Edi Koblmüller on the summit of Cho Oyu in 1978

Only the spouses were in the know. The three Austrians Edi Koblmüller, Alois Furtner and Gerhard Haberl as well as the two Germans Herbert Spousta and Peter von Gizycki had agreed on strict secrecy. After all, the eight-thousander Cho Oyu was not open to climbers in Nepal in 1978. So the five climbers disguised themselves as trekking tourists and hiked to Gokyo. Their actual destination was a few kilometers behind: the 3,000-meter-high Southeast Face of the 8,188-meter-high Cho Oyu. “I was obsessed with this idea,” Alois Furtner, who reached the summit with Koblmüller on 27 October 1978, writes to me. The others turned around about 200 meters below the summit. “Friends of ours later called it a ‘century adventure’. Today I know that it was a very courageous undertaking,” recalls the now 70-year-old Furtner. “At that time I was so determined and focused that it had to happen. Just as a pregnant woman has to give birth to her child, I had to realize this plan in a similar way. And I succeeded.”

Sleeping in snow caves

In the Southeast Face

A picture of the upper part of the wall in a book by Reinhold Messner had inspired the quintet. The mountaineers had no more information. First, they carried about 250 kilograms of equipment from Gokyo to the base camp at 5,100 meters. Koblmüller, Furtner and von Gizycki ascended to an altitude of 6,700 meters at the foot of the summit wall. There they deposited a tent with equipment and descended again. On 22 October the five mountaineers started their summit attempt. They climbed in “pure Alpine style”, Furtner says. “We had no Sherpas on the mountain, no supplies, no bottled oxygen, no communication with the outside world, we were completely on our own. There was also no doctor. We were not allowed to make any mistakes,” says Alois. “Food, petrol, fixed ropes were reduced to a minimum. We only used tents in the lower part of the wall. In the summit wall we dug out snow caves to reduce weight.”

Like Brocken spectres

The summit wall demanded everything from climbers. Their route led over an ice pillar in the middle of the wall, which was up to 70 degrees steep. In the morning of the summit day the thermometer showed minus 40 degrees Celsius. Haberl got frostbite at his fingertips, which finally cost him the summit. Furtner and Koblmüller reached the highest point shortly before sunset. “We both knew that we had achieved something great,” recalls Alois. “I had four turquoise stones around my neck. I pressed one of them into the snow of the ‘Turquoise Goddess’ (that’s the translation of Cho Oyu) at the summit in return for good luck. I remember one thing – it was mythical: The setting sun enlarged our shadows and threw them onto the wall of fog in the direction of Everest, it was like Brocken spectres.”

Five years entry ban

Nepalese side of Cho Oyu (Southeast Face on the right)

The descent turned into a race against time. At 6,600 meters the five mountaineers were snowed in. Two nights and a complete day they crowded together in a tent, food was running out. The quintet digged their way down to the valley through partly breast-high snow and finally reached the base camp on 1 November, ten days after setting off for their summit push. One day later they were back in Gokyo. Because they had climbed Cho Oyu without a permit, the Nepalese authorities punished the climbers with a five-year travel ban. “At that time our ascent virtually disappeared,” reports Furtner. “In the same year, Messner and Habeler climbed Everest without bottled oxygen – that was the world sensation.”

“The adventure of my life”

Alois Furtner

To date, the route via the Southeast Face of Cho Oyu, completed by Furtner and Koblmüller (who froze to death in a snowstorm in Georgia in 2015), has not been repeated. That actually says it all about its degree of difficulty. “Looking back, I’m still deeply moved by how we climbed the wall back then. There were so many obstacles on the way to the summit and also on our way back. And yet we all arrived at the base camp relatively unharmed,” says Alois Furtner. “It was the adventure of my life, and the summit picture was the photo of my life.”

The Cho Oyu pioneer takes a critical view of today’s Himalayan mountaineering. “Gokyo becomes a Zermatt in the Himalayas, the peaks are climbed in hundreds and the ascents are broadcasted live. I lean back calmly and think of our happy ascent with a feeling of well-being,” says Alois. “I am also very pleased that Reinhold Messner, in his Cho Oyu book, classifies our ascent as a ‘milestone in climbing great Himalayan walls’. I accept this compliment gratefully.”

P.S.: Yes, yes, I know, the anniversary was two months ago – but 40 years ago is still true.

Miss Hawley in her home in Kathmandu (in 2016)

The legendary chronicler of Himalayan moutaineering has passed away. “I am very saddened to announce that after a short battle in hospital, Elizabeth Hawley has left us”, the German journalist and climber Billi Bierling informed. “Personally, I cannot put it into words how much this amazing woman has meant to me, how much she has taught me and how much I will miss her in my life.” Elizabeth Hawley was 94 years old when she died. Two years ago, she had handed over the work on her chronicle “Himalayan Database” to Billi.

Never on a high mountain

Miss Hawley had lived in Kathmandu since 1960. At the beginning the American worked for the news agency Reuters. “At that time mountaineering was becoming a very important part of a foreign correspondent’s job in Nepal”, Hawley recalled when I visited her at her home in the capital of Nepal in 2016. From Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first ascenders of Mount Everest, through to the clients of commercial expeditions – the chronicler had met them all. The highest mountain she herself ever climbed was only about 1,000 meters high, the old lady told me, “in Vermont in New England. It was just a walk. A mountain? No, it was like the hills around Kathmandu.” Nevertheless, again and again the American was able to unmask climbers as liars who previously had claimed to have scaled eight-thousanders or other high mountains in Nepal.

“Just a chronicler”

R.I.P.

This was the reason for getting nicknames like “Miss Marple of Kathmandu” or “Sherlock Holmes of the mountains”. “Actually I never heard any of them, you can keep them,” Miss Hawley told me: “There was a book and a documentary film about me called ‘keeper of the mountains’. I don’t know that I keep them. I am just a chronicler.”

Tomek Mackiewicz on Nanga Parbat

Do you already have aching muscles from keeping fingers crossed? Your pain could become even stronger. Because the summit bid of the Pole Tomek Mackiewicz and the Frenchwoman Elisabeth Revol that was expected already for Sunday is delayed. “We are in Camp 3, (it’s) windy (with speeds of)  about 100 km/h,” Tomek is quoted today on his Facebook page. “Tomorrow Camp 4, summit push (on) 25 January. Good weather (is expected for) that day.” In fact, the weather forecast for the summit at 8,125 meters predicts for Thursday the lowest wind speeds this week: between 15 and 25 km/h. Assuming this forecast is correct, it will be almost calm, however with minus 42 degrees Celsius quite cold, some clouds are expected. Mackiewicz and Revol climb without bottled oxygen.

Urubko first climber in Camp 2

K2

Meanwhile, the climbers of the Polish winter expedition are making progress on K2. According to the Facebook page “Polski Himalaim Zimowy 2016-2020” (Polish winter climbing in the Himalayas 2016-2020), Denis Urubko has reached Camp 2 on the Cesen route at 6,300 meters and will spend the night there. Artur Malek and Marek Chmielarski are in Camp 1 at 5,900 meters, it says. K2, with 8,611 m the second highest mountain on earth, is the only eight-thousander that has never been scaled in winter so far.

After Pumori now Everest

On Mount Everest the Spaniard Alex Txikon, the Pakistani Muhammad Ali “Sadpara” and the two Nepalese Nuri Sherpa and Temba Bhote returned from their ascent of the 7161-meter-high Pumori – in their backpacks this small, but nice video:

This winter, Txikon and Ali, two of the three first winter ascenders of Nanga Parbat in 2016, want to reach the summit of Everest at 8,850 meters without breathing masks.

After having met the “Third Man” on Putha Hiunchuli (in 2011)

I have experienced it myself. It happened in fall 2011 during my failed summit attempt on the 7,246-meter-high Putha Hiunchuli in western Nepal, somewhere above 7,000 meters. My teammates were out of reach, I was fighting my way up alone, physically and mentally at the limit. “Please!,” I suddenly heard Pemba Nuru, one of our two Climbing Sherpas, say behind me. “Please what?,” I asked and turned around. But nobody was there. Strange. Scientists call the phenomenon the “Third Man”. Descriptions of such hallucinations abound in expedition reports from the highest mountains in the world. Psychiatrists of the Medical University of Innsbruck and emergency physicians of the private research center “Eurac Research” in Bolzano have now examined about 80 such descriptions from alpine literature and discovered, according to their own information, a new disease: the “isolated high-altitude psychosis”.

Seven out of eight

So far, high altitude physicians have assumed that organic causes are responsible when altitude climbers suddenly see and hear people or perceive odors that are actually not there. The researchers from Austria and South Tyrol, however, found out that “there is a group of symptoms which are purely psychotic, that is, they are related to altitude but not to a high-altitude cerebral edema or other organic factors such as dehydration, infections or organic diseases”, explains Hermann Brugger, head of the Institute for Alpine Emergency Medicine in Bolzano. Brugger had found in an earlier study that seven out of eight world-class climbers who reached altitudes above 8,500 meters without bottled oxygen had hallucinatory experiences.

Almost jumped

Dhaulagiri

The good news of the new study: The pure psychoses in high altitude are only temporary and do not leave any consequential damage. The bad news: On the mountain, they can endanger the climbers. Thus the Slovene Iztok Tomazin, one of the authors of the study, describes a hallucination he himself had during a summit attempt on the eight-thousander Dhaulagiri in December 1987. Several (fancy) mountain guides had advised him to jump down the East Face telling him that in few seconds he would be on a flat, safe place 2,000 meters lower and this would solve all his problems. “I almost jumped and this would have meant death with a 100% chance,” writes Tomazin. But then he reflected and made a test: He jumped only two meters deep to a small ledge. The pain he suffered opened his eyes, that maybe it would not be such a good idea to jump down the whole wall.

Further research in Nepal

“There are probably unreported cases of accidents and deaths due to psychosis,” says emergency physician Brugger, adding that therefore it is important to inform extreme climbers about the possibility that hallucinations can occur. In addition, they should be given strategies on how to deal with the “Third Man” without being endangered, says Katharina Hüfner, psychiatrist at the Medical University of Innsbruck. Next spring, the scientists want to continue their research along with Nepalese doctors in the Himalayas. Among other things, they want to find out how often these psychoses occur at high altitude. “The highest mountains in the world are incredibly beautiful,” says Hermann Burger. “We just did not know that they can drive us mad.”

Mick Fowler

First I had to swallow. He has cancer? That cannot be for real. “For us in the ‘Club of 50+’, people like Mick Fowler are acting like an antidepressant,” I once wrote about the British extreme climber. In my view, the now 61-year-old proves that true adventure knows no age limits.  Year after year, Mick sets out to remote Himalayan regions to enter unexplored climbing terrain. And with great success: Mick has been awarded the Piolet d’Or, the “Oscar of the Climbers”, already three times. Again this year, he had planned another first ascent in the Indian Himalayas, as in 2016 with his compatriot Victor Saunders, another “oldie”, aged 67. But then, a few months ago, Fowler received the devastating diagnosis: “‘You have cancer’ was both a shock and a relief,” Mick writes looking back. “The uncertainty was over. No more dithering. The trip would have to be cancelled. But what would lie ahead?”

Very odd

Mick during the chemotherapy

It began when Mick noticed one or two unusual coloured faeces and a little weight loss. However, the climber actually felt fitter and healthier than for some time. In addition, he had to organize the expedition. “I had slipped comfortably into a ‘monitor the situation’ mindset,” Mick writes. It was his wife Nicki who urged him not to treat these things lightly and to go to the doctor. A colonoscopy and a biopsy were made. The result: Fowler suffered from colon cancer. “I felt well but the doctors told me I was very ill,” Mick recalls. “But they also told me that if all went according to plan then in six weeks time they would class me as well (all cancer cells wiped out) but I would feel ill (after radiotherapy and chemotherapy). It all felt very odd.”

Positive prognosis

Fowler (r.) and Saunders on the summit of the 6000er Sersank (in 2016)

The treatment in a hospital in Sheffield is now behind Fowler. “I would like to reassure those that ask if I am about to die that I am not,” Mick writes. “The prognosis is positive and Victor and I are getting on with re-arranging our Himalayan trip for 2018.” Fowler has started out to gently running and climbing. Mick recommends everyone to take care of their own body: “And get straight down to the doctor if you sense anything odd going on. Nothing (even a Himalayan trip) is more important.” In addition, there is the offer of regular cancer screening that everyone can and should use. After all, climbers do not have an anti-cancer gene, this can happen to any of us. All the best, Mick! I keep my fingers crossed.

P.S. I would like to point out once again the initiative “Outdoor against Cancer” (OAC) founded by the German journalist and mountaineer Petra Thaller. It offers outdoor activities for cancer patients. “I just realized that my psyche benefitted from my sporting activities,” Petra told me at the trade fair ISPO in Munich last February. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of 2014 after an expedition to the Carstensz Pyramid in Papua New Guinea.

Yeti skull in Khumjung Monastery

As a child, everyone has probably experienced this phase. Actually, you know that Santa Claus does not exist and that it’s your parents who put the presents under the tree. And yet you are repressing this fact – simply because Santa is part of the party. Something like that happens to me with the yeti. Actually, I do not believe that this huge mountain monster on two legs really exists, however, for me, the myth and the countless legends about the abominable snowman are simply part of the Himalayas. Therefore, I find it – quite frankly – rather silly that American scientists from the University of Buffalo now stand up and say: The yeti is actually a bear.

Bear hair and dog tooth

Himalayan brown bear

They studied 24 samples that had been attributed to yetis and stored in various monasteries and museums or collected on trips to Pakistan – including bones, hair and faeces – and compared them to the DNA of known species. The result: Almost all of them could be assigned to bears: Himalayan brown bear, Tibetan brown bear, Continental Eurasian brown bear and Asian black bear. Only one alleged yeti tooth from one of the Messner Mountain Museums turned out to be from a dog. Reinhold Messner feels confirmed – not because of the dog tooth, but because of the bear remains. After all, he himself had written a yeti book (and earned good money) almost 20 years ago, exposing the mountain monster as a brown bear.

Three dead yaks

Machhermo Peak

Whether in Tibet, Nepal or Bhutan, throughout the Himalayas, stories about yetis, attacking yak herds and shepherds or even abducting people, have been handed down for centuries. Allegedly there was an incident in the Everest region even in 1974: Lhakpa Doma Sherpa claimed she had been attacked by a five feet tall (or rather small) yeti when she had been guarding her yak herd in the Gokyo Valley. The yeti had pulled out her braids and torn her dress, said the then 19-year-old Sherpani. Just because she had played possum, she had survived, Lhakpa said, adding that the yeti had killed three yaks.

Laughing with erect neck hair

Yeti tracks? (found by the British climber Frank Smythe in 1937)

The incident is even noted on my 2000 National Geographic trekking map, which I still used last year while hiking through the Gokyo Valley. When we passed the alleged or real site of the yeti attack near the 4470-meter-high village of Machhermo, I alerted my son and our guide about the possible danger. We laughed – and yet there was just that little bit of uncertainty that could briefly make the hair on your neck stand on end: Did it happen that way after all?

The Yeti is alive!

Yeti (bear) bone from a cave in Tibet

If you read carefully, even the US scientists are keeping a  little back door open when they conclude their study as “strongly suggesting that the biological basis of the yeti legend is local brown and black bears.” The shadow of a doubt remains.  Maybe people just offered bear hair or bones as yeti relics because the real abominable snowmen were too strong and smart to wangle them out of it. The Yeti is alive – like Santa!

Oswald Oelz

“I will climb until I am dead,” says Oswald Oelz, sitting opposite me recently at the International Mountain Summit in Bressanone. The 73-year-old native of Austria lives as a retiree in an old farmhouse in the Zurich Oberland region in Switzerland. “I have a farm with sheep, parrots, ducks, geese, chickens. I write, read a lot, climb. And I travel around the world.” Oswald called “Bulle” Oelz scaled Mount Everest in 1978, on the same expedition, during which Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler climbed the highest mountain on earth for the first time without bottled oxygen. Oelz succeeded first ascents in the Alps, in Alaska, Jordan and Oman. Until 2006 he worked as chief physician at the “Triemli hospital” in Zurich. The professor also researched in the field of high altitude medicine.

Oswald Oelz, you are a mountaineer and a doctor, you have got to know both worlds. Time and again, there are fatalities in the high mountains due to high altitude cerebral or pulmonary edema. Has the climbing community learned nothing over the past decades?

The climbing community has learned nothing insofar as they still climb up to altitudes where a human being doesn’t really belong. Above 5,300 meters, man is not able to survive in the long run. Nevertheless, he goes up there. This is a charm, a thrill. If he is sufficiently acclimatized, he can stay up there for a shorter or longer time. The problem is that, on the one hand, people are willing to ascent who are less fit for high altitude and, on the other hand, they climb too fast too high. The typical example is Kilimanjaro, where you climb up to almost 6,000 meters within five days or even less. There is a very high death rate. Per year about twenty so-called climbers die. That is kept strictly under lock by the government.

Oelz on the summit of Mount Everest

On Everest, reportedly two-thirds of the summit aspirants are prescribed performance enhancing drugs to increase their chances of summit success. Who is responsible for doping on the mountain, the climbers themselves or rather the doctors who hand over these drugs to them?

I have no idea to what extend climbers are doped on Everest. But I have no doubt that there are quite a lot using the “three D”: Diamox, Dexamethasone and Dexedrine. The mountaineers take Diamox for a long time, then Dexamethasone, a cortisone preparation, during the ascent and finally, to mobilize the last resources, Dextroamphetamine – a poison which was given to the Stuka pilots in the Second World War to make them more aggressive. In the history of alpinism, many climbers have died as a consequence of taking these amphetamines on Nanga Parbat and other mountains because they pushed themselves beyond their limits. Obviously this medication is prescribed by doctors. On the other hand, these drugs are also available illegally. Today you can get everything you want provided that you pay for it.

Actually, Diamox and Dexamethasone is emergency medicine.

This is certainly also a cause of the problem. I think Diamox is the most harmless of these. If someone makes this brutal ascent of Kilimanjaro within five days up and down, he is almost certainly a candidate for high altitude sickness. This can be avoided to a great extent by taking Diamox. It has few side effects. The beer tastes horrible, which is the worst side effect. You have to drink a little more water because it has a diuretic effect. But otherwise I personally recommend Diamox, if someone who wants to climb Kilimanjaro and has problems with high altitude asks me.

Climbing in Jordan

You were on top of Mount Everest in 1978, along with Reinhard Karl (Karl was the first German on Everest, he died in an ice avalanche on Cho Oyu in 1982). Four years later you suffered from a high altitude cerebral edema at Cho Oyu almost killing you. How can this be explained? You really had to assume that you can handle high altitude well.

I was not able to bear high altitude as good as, for example, Reinhold Messner but quite properly, when I had acclimatized. But I always had this time pressure. I was working in the hospital. I wanted to get as high as I could as quickly as I could in the few days I had left for mountaineering. In 1982, I had a severe high altitude cerebral edema. In 1985, on Makalu, we moved within nine days from Zurich up to 7,000 meters. There I had a life-threatening high altitude pulmonary edema. I would have died if I had not tried for the first time a therapy which then worked. I took the heart medication Nifedipine, which lowers the increased blood pressure in the pulmonary circulation, which is especially crucial in the case of a high altitude pulmonary edema. That saved my life. Afterwards I have made the appropriate studies, and we were able to prove that this drug can be used as a prophylaxis for people who are predisposed to high altitude pulmonary edema. In my opinion this isn’t doping. Furthermore we could show that in case someone is already suffering from a high altitude pulmonary edama, it can improve the situation significantly. Meanwhile, it has been found that the same effect can be achieved by Viagra. It widens the vessels also in the lungs, not just below. Thus the increased pressure in the pulmonary circulation decreases, and the people are doing better. This is, of course, more fun than taking a heart medication.

You referred to prophylaxis. Is it really practiced?

I know people who do it. In 1989, we published a work in the “New England Journal of Medicine”, the leading journal in the medical scene, in which we showed that people with a predisposition to high altitude pulmonary edema can be protected to a certain extent by prophylaxis with this cardiac medication. People who e.g. suffered from a high altitude pulmonary edema even in the Alps at an altitude of 3,000 to 3,500 meters should be recommended such a prophylaxis. Of course, it would be wiser to tell them: “Stop this stupid mountaineering, instead swim, run or whatever!” But these people are not teachable. They want some medicine.

“An embarrassing spectacle”

You had the privilege of traveling in the Himalayas at a time, when it was still a deserted mountain region without any tourism. How do you think about what is going on there today?

I follow what’s happening today in the Himalayas with fascination. It is unbelievable what the young really good climbers do in the difficult walls of the seven-thousanders. What I am following with great sadness is what takes place on Everest and on the other commercialized eight-thousanders. These endless queues of clients who are pulled up by their Sherpas – I think that’s an embarrassing spectacle.

On the way to Makalu

One eight-thousander is still missing. Then Nives Meroi and Romano Benet would be the first couple who would have scaled together the 14 highest mountains in the world – always without bottled oxygen and without Sherpa support. On 12 May, the two 54-year-olds from Italy stood at the top of their eight-thousander No. 13, the 8485-meter-high Makalu in Nepal.
Nives was 19 years old when she met Romano. First he was her climbing partner, then her life partner. They are married for 27 years. In 1998, they scaled Nanga Parbat, it was their first eight-thousander. In 2003, they succeeded in climbing the Karakorum trilogy of Gasherbrum I, II and Broad Peak in just 20 days. In 2007, Meroi was the first Italian woman who climbed Everest without oxygen mask.

Life-threatening disease

But there were also setbacks.  In 2009, Meroi had a good chance to become the first woman on all 14 eight-thousanders. On Kangchenjunga, at 7500 meters, Romano suddenly became increasingly weak. He tried to persuade Nives to climb on alone. But she refused and supported him during the descent. The reason for Benet’s weakness was serious: aplastic anemia. Two bone marrow transplants were necessary to save Romano’s life. They returned to the Himalayas. In 2014, Romano and Nives climbed Kangchenjunga. And now Makalu. Five questions to and five answers by Nives Meroi:

Nives, Romano and you have managed to climb Makalu, your 13th eight-thousander. If you compare it with the other twelve, was it rather one of the more difficult or easier ascents?

Technically, apart from the last 500 to 600 meters below Makalu-La (saddle at 7,400 m on the normal route), it is not very difficult and in addition the conditions in the wall were good. The problem was mainly the wind, which forced us to stay at Base Camp for a long time, and the cold, which caused slight frostbite at my toes.

After scaling Mount Everest in 2007

It was your third attempt on Makalu after one in fall 2007 and another in winter 2007/2008. Now you tried it in spring, and you were successful. Was it the secret of success to take this season of year?

In fall 2007, Romano and I were the only expedition on Makalu. Upon our arrival, a disturbance had dumped two meters of snow onto the Base Camp. Breaking trail again and again, we reached Makalu-La, but it was too late. While trying to climb to the top, the jet stream arrived and forced us to climb down.
In contrast, in winter 2007/2008 the sky was clear and the conditions in the wall were exceptional, but the wind, with gusts up to 100 km/ h at Base camp, prevented us from climbing. There were only two days in a month without wind and we managed to climb up almost to Makalu-La. But on 9 February, a strong gust destroyed our Base Camp. I was torn from the ground and broke my ankle. My two companions, Romano and Luca (Vuerich; he died in 2010), carried me for two days on their shoulders along the glacier to Hillary Camp, from where we were rescued by helicopter.
Climbing an eight-thousander, you also need luck with the weather!

Makalu Base Camp

This spring, there were also some commercial expeditions on the mountain. You and Romano are always climbing without bottled oxygen and Sherpa support. Was it difficult for you to arrange with these teams?

Yes, from year to year more energy must be wasted at Base Camp to defend ourselves from the overbearing attitude and the arrogance of commercial climbing.

In your book, that was recently published in German, you describe Romano’s disease, aplastic anemia, as the “15th eight-thousander” that you had to climb. In which way has this experience changed your and Romano`s perspective?

After a first period, when he was angry about the years which, according to him, the illness had “stolen” from him, Romano is taking it now more dispassionate. I perhaps have become more anxious, the memory of the disease still frightens me.

Nives and Romano Benet on Kangchenjunga in 2009

Now there is only Annapurna left to complete the 14 eight-thousanders. Taking the fatality rate into account, it’s the most dangerous eight-thousander. How do you assess the difficulty of this climb and when do you want to try it?

We prefer to make no plans. We’ll see if we get a chance, physically and economically. This would be our third attempt. The first time, in 2006, we tried it from the north, the second time, in 2009, from the south and in both cases we abandoned our attempts because the conditions were too dangerous.
I and Romano are experts in the “art of escape without shame”, and if we return there, we’ll face it again this way.

Dr. Tobias Merz (l.) and his co-expedition leader Dr. Urs Hefti on top of Himlung Himal (© T. Merz)

20 doctors, nearly twice as many test persons. The Swiss research expedition to the seven-thousander Himlung Himal in fall 2013 had the objective to investigate the effects of high altitude on the human body. More than two years later, the first results are there to see. I have talked about it to Dr. Tobias Merz. The 46-year-old is a senior physician at the Department of Intensive Care Medicine at the University Hospital in Bern. Since his youth, Merz has been doing sports in the mountains. So it’s no coincidence that he has committed himself to high altitude medicine too. “In intensive care medicin a disease takes organ systems to the limits of the possible, in high-altitude medicine external conditions are responsible for this,” says Merz. Before going on expedition to Himlang Himal, he had already experienced high altitude as a climber in the Andes and the Himalayas. On the eight-thousander Shishapangma, Merz had reached a height of about 7,600 meters. He then had had to give up his own summit ambitions because he had been needed for a rescue. On Himlung Himal, he stood on the highest point.

Dr. Merz, in 2013 you reached the 7,126 meter-high summit of Himlung Himal. Do you feel somewhat queasy in hindsight if you look at your first research findings?

I already knew that high altitude climbing is a high-risk sport and that it takes you to limits of physiology and rationality. For me, the results were more a confirmation of what I had suspected and less a huge surprise.

But you have worked out something worrying for high altitude mountaineers.

We actually had two important results. One is very reassuring, one very worrying.

On ascent (© T. Merz)

Let’s start with the bad news.

There were 38 probands who were climbing this mountain. 15 of them reached an altitude of more than 7,000 meters. We have found evidence that three of these people suffered from cerebral edema while climbing, means that liquid had leaked from the blood vessels into the brain tissue. In that case the brain is swelling what can turn into a life threatening situation. It was worrying that neither we as doctors nor the test persons had noticed these cerebral edemas. Actually, the classical doctrine is that there a clinical symptoms occurring in parallel to the development of a cerebral edema such as headache, nausea or general sickness and that one has still time to take action, that is first and foremost descending quickly in order to avoid a life-threatening complication. But obviously it is not like that. We think that a cerebral edema can occur without warning. Of course, it makes the situation far more critical if a clinical disaster can happen like out of nowhere, within minutes.

But it was micro bleedings that were not even perceived by the mountaineers.

Correct. On top of the mountain these people felt like those who had no micro-hemorrhages. But these micro-bleedings that we could detect afterwards at the test persons are evidence of significant cerebral edema at high altitude. The good news is that these micro-bleedings can not be equated with brain damage. These climbers have returned and now have a completely normal brain. You can still see a few leaked blood cells, but the brain tissue is unharmed. So the climbers had a narrow escape. They were close to developing a severe cerebral edema. It then requires only a little increase in volume to fall from a normal level of consciousness into a coma.

Blood collection in Base Camp (© T. Merz)

So there are no warnings. But can we even say at which altitude the risk of cerebral edema increases dramatically?

We cannot prove it due to the design of our study. We did the MRIs (Magnetic resonance imaging)  before and after the expedition. The micro-bleedings occurred sometime in between. But we found it only at test persons who were higher than 7,000 meters. This is no proof, but at least an indication. And the affected climbers were those among all who had the lowest oxygen level. During the expedition, we checked the oxygen saturation in arterial blood twice a day.

Is there perhaps a predisposition to High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE)? And if yes, is it possible to test this vulnerability in advance?

No, such tests do not exist. We only can say very pragmatically: A person who had already a cerebral edema at 4,000 meters is more likely vulnerable in ever higher altitude than someone who has never had a cerebral edema. But there are no studies on that.

But younger people are probably more vulnerable than older ones. This has more mechanical reasons. The brain volume decreases with age, that is, a 65-year-old has significantly less brain matter in his skull than a young person. If the somewhat shrunken brain begins to swell, it simply has more space than the brain of a 20-year-old, whose skull is actually mostly filled with brain matter.

Would you say in the light of your study that high altitude climbing is irresponsible from a medical perspective?

I would rather say that every climber must consider by himself how much risk he wants to take. He has to be aware that a certain percentage of climbers get a cerebral edema. As in all high risk sports, it’s an individual decision whether one is willing to accept the danger.

You can book an expedition to the mountain we climbed from catalog, paying about 12,000 to 14,000 Euros. We as clients assume that the product which we buy is safe. And we also tend to delegate the responsibility for our well-being to the operator, expedition leader or guide. But it does not work. Actually, any high altitude mountaineer must be aware that he personally has to take this risk and nobody can take over that responsibility from him. This awareness is lacking a bit in commercial high-altitude mountaineering.

Camp 2 on Himlung Himal (© T. Merz)

Also an expedition doctor, if there is one, can do little.

The chance that he is getting sick is the same as for all others. And he can do little to treat the high altitude cerebral edema. It’s even difficult to bring down an ill climber from 7,000 meters. And it has to happen quickly. This brings an expedition very quickly to the verge of its logistical facilities.

Finally once again the good news: The statement that high altitude mountaineering makes stupid belongs to the category of popular misconceptions, doesn’t it?

Yes. For methodological reasons, we had doubts concerning the results of previous studies saying that climbing at higher altitudes, starting already at the height of Mont Blanc, cause brain damage. In these studies usually mountaineers were compared with non-climbers. But if I compare a 45-year-old mountaineer with a 20-year-old medical student, I will always find a relevant difference. That’s why we conducted this study, in which we examined every mountaineer with MRI before and after the expedition. We could neither prove that there is a loss of brain matter, nor that micro-infarctions occur as described in previous studies. Even the three climbers in our group who had micro-hemorrhages suffered no permanent brain damage. The cerebral edema is gone.

It’s melting away

200 meters as the crow flies away from my desk, nothing less than the future of the planet is negotiated. Until Friday representatives from around the world are debating at the World Conference Center Bonn on a new climate agreement. It is to be adopted at the global climate talks in Paris, which will begin in late November. Once again the negotiations are long and tough. The solidarity with the states that are already feeling the effects of climate change is within limits. In most cases economy beats ecology. But the clock is ticking. With only a few exceptions, glaciers are melting worldwide. Glacier Works, an organization founded by US mountaineer David Breashears in 2007, has impressively documented how far for instance the glaciers around Mount Everest have retreated during the past decades. Now the Dalai Lama has pointed to the consequences of climate change for his Tibetan homeland.

The Third Pole

“This blue planet is our only home and Tibet is its roof. As vital as the Arctic and Antarctic, it is the Third Pole”, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan Buddhists says in a video message (see below) from exile in India. “The Tibetan Plateau needs to be protected, not just for Tibetans but for the environmental health and sustainability of the entire world.”

The 80-year-old emphasizes that he wants people to understand his words not as a political message, but as a humanitarian.

Drinking water for more than one billion people

Even Chinese scientists have been warning for a long time about the effects of climate change on the glaciers in Tibet. The average temperature on the more than 4,000 meter high plateau has increased by 1.3 degrees Celsius over the past five decades and thus significantly faster than the global average. The Tibetan glaciers are the source of water in rivers that support about 1.3 billion people in Asia. Against this background, the Dalai Lama appeals to the young generation of the 21st century to become more engaged in protecting the planet – thus also fighting for the environment in the Himalayas, especially in Tibet. Will his message be heard by the negotiators here in Bonn and later in Paris? That would not be bad.

Tsho Rolpa in Nepal

Nepal has a problem with its glaciers. Over the past three decades, the 3808 glaciers in the Himalayan country have shrunk by about a quarter. The increased melt created some glacial lakes which scientists call ticking time bombs. One of the biggest of them, Tsho Rolpa, which is located about 100 kilometers northeast of Kathmandu, is estimated to contain between 90 and 100 million cubic meters of water by now. If the natural dam burst, it would have devastating consequences. This week, the Nepalese capital is hosting an international conference, during which more than 200 scientists from around the world exchange their findings about the impact of climate change on the high mountains of Asia – not only on the the Himalayas, but also on Karakoram, Hindu Kush, Tien Shan, Pamir and the Tibetan plateau.

Currently, more water …

Doris Duethmann

Among the scientists in Kathmandu is the German Doris Duethmann. The hydrologist from the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam is researching the water balance at the upper reaches of the river Tarim. “The Tarim runoffs have been increasing sharply over the past 40 years because the higher temperatures led to a greater glacier melt”, the scientist told me (before leaving for Nepal). The Tarim is more than 2000 kilometers long and thus the longest river in Central Asia. It flows north of the Taklamakan Desert and is among others fed by glacier runoff of the Tien Shan mountains including the seven-thousanders  Pik Pobedy (7439 meters) and Khan Tengri (7,010 meters). Especially the arid region at the edge of the Taklamakan is depending on the water from the mountains. In recent decades, the river Tarim has been increasingly tapped to irrigate fields. The strong glacier runoffs made it possible.

… later less

“People expect that it remains the way it is, but someday it will no longer be the case”,  Duethmann predicts. “Now they are living from the increased glacier melt. This will not be permanent, because the melt drain the glaciers. In the northern Tien Shan the ice has declined by 30 percent compared with 30, 40 years ago.” In other words: There is less and less ice that can melt, and water will be short someday. It is difficult to reconcile the different interests, says the hydrologist. On the one hand there are countries on the upper course of the river like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, who use the water of the mountains mainly to generate electricity, on the other hand countries on the lower course such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which draw much water to irrigate their fields. “The theme of water holds a lot of potential for conflict”, says Doris Duethmann. This makes it all the more important to talk to each other – as the scientists do now at the conference in Kathmandu.

Poster of the competition

As in the Alps, mountaineers in the Himalayas shall soon find shelter in mountain huts. Not in simple wooden or metal sheds. The new huts shall be functional, low maintenance, not too expensive, but, please, also nice and comfortable. The Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA), in cooperation with the Nepalese development programme Samarth, announced a competition for architects and designers to find “an innovative high altitude accommodation unit which will be the first of its kind ever to be established in Nepal”.

Sustainable

The mountain hut has to be “resistant to the elements of heat, cold, rain, snow and wind”, the organizers of the competition say. The hut shall provide “comfortable shelter” for ten to 20 people who must be able to stay there for several days due to lousy weather. It must have enough storage room for climbing equipment such as ropes or harnesses and has to supply electricity and drinking water in a sustainable way. It must to be suited for self-catering as well as a mountain hut with staff, kitchen and a small shop. The competition’s closing date for registration is 1 April, for submission 10 April. The winner will be announced on 30 April and will receive a prize money of US $ 5,000. The 13-member-jury consists of architects e.g. from the USA, UK, France, Hong Kong and Singapore, but strangely enough not from Nepal.

All over Nepal

Trekking the Annapurna Circuit

The first hut is to be built at 5896-meter-high Paldor Peak, a popular trekking peak in the massif of Ganesh Himal, north-west of the Nepalese capital Kathmandu. The ultimate goal is to replicate the winning hut model “in all parts of the country along the Himalayas”. In taking this action, the Nepal Mountaineering Association probably responds to allegations following the heavy snow storms in mid-October that killed about 30 people in the area around the eight-thousander Annapurna, including many trekkers. At the time, critics raised the issue that there had been no refuges in the affected areas along the Annapurna Circuit.

Makalu

In one point it is the same for mountaineers who want to climb an eight-thousander and for everyday travellers: Shortly before departure the dates are accumulating. They have to pave the way for their long absence in their jobs, meet friends and family and – last but not least – make the last preparations for the upcoming project. That applies to Luis Stitzinger, too. We met last weekend in Oberstdorf in the Alpes, the day before Luis’ departure to Nepal. The 45-year-old German and his wife Alix von Melle want to climb again Makalu, at the height of 8485 meters the fifth highest mountain in the world. In 2010, the couple had to turn back on 8050 meters at temperatures of minus 45 degrees Celsius. Alix and Luis have already climbed six eight-thousanders: Cho Oyu, Gasherbrum II, Nanga Parbat, Dhaulagiri, Broad Peak and Shishapangma, all without using bottled oxygen. This makes the 43-year-old Alix the most successful German women at the highest mountains in the world.

Luis, soon you will start to Makalu.  Do you feel something like stage fright?

No more stage fright because we have made too many expeditions, but of course we are a little bit excited. Preparations drag on. When the time comes, it’s like a spring that is released. We are looking forward to our expedition.

Luis Stitzinger

This is already your second attempt on Makalu. Will you have a different attitude?

Yes, I do think that it is different. We have tried so far no mountain twice, not even those where we did not reach the summit. This is actually the first time that we will it the second time. We are really prejudiced.

In what way?

We just remember the last time. And we are also a little bit more under pressure.

Will you be doing anything different?

First, we are staffed differently. We have a friend in our team, Florian Huebschenberger, who was already with us on Nanga Parbat. So we are three now. Maybe we also want to try a different route. But generally, expeditions are never quite the same. The weather is different, the conditions are too. Therefore, the schedule will always be a little different.

How much time do you have?

We have a maximum of two months for the whole trip. This is more than what is needed. But if it takes shorter, we would not say no.

Until now you have been climbing the eigth-thousanders via the normal routes. Will you do it on Makalu too? You suggested that you may choose a different route.

We will climb on the normal route, but maybe we want to try a variant in the upper part. We need to see what the conditions are like. Only then we will decide whether we really want to try it.

In 2013, there have been only a few ascents, Makalu has defied many attempts in recent years. How do you estimate your chance to reach the summit?

It’s always hard to express in figures.  I always say that the odds are fifty-fifty. When we were on Makalu in 2010, everything looked fine, the weather seemed to be good. But on these high mountains a single factor – then it was just the continuing jet stream which had parked over the Himalayas for weeks – can be sufficient to keep you from climbing up. And then you sit at basecamp in perfect, sunny weather, twiddling your thumbs and you can do nothing.

Alix in the upper part of Makalu in 2010

This year, the Nepalese government has adopted a lot of new regulations on Mount Everest. So there is a guarded post at the basecamp as an arbitration board. In addition, each climber must bring down eight kilos of rubbish from the mountain. Are there similar rules on Makalu?

Everest is just a hotspot where international mountain tourism meets. By comparison, Makalu is very rarely visited. We have learned that this year there are some more climbers on the way to the mountain, but compared to Everest it is only a small fraction. Makalu is still a relatively lonely mountain where usually not even a liaison officer is staying, because he does not want to take on the long trekking to basecamp.  Usually you are amongst yourselves there.

Will you contact the members of the other expeditions to share the work or will you act completely independently?

You always come together and coordinate your actions. We know many of the others who will be there. With some of them we have been on other mountains. I also know the operators of the expeditions. You will always try to pull together. But we actually plan to work on the route independently, we do not want to wait until all ropes are fixed to climb up using jumars.

Alix (r.) and Luis at the summit of Shishapangma in 2013

Makalu would be your seventh 8000-meter-peak. Did you approach the project in a different way compared to your first expeditions to eight-thousanders?

I do think that we have got something like routine or at least experience. If you have succeeded in climbing your first eight-thousander, you wonder before trying the second: Have we only been lucky or have we done everything right? But if you have summited a few 8000ers, you realize that some systems have proved to work and that you can count on that.

Makalu would be you highest eight-thousander so far.

Yes, up to now we have summited the lower eight-thousanders. Our highest was Cho Oyu with 8201 meters. Now we try to climb up about 300 more meters, which means that we step into the upper half of the eight-thousanders.

You will not be using bottled oxygen. For this reason you will climb in a different league if you try to get to a summit of one of the high eight-thousanders.

Definitely. We are eager to climb without bottled oxygen. We would rather turn around if we realize that we do not succeed. But because we want to achieve all our goals without breathing mask, we have been moving higher very carefully. Some other mountaineers climb Gasherbrum II and then directly turn to Mount Everest, perhaps even trying it without oxygen. That would be too risky for us. We know from our own experience that every 100 meters in high altitude mean playing in a different league. There is a big difference between a mountain which is 8500 meters high and one that scratches just above the 8000-meter-mark. We climb high and higher very carefully, because up there we have minimal safety reserves without bottled oxygen.

Alix and you are climbing as a couple. Have you discussed what happens if one of you loses his or her power at high altitude?

Sure, we have talked about. Therefore we feel better now climbing as a trio. One helper cannot do much, but in twos it is looking already better. Two helpers, who feel good, may have a chance to bring down a weakened climber. That’s a safety factor. But if you don’t have any oxygen – due to weight reduction we will not even carry oxygen bottles for medical emergency to the high camps -, you have only limited safety reserves. This is evident.

Two Broad Peak 8000ers?

Nepal has to be patient for about one more year. At its general assembly in Pontresina in Switzerland the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA) has not yet decided whether it will recognize additional 8000-meter-peaks or not. According to the Nepal Mountaineering Association a UIAA commission had named six side peaks that could be accepted as prominent peaks with a unique identification: Kanchenjunga West-Peak (alias Yalung Kang, 8505 m), Central-Peak (8473 m) and South-Peak (8476 m), Lhotse Central-Peak (8410 m) and Shar (8382 m), Broad Peak Central (8011 m). “Both Nepal and China Mountaineering Association delegates welcome and fully support the UIAA initiation”, Nepalese Ang Tshering Sherpa, Honorary member of UIAA, wrote to me after his return from Switzerland. “Also Pakistan Alpine Club and Indian Mountaineering Foundation delegates were very positive but need more time to get approval from their association’s annual general meeting which will be held end of Dec 2013 or January 2014.”

Nepal hopes for a larger number of expeditions

Ang Tshering says that the question of new 8000ers will be discussed again at the meeting of the UIAA Management Committee in May 2014 in Istanbul in Turkey and afterwards at the next general assembly in Flagstaff in the USA. In Pontresina Ang Tshering had campaigned for the recognition of the additional 8000ers. “It is our duty to make mountaineering exiting for the next generation and make them feel that they are able to also achieve new successes”, the 59-year-old Nepalese said to the delegates. “Recognizing new peaks will also mean that a larger number of expeditions will be going to our mountains for climbing.”

Brawl on Everest a “single incident”

Ang Tshering Sherpa

In another speech at the UIAA general assembly Ang Tshering reviewed current discussions about Mount Everest. The Sherpa attack against Ueli Steck, Simone Moro and Jonathan Griffith at the end of April was a very unfortunate incident, he said: “We hope that this single incident will not ruin and tarnish the image of the country and century long reputation of all Sherpa’s hard work, dedication, deliberation, honesty, courage and sacrifices for the sake of putting so many climbers on the top of Mt. Everest and other Himalayan peaks.”

Ladder at Hillary Step only one of many suggestions

Ang Tshering also referred to improvements in spring 2013 to manage the great number of climbers, e.g. by fixing double ropes at bottle necks. These measures had “led to a safer and more secure climbing season with no reports of traffic jams”, he said. Ang Tshering denied that Nepal had made any decision to fix a ladder at the Hillary Step. The delegates of his country  were “very upset”, that during the conference in Pontresina there had been rumors and criticsm concerning this point without giving the Nepalese the opportunity to express their view on it. In his words the ladder was only one of many suggestions and ideas the Nepalese authorities had received: “It is our intention to protect our mountains and that does mean that we have listen to new ideas, deliberate on their consequence and make informed and democratic decisions.”

It’s melting away

Better safe than sorry, this also applies for public relations. Three years ago the IPCC slipped on the ice of the Himalayan glaciers. In its last report on climate change that was published in 2007 it was predicted that all Himalayan glaciers would have disappeared until 2035. In 2010 the IPCC had to concede tranposed digits, the right year in the prediction should have been 2350. There was a flood of criticism. No wonder that in the summary of the new climate report the word “Himalaya” is missing. The IPCC only announced that “over the last two decades (…) glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide”. Also in the full report, which is more than 2,000 pages long, the IPCC is only making cautious predictions for the Himalayas.

Forecasts for the Himalayas are difficult

“The Karakoram-Himalaya mountain range, for instance, has a large variety of glacier types and climatic conditions, and glacier characteristics are still only poorly known”, says the report. “This makes determining their future evolution particularly uncertain.” While studies showed that glaciers in the Himalayas and Hindukush had been losing mass, those in the Karakoram were close to balance. There were even glaciers in the Karakoram and also on the coasts of New Zealand, Norway and Southern Patagonia that advanced – as the result of special topographic and/or climate conditions (e.g., increased precipitation). “More glaciers will disappear, others will lose most of their low-lying portions, and others might not change substantially”, says the IPCC.

Some mountains become glacier-free zone

Impacts of climate change (on 7000er Putha Hiunchuli)

But there cannot be given an all-clear. Quite the contrary. According to the IPCC many glaciers are threatened: More than 600 have already disappeared in the Canadian Arctic and Rocky Mountains, the Andes, Patagonia, the European Alps, the Tien Shan and elsewhere. In these regions, more than 600 glaciers have disappeared over the past decades. “It is also likely that some mountain ranges will lose most, if not all, of their glaciers.” 

Hundreds of millions of people might be affected 

Even before the publication of the new climate report IPCC chief Rachendra Pachauri had pointed out that the situation in the Himalayas remained critical: “The mistake we made was using that figure of 2035, but that doesn’t in any way reduce the implications of glacier melt across the entire Himalayan rang and that’s something to be concerned about.” Even before 2035 it was going to shart showing up in term of chances in water flows, said Pauchauri. Estimated 500 million people in South Asia and 250 million in China might be affected.

Compared to that, the consequences for mountaineers would be unimportant. Nevertheless climbers have to expect more rocky passages and more rock fall on the world’s highest mountains. And extreme weather events, which are probably more likely if the world’s climate as expected will become warmer.