MESSNER · Worlds Greatest Mountaineer

i only like to give the maximum in everything i do the maximum i have i can give well i think you revolutionize climbing by being a visionary i'm not perfect but i if i do something i do it best and that second and this many people are not made like this there aren't a few but i like this view he had this vision and these ideas about climbing in ways that people had never thought of before climbing everest without oxygen people thought that could not be done he's arguably the greatest climber of all time i think that the whole evolution in climbing has to do with the approach the mental approach to the impossible if we kill the impossible with technical equipment with sophisticated technical equipment climbing will be gone forever [Music] i know that it's possible to clamp everest this is with oxygen but nobody knows if it's possible to climb everest without oxygen in 1977 reinhold messner had already stunned the world by being the first to summit an 8 000 meter peak without using bottled oxygen when he flew up in a depressurized plane over everest without an oxygen mask for messner it was a survival test at 30 000 feet in preparation for two climbs that would cement his reputation as the greatest climber and the greatest revolutionary climber of modern times seeing albinism as a joke it's interesting to try this climb without oxygen i would never come here for drying everest with oxygen it's not important for me this is not a challenge for me i'm doing this albinism this climbing in high altitude for knowing myself it's not more important to explore the mountains exploring the mountains maybe necessary when hillary and denzin climbed the first time everest but in the meanwhile the whole mountains in himalaya and krakow also in patagonia they are explored and it's not important for the human world to explore them what's important to explore myself and if i put some important technical thing between me and the mountains i have never the possibility to know myself to explore myself messner did not view mountaineering as being about conquest he viewed it as seeking what he called the heart of adventure seeking the unknown in a world in which technology could too easily erase the unknown and extinguish adventure but he had barely gotten up on everest when the mountain unleashed a very powerful unknown of its owns and minus 40 degree temperatures while lightning slashed down the mountain around them messner returned 36 hours later after spending two nights in the storm two nights in the death zone without oxygen his climbing partner peter habler had descended alone back to camp two and had nearly gotten lost in the blizzard where he certainly would have died habler began to have second thoughts about climbing everest without bottled oxygen doubts made worse after he talked to a party that had just come back from the summit when the first summit party came back robert schauer told me that whenever he took he took his mask sometimes down sometimes you know his oxygen oxygen mask and he was completely he was dizzy you know he didn't know what to say he didn't know what to think and this made me thinking and i was fighting against it and i was almost ready and willing to use oxygen not to lose my brain to be normal to just go up and have a nice time sit maybe one hour there and took some nice taking take some nice pictures and i have only to tell him peter you have done this and this and this and this if i can do it also you can do it i'm sure now show them that you can do everest without oxygen so messner and habler set out knowing that severe altitude sickness brain seizures and hemorrhages and fatal blood clots were among the perils that climbers at far lesser altitudes often suffer brain damage even madness was not ruled out the expedition cameraman in fact was unable to continue forcing mesner himself to shoot this film of their historic ascent of everest [Music] reinhold got up the the hitler step first and it's a maybe the most exposed place on earth down to tibet and on the left-hand side of downtown nepal and i got up that part reinhold didn't believe me he was just filming and then i got up to him and he did continue [Music] within short time he reached the summit and he was sitting there beside the chinese pole and i i just remember seeing him and in the last moment i thought well we are going to make it and the pain became excruciating my first fear was that i was going blind this was quite bad but i was very lucky because on the way up i did the whole filming and also the photographing we had very high sun shining but above the clouds so the the sun came from the clouds and also from the sky and from the snow and i had my goggles almost down for filming photographing and on the summit i had no problems and i didn't feel anything on the way down and i climbed down normally and thinking maybe i got i lost my eye for the fact that i was in her attitude after a while we understood that should be is no blandness because the pain's there terrible next day i could see only a shadow of peter so we had not to go on a roll but he i also had to say peter stop because if i lose you i don't know where to go the world would compare them to sir edmund hillary and tenzing norgay but messner would describe this comparison their ambition was to stand on the summit mine was an adventure towards spiritual and ethical self-examination we both succeeded hillary with his summit and i with a new measure of myself two years later mesner would attempt to climb everest without bottled oxygen alone [Music] in 1984 the great german film director werner herzog made a film about messner entitled the dark low of the mountains in it mesner gave perhaps the clearest explanation of the revolution he brought to mountaineering a traditional expedition attempting to climb this mountain or both would have porters to transport a ton or two of equipment and supplies it would be made by a large number of members set up high altitude camps with many tents and with the climbers moving back and forth from tent to tent camp to camp would eventually form a pyramid with the strongest making it to the peak we on the other hand climb alpine style we use the rope if we have to to go down rock faces or to cross crevasses but for the most part we climb everything freestyle without rope i brought a revolution maybe which was only possible with the philosophy of the clean climbing which came in the same period from the yosemite valley i think that the philosophers tom frost royal robbins they in the same period understood we have to change something and they did it in the yosemite valley i did not either know that this existing then yosemite valley was not known in europe i did not know anything about royal robbins or tom frost or ivonne jonathan the heroes of this period and i did it here and i understood that it has to do with impossible quite early i understood if we destroy the impossible with technical aids so climbing will be gone because climbing is a metamorphosis in our head of the impossible and for having the infinite possibility to change the impossible in our mind only in our mind because outside is changing anything nothing is changing it will be over and the best climbers were always they were able to say this is possible everybody before said this is impossible but once somebody came and said this is possible this film about young climbers challenging the impossible in yosemite could have been made about messner and the dolomites five thousand miles away in northern italy in the 60s i began to do the big solar climbs in 67 but a few 68 and in 69 i was in my best form in rock and ice climbing in the alps and i did the most difficult rock climb of the alps solo without a rope and all the climbers they spoke badly about it is that you will be that in a few weeks and this is crazy what you're doing and maybe young people are following you and they will all die and the details in this summer the most difficult combined rocket dies route in the month again without the rope without anything and the quickest they needed three days and it was a rumor going on this route is so difficult that everybody will have a fall and i went up alone without the rope and i did it in seven hours i went up i climbed up like fishes are swimming and birds are flying i would be not at least dreaming about to do it today because my abilities are gone i'm i'm doing different things high altitude is a different thing there you need willpower you need a strong mental preparation but climbing it's it's not difficult like in the in the dolomites or somewhere or in yosemite valley the technical climbing may be easier in the himalayas but for mesner the psychological challenges were strikingly more important to him than the physical challenges he confronted when i did the solar sense on the himalaya peaks i had the necessity to show to myself that i'm able to do also what i did with my partners with my friends alone technically it's not more difficult especially in high altitude it's only a psychological request it's a question of mind and i needed a long time to learn to stay for weeks up there in the high places all by my own without being afraid especially for the fact that i am alone the solo climbing became a necessity for the fact i have problems to be alone it's not so easy for me to be alone for days in the mountains and in the 60s when i was a good rock climber fanatic rock climber i would say i was always understanding that it's very difficult for me to do these solo climbs i knew i can do them because i have the ability but it was quite impossible for me to climb a whole day and to sleep in the the wall and climb further next day because i was afraid in the night being there alone in some cave high up i was afraid and so it came this necessity in all my activities i did something alone solo climbing it's only possible if you are on your best of your of your physical stage mental stage and you feel i can do it if you are afraid you should not do it and i needed a long time to learn to do it because i had this small problem to to be in troubles being alone but not for the difficulties only for the fact that i had nobody to tell him okay we are great today we do it or looking in his eyes and understanding he understands it's quite dangerous what are doing so danger is only half if you divide danger with another one and if you divide your joy on the summit it's double joy and if you're alone you cannot divide anything you have to handle it by yourself not knowing where you go not knowing how the weather will be not knowing where you sleep you have to carry food you have to carry a tent you have to carry a sleeping bag you have to carry especially also burning material gasoline or gas to melt snow so you have a heavy heavy rucksack and you need a day if you need two days you have a heavier rucksack and if you go in in the wilderness in in the places where you don't know what's happening because it's a first ascent so maybe you calculate 10 days and you can imagine how heavy is the luxac and the snow is maybe deep no no trail there you have to do the trail and so it's a different thing and for this i say like krakow is saying i like him in his book into thin air climbing has to do with self-invention you invent gerud you invent the how you go up add to the psychological challenge of climbing alone the physical challenge of climbing without bottled oxygen and you understand the depth of his self-examination and the depth of his achievement i mean some people say they've done a solo climb of everest but there's been other people around there's a huge difference psychologically there's a big difference when you're completely alone and that's what he was trying to to see what was that like ed visters is the only american to have summited the six highest peaks in the world without using bottled oxygen climbing without oxygen is very very difficult it totally changes what happens at high altitude when you're climbing with oxygen you stay warmer you think more clearly you move faster without oxygen you really have to will yourself and force yourself to just keep moving at those altitudes and i think it's been shown that messner had relatively normal physiology he wasn't like this phenomenal physiological specimen but he had this mental drive that pushed him far beyond what he should have been able to do the passion for limits i think this is the best title for my activity passion for limits almost going a step further on the limit of the possible my personal limits when you're in the death zone above you know 24 000 feet your body is slowly kind of consuming itself so you're kind of climbing on borrowed time the lack of oxygen means you think slower you can't process as quickly you are slowly losing your mind and afterwards is coming back being in high altitude without oxygen for a long time really high up if you see somebody you know maybe this is this person you can see yourself thinking very very slowly it needs willpower to do a small sentence again your thought processes are slower your your motivation is depressed i mean just to go and put your boots on takes 20 minutes of thinking and then another half an hour of doing and and then you're like exhausted in cortina italy the climbing center of the dolomites guide mario de bona has just returned from summiting everest without oxygen the opposition in the summer of 1980 reinhold messner returned to everest to attempt the unthinkable climbing it solo without oxygen to the everest i had three weeks to acclimatize it was enough i was quite well acclimatized i made the first assault and at seven thousand meters the snow was so wet and it was so dangerous for our lunches the snow was right up to here up to above the knees and i was afraid for the avalanche so i went back and i did decide i will not stay on everest to acclimate us because it's too dangerous and i went north to tibet where the monsoon is not reaching and there i climbed smaller pigs only 7000 meter peaks to acclimatize i went back and on the middle of august the weather changed it became cold and quite good weather and so i decided now i go after two days of of cold weather because i know now the snow is getting hard now i started in the advanced base camp and a little bit after midnight i went very high up the first day up to seven eight this incredible very high up i had also very good conditions good snow conditions and from there it was much more difficult that the snow conditions were not so good and i needed a long day for 400 meters only also because i had to look for the route and not every time i was able to find it directly to go a little bit back left right speed is generally the key for high altitude climbing quicker you go up better it is because you cannot get high altitude sick but you have to climb down the same day at least halfway if you stay after climbing very quickly up high up it's quite surely the end on the way up i knew that i would find the summit because you go up it if it's going up it's going up so you go upwards but on the way down i needed my my foot prints otherwise i would not have the smallest chance to come back and it was slightly snowing and these clouds everywhere sometimes a hole i could see down to the to the glaciers and so i was looking back the footprints are still there otherwise on the way down it's dangerous but i could find them so i found my tent again so three days for going up and two days for going down five days i was very quick much quicker than i was thinking tom hornbine a member of the first american expedition to summit everest told outside magazine like copernicus mesner had conceived a whole new way of seeing his world he transformed mountaineering as we know it john krakauer called mesner's 1980 solo climb of everest a deed widely regarded as the greatest mountaineering feat of all time the climbing community when messner did the solo climb of everest thought that you know he was the most phenomenal climber of all time i mean he proved it people knew he was phenomenal up until that point but this really set it in stone here's something that this guy did that probably will never be done again or could not be done again it was there that he put it all together and i i think that solo ascent of everest was one of the greatest achievements of all time messner would go on to be the first climber to summon all 14 of the world's 8 000 meter peaks without using bottled oxygen messner grew up in the village of ilnos in the south tyrol where he and his brother gunther began climbing together from early childhood we were a group of brothers climbers friends and we did the most craziest things in the in the alps together and we both with climbing we ran also away from this narrow dark south herolian mountain world it was not a nice world in which we came up my father coming home from the war and being unhappy with most of the germans understandably he was not a german he was in italian this south terrorist german-speaking italians 86 percent of the south cerealians voted for hitler they were willing to leave this home place this beautiful country and to go north east incredible but anyway they decided so they became all germans and most of them they were thinking they do something good positive and on the end they were disparate they lost their young years they knew that they did wrong they knew it was the most terrible political system ever and i think also that my father brought us to clamp he was a climber before the world war not a good one but he was able to clamp with a few other guys in the same valley they died in the war he was alone after the war so he had no nobody was to climb this and he to forget the war to remember only the positive side of the 30s of the climbing period he went with us to climb but we had not his biography we had another biography you have to imagine we had no car we had bicycles later in the valley there was no football place no not either a swimming pool i didn't learn to swim up to now no swimming pool in the whole valley so we had only the trees and the mountains and we had this possibility to climb the mountains and the father let us go when i did my first climbs i was especially amazed and fascinated by the fact that i could see a much bigger world living in a narrow valley and seeing the trees and the rocks above and seeing a little bit of the sky where the clouds came and they disappeared a few minutes later this was my world and standing the first time as a five-year-old child on a 3000 meter peak and seeing a huge world a new cousin i understand this is great the world is great but there was a horizon against somewhere and i was beginning to seek to know what's behind the next horizon messner will tell you he survived a lifetime on the cutting edge of climbing because of instincts learned in the dolomites from the age of five i am not better and not weaker and not more intelligent than the others they are much better climbers than me but i had 15 years between 5 and 20 where i could approach easily naively the mountains and then i learned everything i had this instinct which i got as a small boy and i think this is the only thing i have more than the others that i was lucky lucky they pulled me in the mountains and i became a mountain climber this way and not only that i was liking to go to clamp i was so fascinated by climbing i was dreaming about climbing with eight years old he's nine years old i was seeking the whole winter for the summer times to go again up to this this rocks and when we were fifteen sixteenths we did the first faster sense really first essence new lines he and his brother gunter climbed together from their earliest childhood but gunter's death on their first himalayan climb has haunted mesner all his life the naga barbara situation of 70 the worst i had in my life i think that if thousand climbers would be in in the same trap maybe one would escape if you take the thousand best climbers of all times if i would be in again in the same trap i would not survive because i had my chance and i i survived on july 27 1970 reinhold and gunter achieved the seemingly impossible summit of the rupaul face of 26 600 foot nanga parbat in pakistan the highest rock and ice wall in the world but gunter suffered severe altitude sickness and during their descent he was swept away by an avalanche after reinhold had left him to search for a viable root down do you suppose that because you two brothers were so close your brother might have died in your place and might that have given you a different attitude towards death i have a different attitude towards death in general because of mountain climbing and also perhaps because of my brother's death even though i still have the feeling that he's still alive and not just in dreams but say when i look at the mountains we climb together and that welded us together so intensely that we can never be separated again i don't have the feeling that he died in my place i have the feeling that i myself died on that expedition how did you break the news to your mother [Music] i needed long years to not to digest to live with the fact that my brother died on nanga parvati is of my responsibility my co-responsibility surely this purpose also is and still now i'm living with it but i'm living in in harmony with it i understand it and it's the fact and my brother is still living with me i speak sometimes and half sleeping with him and i imagine what he would do now what we would do together maybe not yes know anything about messner and you're not surprised to learn that he returned to nanga parvat 8 years later to make his first solo attempt on an 8 000 meter peak he did it alone on a very difficult route and also it was an idea he had and had tried to do several times and he went any any at some points and felt well i don't have the mental strength to do this and he'd go home and then he went again and he failed and he went home i don't know that everybody realizes i mean i don't even know how many times he tried each peak before he got up the thing that makes him good is his judgment he's got so much experience he's been in the mountains so much and he's tried these peaks so many times that he's got good judgment and that allowed him to eventually get up him and also to get up him and still be alive he finally i think on the third trip to nanga parbat he had his act together mentally and he did this climb so that's probably why it's something he had thought about for years and he finally did it if i speak about history there is no doubt this is sir ernest shackleton he's my hero he was the greatest of the adventurer of the modern times not speaking about the grease times in the roman times but i don't like the classical heroes i like much more uh broken down uh people like shackleton he never succeeded but how he failed is great from the modern people i think the most important mountaineer of the last 50 years is responding no doubt he did so many things in a long period between the 50s up to the last years he's still climbing very well i'm of an older generation and i mean quite honestly i don't put myself remotely in the same class as messenger i mean i think he's arguably the greatest climber of all time [Music] [Music] i look for beautiful places and this i bought many years ago 20 years ago i bought it for 30 000 the whole place nobody was willing to buy it everybody was thinking this is breaking down these castles had no value and i got it and i needed a few years and i put in all my money in this period to restore it and afterwards it became my home place messner's castle is located in northern italy on the eastern edge of the dolomites outside of the lovely town of murano known for its healing mineral springs when my children had to go to school we decided my wife and myself we will move to merano in the winter time in the school months for 10 months that they can go school nearby and in this moment i decided by myself to handle this castle i will open it to the public and it should be self-sufficient and it was self-sufficient the first year it's not costing me anything [Music] so i collected from all [Music] one focus of mesner's life now lies across the dolomites near the famous ski and rock climbing capital of italy cortina on a mountain pass called monte reit in this period of my life i would like to bring home the heritage of mountaineering of climbing this was a fortification in the first world war built by the italians and afterwards nobody came anymore here up to 89 when i came and i found this and this is a good place for a dolomite museum now i think the people they need more background informations but not only scientific information they need specially emotions to understand why the mountains are important what are the values of the mountains like i will speak about this islands about the the emptiness and these values are lost inside in the museum you see a different phase of the mountains and with this i hope that the people are going out of the museum and their eye changed and they will go and see the mountains in a different way and their respect for them will go this glass houses are crystals and the architect vacher who is the architect of this museum had the idea to change these crystals and they should remember also that we are in the mountains and around this museum we have 360 degrees of the most beautiful mountains of the dolomites which are the most beautiful mountains of the world foreign [Music] so [Music] [Music] with this new approach this is more than a book it's it's a different approach than a book in a book i can tell stories people can read it or not read it but here they are forced to have emotions and i will combine this every every year new the combination i'm only the combiner i'm not an artist i'm not able to do a painting i'm not able to do music with the combination i found out that the people are going in and they they go out and they say i understand now i know now but they know with their heart and not this their head you know there is a film film done in the 30s with the title the call of the mountains but i'm not believing that mountains are calling nuns are silent and quiet and this is the arena of the loneliness what is up there reinhold hear you sit naked before us vulnerable i'd like to ask you a very simple question and just as naked what was the point of all this i don't know i've never asked myself why i do it that goes for the other crazy things i've done in my life i wouldn't know the answer i have the feeling every now and then that i can write on those large rock faces that are three or four thousand meters high like a teacher writes on a blackboard with chalk but i don't just write lines imaginary lines i live those lines i also have the feeling that afterwards those lines are still there even if i'm the only one who can feel them see them because i lived them and nobody else will ever be able to see them but they're there and they'll be there for all time messner gave a similar description of climbing 19 years later a climb is only there for me if i climb up a wall there is a line before during and afterwards and this line is really done but afterwards you see nothing on the wall i see in my inner eye my line this is a huge design maybe the biggest paintings we do on the high high faces on akon cargo south face on every south west place but we la we leave nothing we leave really nothing because the next generation can come and they don't see a line on everest and on nanga barber and so on and i think that the biggest possibility on this world we have is to create the nothing not to create something they're nothing so the next generations they have the world still empty and they can fill it up but if they again leave nothing forever human beings are forced to be creative and to do something to bring them in with all their abilities and so they have a strong sense in living if you are there and the whole world is prepared it's much more important to have nothing and to to create something but if we create something real on the end the next generations can do nothing because everything is done and i think we invent the world in each generation again and we we live it step by step the life is lived step by step only this moment during doing the step the the way is there afterwards there is nothing the wind is bringing away my footprints and we don't never know exactly where this waste is bringing us the intersection of life and adventure is never far away in a conversation with reinhold messner a profession you learn you learn in school you learn in university and afterwards you handle it and you get maybe also diploma and you can work with it adventuring is totally different you can only learn it doing it and you are not never a professional because you never know everything because you need in adventure the unknown and if there is unknown you cannot know to handle it so you are faced in each adventure again with new problems and on the spot you have to decide and do it to survive to die to handle it and for this is only [Music] a condition you know you you are in a in a adventure condition you have the heart of an adventurer during doing it i am having a huge problem from all these climbers of this generation i came out as a known person in a large public in a larger public and not all of them but many of them after a while understood they have only one chance to compete to use me it's very easy to use me in in a bed and in a good way and most of them they became very weak when a ghostwriter came or a manager came and said let me handle it i handle your person i make you famous i make you rich we do it selling you a figure peter figger fuchsias figure whoever on the shoulders of messner when peter habler published his account of their 1978 everest climb he described mesner as having completely broken down after his snow blindness set in he was completely confused hebler wrote and was suffering hallucinations completely helpless and reliant on my guidance i can carry many people but it's not possible if i carry them and they [ __ ] on me and this is happening normally they never climbed together again and mesner still has not forgiven him i try to be very very truthful also to myself so i'm telling things which many people do not they don't like to read i'm not here for telling what the people like to hear or to to listen to or to read and telling what's my experience what is my view i'm very critical with the climbing scene because i see that many things i don't like so as i say it there is no heroic man on this world we are all normal people and our possibilities are very very small and because our possibilities are very small we are running 100 meters in the best of the world in nine seconds and something there are horses there going double earthquake the polar bears they can cross the arctic ocean without attempted sleeping breakfast after cooker without gps without anything they are much better than we are the the certain animals can climb up vertical overhanging walls without anything [Music] they go up we are really not able to do any great thing and for this fact because we are not weak our skin is not thick we have no long hairs against the cold our lungs are nothing there are birds that can fly at 11 000 meters in a huge velocity because their lungs are able to handle it we are not able to handle 8000 meters i mean for a few hours but maximum we are really not a great build but because we are so big in many sites we invented our intelligence especially because we were afraid a hundred thousand years ago two hundred thousand years ago when the lions and the tigers have polar bears came and being said to learn to handle it and the fires all over so they learned to become intelligent slowly through fear and the fact that they were not intelligent and not able in in an animalistic way and with the intelligence we are able to handle everything and we became the strongest group of animals on this award there is no stronger reality than mountains of wilderness generally this is reality the storm the rockfall the the difficult ground but going to everest or going also on a hill like this you see and you feel you smell the danger and this is there the danger is always there you can hear it when when is lightning is coming and you learn quite quickly in your life as a small boy or as a small girl if you go in in wilderness a few steps again a few steps back how to handle it and this is great i think that up to my last days i will go if the time is there out of the mountains out to the wilderness to be in reality in the real reality it's very strange that i'm seeking for getting older i know that it's it's not so easy to be old still now i have only a few problems with one leg and my memory is not anymore like it was before so i feel the fact that i'm getting older and older but getting older means also to get freer it's not more necessary to go into an expedition to have a success i did everything what i had to do there is no famous climbers on the wall because climbing is a activity which nobody is following is not football or rugby or gold for tennis we are quite unknown but it was my way to order the world for myself and it was my way to express myself i needed the possibility to express myself not these words also was going up a rock wall and we are on the world more or less to express ourselves and to order our own world and more we cannot do in this life it's not important what we have at the end it's something important what we have done but not what we have and i am still functioning this way i'm willing to uh spend everything for a project all my money all my time all my energy all my enthusiasm to do it and afterwards i can say it was not necessary but it was great [Music] you

Channel: David Snow

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Keywords: Reinhold, Messner, Climbing, mount everest, mountain, mountaineering, interview, reinhold messner, greatest mountaineer, reinhold messner brother, reinhold messner climber, reinhold messner mountaineer, reinhold messner documentary, reinhold messner world records, reinghold messner everest, first climber to summit everest without oxygen, best climber in the world, climbing everest without oxygen, reinhold mesnner film, messner videos, messner documentary, reinhold messner everest

Id: WBTKM7ByCVs

Length: 45min 0sec (2700 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 09 2021