silvano Gheser, Bonatti attempted a winter ascent of the Pear Route on the Brenva side of Monte Blanc.

During the approach they met two climbers, the French Jean Vincendon and the Belgian François Henry, en route to the nearby Brenva Spur, a climb of medium difficulty.

Bonatti decided to take the second option, the safest but also the longest and more painful because it required the four men to gain 500 metres (1,600 ft) of elevation in a winter storm.

Bonatti pushed the men to climb as fast as possible because he realized time was limited; Gheser's feet and hands were suffering from severe frostbite (later in the valley he would have some fingers amputated).

Vincendon and Henry, in the meantime, were totally exhausted and frostbitten and waited in the crevasse to be rescued, but the bad weather prevented a successful operation.

On 9 March 1961, Bonatti climbed together with Gigi Panei and made the first winter ascent of the Via della Sentinella Rossa, a classic route on the Brenva side of Mont Blanc in a record time of 11 hours from the bivouac of La Fourche.

In January 1958 Bonatti was in Patagonia, (Argentina), to participate in a mixed Italian-Argentinian expedition in the glaciated mountains of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field.

In the summer of 1961 Walter Bonatti, Andrea Oggioni, and Roberto Gallieni decided to climb the Central Pillar of Frêney, an unclimbed peak of the Mont Blanc Group.

In 2002, French President Jacques Chirac awarded Bonatti the National Order of the Legion of Honor for the courage, determination, and altruism he demonstrated in trying to save his fellow climbers.

On 29 August 1961 Chris Bonington, Ian Clough, Don Whillans and Jan Długosz were the first to solve what was called the "Last Great Problem of the Alps’.

It is classified as ED alpine grade and consists of 1,100 metres (3,600 ft) of rock-climbing rated UIAA VI, several sections of mixed ground quoted M6 (vertical to overhanging with difficult dry tooling) and with some pitches of A2 aid climbing.

Bonatti, aged 81, died alone at a private clinic where the hospital management would not allow his partner of more than 30 years to spend the last minutes of his life together because the two were not married.

Reinhold Messner shared Bonatti's approach and stated in the book The Murder of the Impossible that "Expansion bolts contribute to the decline of alpinism".

In his book The Mountains of My Life Walter Bonatti writes: For me, the value of a climb is the sum of three inseparable elements, all equally important: aesthetics, history, and ethics.