Beat Kammerlander (at the IMS in Brixen)

The 59-year-old is a phenomenon, a living climbing legend: Austrian Beat Kammerlander is still overcoming vertical walls, almost without climbing grips – preferably in the Rätikon, quasi on his own doorstep. The Vorarlberg native lives with his wife Christine and their two children in the city of Feldkirch. A week ago, at the “International Mountain Summit” (IMS) in Brixen, Kammerlander received the renowned “Paul Preuss Award“, which honours climbers who stand in the tradition of the free climbing pioneer who fell to his death in 1913. Preuss had pleaded for a far-reaching renunciation of climbing equipment such as ropes or bolts (“Skill is the measure of what is allowed.”). “Actually, the award could also be called the ‘Beat Kammerlander Award’,” said Hanspeter Eisendle from South Tyrol, winner of the prize in 2013, in his laudation. I spoke with Kammerlander during the IMS.

Beat, next year you’ll be 60 years old and you’re still climbing crazy tours. Will you tell us the secret of your success?

In the wall

There’s no secret. Do what you love! Only that counts. (laughs) I once planned to continue with this competitive sport until I was 40. Then I turned 40 and was stronger than before. Then I said: Why should I stop now doing something I like best? Over the years there have been setbacks, stagnation, injuries, but also highlights again and again. I realized that I feel much better about the way I lead my life and how I can finance it than if I did any job. And I am allowed to go climbing. So this question has become superfluous. Now I will soon turn 60, that’s just a number. What matters is how I feel.

While last year was great, this year was not a good one. I was bitten by a tick, got Lyme disease and had to be treated. That kept me pretty small over the summer. Now I have to be a stand-up man. I am well again. But I still need a few more months with targeted training and physiotherapy so that I can climb again on a very high level.

Have you been ordered to rest?

No, but I have a family with two small children. Sarah is two and a half, Samuel turns five in February. I spend a lot of time with them. In the past I used to goof around far too much and to train senselessly. My time management is much more targeted now. It suits me very well.

En route in rock with (almost) no grips

In 2017, you opened a new extremely difficult route in the Rätikon and called it “Battle Zone”. Do you have to fight more today than in the past?

You always fight as good as you can, at any time. (laughs) Depending on the type. Maybe I even developed a bit more motivation on this route than I used to, more consistency to achieve this goal. It was so difficult to open this route from bottom to top and to set the bolts, then to climb the passages freely. And finally it was about climbing the route Redpoint, in one day these five pitches of high difficulty. 10+, 11-, 10-, 8 and 9+. It requires a very high intensity to connect these pitches. For this project, I once again chastened myself extremely and prepared myself in a very special way. Even in the most adverse weather conditions I went there and didn’t waste any time. I also went out in the rain. I knew that it was windy on the other side of the mountain and that the fur would get dry. The whole thing at 2,800 meters, in a summit region where it always blows. You have to wrap up warm and still climb – and don’t say: Today I don’t feel like it, today I’m too comfortable. It’s always about wanting.

Does being able to bite through make you stand out?

Probably.

Do you need that to stay in business that long?

I rather see that being allowed to bite through. I have fun doing it. Surely it’s sometimes painful to hold such small grips. But it’s nice to be able to decipher such smooth, small-grip rock and climb it. If you are the first to tackle this rock and leave a trace, a line there. That is my motivation.

The view upwards

Even after such a long time? Doesn’t there ever come a point at which you say: Now it’s enough?

I’m not on the road every day. Spread over the year, it’s just a few days you work towards – mentally and physically, until you get released like a racehorse.

To be such a racehorse, do you also need competition with other climbers?

No. That would be so repugnant to me. I only do that for myself. I don’t want to compete with others. I don’t give a damn.

But climbing in a team is something important for you, isn’t it?

Of course. I only climb with friends, otherwise it doesn’t work. It’s a give and take. It’s a real act of friendship if someone joins you who is not able to climb these difficulties. You have to be grateful when a good friend is belaying you the whole day on a first ascent and feels sorry for you. And who is always on the ball. Because if he doesn’t belay you well, you can be injured seriously.

Very small ledges

Has your role shifted in the decades, from greenhorn …

I wasn’t a greenhorn for long. (laughs)

… to mentor?

Of course. I have a big climbing scene around me and have shaped it very much in terms of ideology and attitude: That you have to be honest and say what you did and how you realized it.

Do you think that the problem of a lack of honesty increases in times of marketing?

Sure. You can dream a lot of climbing projects up that aren’t really worth anything, but that make a good headline above a bad report. You will then have received your media echo, and that won’t be revoked. However, you have a loss of image which you also have to live with.

You have opened most of your routes in Europe. Why did you never go to the very high mountains in the Himalayas or the Karakoram?

That just didn’t happen. My projects, which were constantly present, simply kept me here. I would have had the motivation and the interest to climb the high walls of the Karakoram, but now that’s passé.

Let’s talk about risk. How much risk are you willing you take?

I believe that my routes, in the way I climbed them, are relatively safe. On some of my previous routes the risk was of course much higher, for example when I was doing free solo ice climbing or difficult routes in sport climbing. But alpine sport climbing is about the awareness you have developed. I am not someone who flees from a dangerous situation as quickly as possible. I have the necessary patience and the mental power too. Again and again up and down, until I manage it. Many people can’t stand it and then make the fatal mistake.

“Do what you love!”

Have you ever been lucky while climbing?

Of course. Frequently.

And what did that teach you?

Above all, to be careful with routine matters. Or when stupid emotions come along. Then sometimes you do fooling things. And that’s not smart.

Has your father role also had an effect in terms of risk taking?

When I’m out freeriding as a mountain and ski guide with guests or even for myself, it’s actually the big dangers I’m afraid of. Sometimes you can’t judge a flank’s risk exactly. Then you stand somewhere up there and have to go down. You can keep the alpine safety rules, but every now and then you also need your portion of luck. I have become much more cautious than before.

Would you encourage your children if one day they came and said: We want to do the same as you?

Of course. Do what you love! But I never want to manipulate anyone in one direction. That must come by itself.

And you have the feeling that all your life you have done what you wanted?

I think so. (laughs)

Robert Jasper (at the IMS in Brixen)

He himself was the most dangerous polar bear in Greenland. Whenever the German extreme climber Robert Jasper pitched up his tent last summer during his one-month solo expedition in the eternal ice, he built a protective fence against polar bears around it. If one of the predators had touched the fence, a flare would have gone off to chase the polar bear away – and of course to warn Robert. One day, however, the 50-year-old was so in mind that he touched the fence when he wanted to climb over it. “I almost blew myself up,” says Jasper.

Jump between two worlds

Alone in Greenland

We meet at the 10th and last “International Mountain Summit” in Brixen last week. In April, Robert had celebrated his 50th birthday. “I thought to myself: Before I get a midlife crisis now, I’d rather do a solo expedition,” says Jasper and laughs. “It was as if I was jumping back and forth between two worlds.” Jasper paddled through the fjords of Greenland in a folding kayak, hiked to the foot of the mountain he had chosen, and succeeded the first solo ascent of Molar Spire in three days. He called his route through the 450-meter-high rock face “Stonecircle” because “the most impressive things in life are often rocky and hard”.

Inner peace and strong nerves

Kayaking through the fjords

The mixture of being alone en route, kayaking and bigwall climbing was “very special” says Robert. “It was an absolutely ingenious adventure.” Even though he had a queasy feeling in the beginning, he coped well with the loneliness overall: “It was very, very quiet. You only have the sounds of nature. About this silence you find very fast to yourself. I was quickly in harmony with myself and absorbed the silence in me. This loneliness, combined with the wilderness, was a wellness holiday for the soul.”

When Jasper talked to others about his experiences after his return to civilization, his vocal cords were overstrained. “It took me a few days until I could speak properly again.  After four weeks I was simply not used to it anymore.”  He “would never have been able to spend so much time in the wilderness at the age of 20,” Robert believes. “Not at 30, maybe not even at 40. You must know yourself well, have inner peace and strong nerves as well.” Aged 50, he now fulfills all these qualifications. “Nevertheless, it was an experiment. It could also have gone wrong.” However, according to  Jasper’s words, he never had the feeling in all that time that “he was giving up control”.

Preserving lived stories

During the solo ascent

Expeditions like these on Greenland are “like jewels that I put in a treasure box. These are memories that make me happy,” says Robert. “I know many colleagues, especially younger ones, who go from one tour to the next, who are addicted to adventures and simply consume it. So I think to myself: ‘Be careful!’ You can have an accident and maybe the next day you won’t be able to climb anymore. If you haven’t learned to appreciate experiences, this situation can even break you. It is important to preserve stories you have experienced.”

Even though it was his first solo expedition, there have been – besides team successes – also some solo achievements in Jasper’s long career. For example in 1991, he climbed solo through the “classical” alpine north faces of the Eiger, Matterhorn and Grandes Jorasses. Together with his wife Daniela, Robert opened the first Eiger route in the tenth degree (“Symphonie de Liberté”) in 1999. His route “Odyssey”, mastered in 2015 along with Swiss Roger Schaeli and South Tyrolean Simon Gietl, is considered the most difficult route via the Eiger North Face to date.

Expeditions took him to the 7,804 metre high Nuptse East in the Himalayas, to Baffin Island in the Arctic – and to Patagonia: For their new route through the north face of the Cerro Murallon in 2005, Jasper and his team partner Stefan Glowacz were nominated for the Piolet d’Or, the “Oscar of the Climbers”.

More like a decathlete

On the summit of Molar Spire

Robert is not only on the move in extreme rock, but is an excellent ice climber too. “I was never a pure sports climber,” says Jasper. “I practice various disciplines of alpinism and am therefore more like a decathlete. Sport climbing is my basis: The safer you can climb the more buffers you have in alpine terrain.” Being father of a daughter and a son, “the backpack I carry has become bigger and heavier,” Robert admits. “I have more responsibility, but the experience outweighs that.” Safety is his top priority, not only on the mountain. “You have to try to minimize the risk but nevertheless take the step towards your passion, your adventures. That’s my philosophy.”

Tamara Lunger at the IMS

“I often wish I had been born a hundred years ago,” says Tamara Lunger. “When I hear the 90-year-olds talking, I think to myself: Oh, they were still adventurers! Today we are only pussies compared to them.” Yet, in 2010, at the age of 23, the professional climber from South Tyrol stood on the summit of the eight-thousander Lhotse, as the youngest woman at that time, and in 2014, she scaled K2, the second highest mountain on earth, without bottled oxygen.

During the “International Mountain Summit” in Brixen I am hiking with Tamara from the Latzfonserkreuz downhill. Her parents are keeping the alpine hut up there. We talk about Tamara’s adventures of the past years. The 32-year-old is a honest soul and doesn’t mince her words: “People tell me: ‘You can talk easily, you can live what gives you pleasure.’ However, sometimes there is something negative in my pleasure that I have to accept and learn from. That’s actually what’s important.”

Close to death

Tamara (2nd from l.) with the winter first ascenders of Nanga Parbat, Alex Txikon, Simone Moro and Muhammad Ali “Sadpara” (from l.)

In February 2016 in Pakistan, Tamara Lunger turned around just below the summit of Nanga Parbat. She was only 70 meters short of fame to become the first woman among those who succeeded winter first ascents of an eight-thousander. During the whole summit day she had felt bad, she quasi had dragged herself up the mountain. Then God spoke to her, Tamara tells me: “Normally I always get what I ask for. But that day, ten hours of praying did not help. Then I knew there was something wrong.” She turned around. In the descent she slipped. “It was my experience closest to death so far. I also talked to the Lord when I fell: ‘I didn’t think it would happen so early now. But if that’s the way it has to be, I’m ready, and that’s okay.'” After 200 meters Tamara stopped slipping in loose snow.

Much learned

She survived with injuries of her shoulder and ankle. In the following weeks she was in pain, not allowed to do any sports. And the media hassled her with interview requests. It was a “difficult time”, says the climber. “It was only with time that I understood what Nanga Parbat had given me.” Now she knows that it doesn’t always have to be the summit, says Tamara. “I also learned a lot about myself. For example, how I behave in fear of death. Do I panic or remain calm? Can I still think clearly? These insights are extremely important because they are part of the game in our profession or vocation.”

Lack of respect

A strong team: Tamara Lunger with Simone Moro (r.)

Her next eight-thousander expedition in spring 2017 led her to Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world. With her team partner and mentor Simone Moro, she wanted to traverse all peaks of the massif. However, this did not happen because Moro’s health did not play along. The experiences in the base camp, which the two professional climbers shared with members of commercial expeditions, spoiled climbing eight-thousanders for Lunger for the moment. “It’s incredible what some people are doing there,” says Tamara and shakes her head. “I was partly ashamed of them. The only thing they wanted was to get up somehow. They no longer have any respect, neither for the mountain, nor for other people. In the high camps people are stealing.”

Never again a base camp with others

A Sherpa of the Nepalese operator “Seven Summit Treks” had felt pretty bad on the mountain, unable to descent. “The boss of the Sherpas didn’t give a damn. He preferred to play around with his mobile phone on Facebook instead of helping.” That was so much against her principles that she was losing all her strength, says Tamara: “I swore to myself at the time: No more going to a base camp with other people! I hope I can pull it. In the future, I will approach the mountains in winter or from another side, with a base camp where I have my peace.

Relief in the cold of Eastern Siberia

During the first winter ascent of Gora Pobeda

Last February, Lunger and Moro succeeded the first winter ascent of the 3,003-meter-high Gora Pobeda (also known as Pik Pobeda) in the ice-cold Eastern Siberia at temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius. After the failure on Manaslu in winter 2015, her turnround on Nanga Parbat in winter 2016 and her unsuccessful attempt on Kangchenjunga in 2017, she felt under great pressure, Tamara says. She tried to enjoy every step in the beautiful nature of Siberia and not to think about what any people expected of her. “I did that relatively well and it really set me free. When I arrived at the summit, I breathed a sigh of relief. At last!”

Living what she feels

In her future adventures she wants to listen more to her inner voice, Tamara Lunger reveals: “I try to live what I feel. I can’t tell what I’ll do tomorrow or in a week from now. I am currently searching.” And she is not only fixated on the mountains. “I would also like to set off with a sailboat.”

Hansjoerg Auer

“The ability is the measure of what you are allowed to do,” the free climbing pioneer Paul Preuss (1886-1913) wrote – freely translated – more than a hundred years ago. Hansjoerg Auer is able to do a lot and is therefore a well-deserved winner of the “Paul Preuss Award”, which is annually given to an extraordinary climber in the tradition of the legendary Austrian. “Auer belongs undoubtedly to the best climbers in the world,” said Reinhold Messner during the award ceremony at the International Mountain Summit (IMS) in Bressanone last weekend. Meanwhile, Hansjoerg Auer has set off from his native Oetztal for a new adventure. In the far east of Nepal, the Austrian, along with his countryman Alex Bluemel, wants to first climb the North Face of the almost 7,000-meter-high Gimigela Chuli East. The mountain is hidden behind the eight-thousander Kangchenjunga, the third-highest mountain on earth.

Hansjoerg, do you take failure into account?

Of course. If you go off the trodden track on an expedition, so many things might go wrong. But that’s why it’s so much fun because you can not write the expedition report at the beginning.

But you may also experience nasty surprises – like on your last expedition to Annapurna III this spring, where you spent five weeks more or less in bad weather.

Nevertheless, we have not returned empty-handed. We have collected a lot of information about the project and we want to come back again. Next time we will do many things in another way and better. Maybe we are able to succeed. Often you have to approach to a goal by answering open questions. In difficult projects this can take several years. If I go on a frequently climbed mountain, I only need to google.

Masherbrum (in the centre)

One of the major unsolved problems in the Himalayas and Karakorum is the Northeast Face of Masherbrum (7,821 m) in Pakistan. David Lama, Peter Ortner and you have tried it in 2014 but have not been able to advance much further than to the bottom of the wall. Do you have this project still in mind or do you concentrate on more achievable goals?

If you are constantly going on expeditions, you can not always try very, very difficult projects. You have also to choose projects that are manageable to find your confirmation by success. If you’re going somewhere year by year, where the odds are very low, it will wear you down in the long run. But the Masherbrum project is still alive. Whenever we meet, we talk about it. The date when we’ll try it again is still open. But for me it’s clear that the wall is not climbable on the direct line we had originally planed. We will have to compromise. Masherbrum is really extremely dangerous. You can not try it every year. If you do so, you won’t come home someday.

In the South Face of Nilgiri South

About a year ago, you first climbed the Southface of Nilgiri South (6839 m) in Nepal, along with Alex Bluemel and Gerhard, called “Gerry” Fiegl. Gerry suffered from high altitude sickness and fell to death on the descent from the summit. Do you, for this reason, post the expedition as failed?

Of course, it is not a successful expedition, because that would mean that all climbers, who set off, later returned. We can not undo this accident. It was one of the saddest moments of my career. If a friend with whom you started to climb falls to death right in front of your eyes, it is horrible. But even on the summit, we hadn’t any feeling of happiness because we realized that something was wrong with Gerry. We had to traverse the summit because the descent via the ascent route was much too difficult. We had hoped that Gerry’s condition might change for the better due to the euphoria of having reached the summit. And we managed to descend relatively far down. But in the end the accident could not be avoided. These difficult climbs in high altitude are only possible by reduction: reduction of equipment, of weight – and of safety too. There is simply no longer a large safety buffer.

During the frist ascent of the 7000er Kunyang Chhish East in Pakistan

The public quickly forgets such accidents. But you have to live with it. Is it possible at all to come to terms with such an event?

I believe you can not forget it for the rest of your life. You are shaped by such an extreme experience. Gerry will also be missing in ten years. There are many memories, because we were so often together en route. It’s quite normal that the public forgets. But we don’t want to forget it. We have to accept it in a certain way. We were given someone with whom we were allowed to take many actions. We would have liked to do it longer, but maybe it was predetermined and just had to happen this way.

Has the incident made you more cautious?

It was, of course, a dramatic experience. It has made me reflecting about myself, but my basic personality is not so extremely influenced that I would say: I stop it. Finally climbing is my life. Of course, it was not easy to go on expedition to Annapurna III last spring. The moments are the same: the airport in Kathmandu, the hotel, the base camp. The mountain is located not far from Nilgiri South. And we have set off for climbing Annapurna III on the day exactly half a year after Gerry’s fall to death. You can not simply fade out these memories.

Free Solo in the Marmolada South Face

You are moving on a narrow ridge doing these extreme projects. If you climb free solo (Hansjoerg i.e. made headlines worldwide when he climbed the difficult Fish route through the South Face of Marmolada in the Dolomites for the first time free solo in 2007), almost any mistake inevitably would lead to death. Do you feel how far you can go?

I have started very early to climb solo. I have a good feeling for that. And only in this case I really do it. In high altitude it is much more difficult, because things can happen which you don’t expect. If you have not experienced it by yourself, it is, for example, hard to imagine how fast high altitude sickness can develop. Up there you are not allowed to live out your ambition excessively because that can lead to death. You have to be more honest with yourself than in the Dolomites or other mountains of the Alps.

In other words, you have to learn to put the brakes?

You have to know when it is enough. Of course I can not turn around at the first sign, otherwise I would never get far. But I must have to realize if it was the last sign.

Restrain ambition in high altitude

The projects are created in your head, you are planning them for a long time, you focus on them. Do you still have the sense to perceive the country and the people on your expeditions and to enjoy the fact that you are traveling in a foreign world?

Honestly, mostly not. I am so focused on my projects that there is little time left. But I have started to travel once a year, always in December, to a city in Europe for a weekend, without climbing equipment, simply to visit it. For me, this is a big step. Not only mountains, walls, shadow, ice, snow and rock.
If you are constantly en route for many years, you have to be careful not to lose your footing. You are so focused on your projects that you begin to believe they are necessary for life. You return from an expedition and feel that everyone should be interested in it. Of course adventure stories are always interesting, but you have to keep both feet on the ground and be aware: There are other important things.

Frits Vrijlandt

The Netherlands are called so for good reason. The highest “summit”, the Vaalserberg near the town of Aachen, is only 323 meters high. Nevertheless you find “Oranje boven” also on the highest mountains on earth. Frits Vrijlandt is not a blank slate in the climbing scene. In 2000, he was the first Dutchman to climb Mount Everest from the Tibetan north side, later he became the second mountaineer from the Netherlands who scaled the Seven Summits, the highest mountains of all continents. At the International Mountain Summit (IMS) in Bressanone in South Tyrol, the General Assembly of the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (UIAA) was held – and Vrijlandt was reelected as President for another four years.

Frits, a man from such a flat country is the head of all climbers worldwide. That sounds a bit strange.

(He laughs) Why? I have to be a friend of all countries who have mountains. This is important for my role to bring all countries together.

How is it for someone who has climbed the highest mountains of all continents to be an official for mountaineering?

I’ve been already doing this for four years. There are parallels to mountaineering. You want to achieve goals, and also the way to reach them can be beautiful.

Climbers often talk about freedom and independence, and to be honest, many are also egoists. How does this fit with a world federation that has to set up rules?

This is not our main task. We want to help the Alpine Clubs to make progress. We take care of safety, sports and environmental protection. This doesn’t always go together. Particularly environmental protection and mountain experience often create a tension field – all over the world.

Much traffic on Everest (in 2012)

The UIAA’s new strategy paper for the coming years does no longer provide a commission for expeditions. Isn’t there any problem in this field from the UIAA point of view?

The big “conquest” of the mountains, how it was said in former times, is over. But of course expeditions remain our task, even if we do not need to have a commission for this issue. We deal e.g. particularly with Nepal, because there is the highest mountain in the world. Today, with the commercial expeditions and with Sherpa support, it is almost possible for any well-trained, little experienced person to approach the summit of Mount Everest. But this is also an ethical question. We think Everest should remain a mountain for people who are experienced. They should be able to ascend on their own or with a partner – and not depend on ten or more Sherpas who decide everything for them.

Sport climbing will be part of the Olympics 2020 in Tokyo. What does this mean for mountain sports?

I think it’s great. This is a big task for our members who deal with sport climbing. I believe it will have only positive effects. For top sport climbers, the incentive to compete at the Olympic Games is perhaps the same as for alpine climbers to tackle the steepest wall or reach the highest summit.

Ang Tshering Sherpa

The numbers fill Ang Tshering Sherpa with confidence. “We hope that mountaineering in Nepal will revive very soon,” says the President of the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) when we meet at the International Mountain Summit in Bressanone in South Tyrol. According to his words, expeditions to Nepalese mountains higher than 6,500 meters, which are managed by the government, have already achieved 87 percent compared with the time before the devastating earthquake in April 2015. Climbing on mountains lower than 6,500 meters, managed by the NMA, has even fully recovered. Trekking is between 40 and 50 percent again, depending on the region, the head of the NMA says: “We need to let the world know that the best way to help Nepal is by visiting. Each and every person who spends time in Nepal will help to revive the economy and rebuild the infrastructure.”

Less but true liaison officers

Mount Everest

As NMA president Ang Tshering has to work on several construction sites related to expeditions. For example, the case of an Indian couple that made headlines all over the world, because they had obtained their Everest certificates by fraud, faking the summit pictures of other climbers. “We need to monitor more strictly and seriously those climbers who are not good for climbers’ image,” says the 62-year-old. The Nepalese liaison officers are no big help. They usually take their money that the expedition teams have to pay, are not seen at the base camps, but confirm afterwards that team member have reached the summit. “We asked the government to send only one liaison officer per mountain, not 30 or 40 on Everest or other mountains,” says Ang Tshering.

Everest aspirants should be more experienced

Ang Tshering (2nd f.r.) with Reinhold Messner (l.)

But it is difficult to implement such reforms because “unfortunately the government is changing every six or eight months. You have to convince them. And when they are about to understand, they change again.” That is why the discussion about new mountaineering rules for Mount Everest is already lasting for such a long time, says the head of NMA, adding that the reform is urgently needed: “Everest is the highest mountain in the world and it is not easy to climb. Either they climb in the European Alpes or the Nepalese mountains or elsewhere abroad, they do need more experience.”

“Mountaineer only interested in price”

Like others, Ang Tshering sees the problem that especially new expedition operators from Nepal are attracting clients offering dumping prices: “They are picking up people who have not any knowledge about climbing, how to use the equipment. Such agencies are spoiling the tourism industry.” The NMA president is also head of Asian Trekking, one of the country’s leading expedition operators. “We must not compromise the safety conditions ot the other Nepalese operators who are well prepared, well organized and more experienced than the new companies who have no knowledge about expeditions”, says Ang Tshering Sherpa. “Climbers, however, are only looking at the price, they don’t look at the safety conditions. This is the problem.”

Basti Haag (1979-2014)

No, I didn’t really know Sebastian Haag. I met him only once – as we sometimes do in the mountaineering scene. It was a year ago, at the International Mountain Summit (IMS) in Brixen (Bressanone) in South Tyrol. At that time he and Benedikt Boehm reported on their experiences at the eight-thousander Manaslu in Nepal: On 22. September 2012, an avalanche had hit two high camps at about 6000 meters. Eleven climbers had been killed. Bene and Basti were lucky because, due to a disquieting feeling, they had pitched their tent far away from the others. After the accident the two Germans had rescued several injured climbers. In October 2013 in Brixen, we talked about the risks that Basti took as an extreme athlete. “There are moments in which you have to switch off your brain, and others in which you have to switch it on”, said Basti. “Of course something can happen to us, like to anyone else. Nobody is immune, no matter how cautious you are. And if you’re too cautious, you have to stay at home, climb the Zugspitze or take part in the Munich City marathon.”

A fun-loving guy

Always fast: Haag (r.) and Boehm

Haag was not only a ski mountaineer, but also an ultra trail runner who started in competitions worldwide – and he was a doctor of veterinary medicine. In 2010, he presented his dissertation dedicating it to his brother Tobias, who fell to death near Chamonix when a cornice collapsed. With his schoolmate Benedikt Boehm Basti set a speed record at 7,546-meter-high Muztagh Ata in western China in 2005: nine hours and 25 minutes for the ascent, one hour and 16 minutes for the ski run. A year later the two ski mountaineers and their German compatriot Luis Stitzinger climbed and skied down the eight-thousander Gasherbrum II in the Karakoram. It took the trio only 17 hours. “I experienced Basti as a very friendly and pleasant man”, said Luis, when I called him today. “He got along with everybody, a fun-loving guy.”

No candidate for suicide

Then the successful series of Bene and Basti at the eight-thousanders ended. In 2007 on Manaslu, they had to turn around at 7,400 meters due to great danger of avalanches. In 2009, their attempt at Broad Peak ended on the lower Central Summit (8,011 m) because Basti war suffering from a cerebral edema. “At that time I risked not only my life but certainly Bene’s too, because I made the mistake to climb on ignoring my problems”, Basti told me in Brixen. In 2012  on Manaslu, he tried to get to the summit after the avalanche incident but turned around at about 8000 meters, although Benedict climbed up to the top. “He had learned from his experiences”, said Luis. “Basti was willing to take risks, but he was not a candidate for suicide.”

Low safety margin

There is no speed ski mountaineering without risk, says Stitzinger who continued to ski down 8000ers, but stopped his speed projects after his experiences on G II: “If you’re too defensive, you will not be successful. You have to give your very best to get the highest speed. The safety margin is relatively low.”

On Wednesday, Sebastian Haag and his Italian friend Andrea Zambaldi died in an avalanche in the summit region of Shishapangma. Basti was 35 years old.

Blind climber Andy Holzer

The blind can see, just in a different way. This is demonstrated by the Austrian Andy Holzer. The 47-year-old from Lienz in East Tyrol has been blind since birth. But that does not prevent him from rock climbing, ski touring or even mountaineering in the Himalayas. 16 August 1975 was a special day in Andy’s life: As a nine-year-old boy he was allowed for the first time to climb a rocky mountain together with his parents. After he had dragged himself for hours through the debris he turned to rock climbing and suddenly he regarded his father as climbing too slow. His mother couldn’t follow them. “I felt like someone had freed me from chains”, Andy recalled, as we recently met during the International Mountain Summit in Brixen.

Andy, the first question is probably always the same. How do you manage to climb a rock face without being able to see anything?

I don’t climb without seeing it. That would not work.

Please explain what you mean!

I generate the topographical details of a rock face with other sensations, for instance when I touch the grip, which later becomes my tread. This is simply intuitive climbing. Also seeing climbers train – of course in a protected environment – to climb blindly. These are completely different movement sequences. You don’t take a grip because you see it, but you grab for the place where your body’s center of gravity wants to go to. That’s the difference when you are climbing blindly. I habe been refining this technique for 25 years now. It’s no top climbing, no bid deal, but a lot of fun.

Andy on Carstencz Pyramid

You must have a huge memory to combine all these sensations and informations in your brain to a 3-D-image of the rock face.

I am not even aware of this. I only notice that I have a much higher metabolism than my friends or other climbers. This is a very different deal of energy. I have to imagine much more, to invest more mental strength to climb on the same level as my seeing friends. The difference for me makes two, three or four degrees of difficulty. It’s just another dimension.

You are mostly climbing roped up with seeing partners. Are you also able to lead a route after having finished it with your mates?

For me that is the great motivation to climb steep mountains. I want to know: What does it look like? What do the seeing climbers see? Which shapes and structures has the mountain? I can not do it with my eyes. Not even with my ears. No matter how exactly you are listening into nature, you do not hear the mountain in its details. But I have my sense of touch. It is limited just to the point where my arm ends. I have to climb up the mountain to see him. It’s a huge motivation. To save it in memory is not strenuous but rather an emotional impulse, as if seeing people remember faces or sunsets.

Guiding in rock (Image by Martin Kopfsguter)

Are you experiencing a rush of adrenaline like others when they hang in the wall, look down and are suddenly overwhelmed by what they are doing?

Many people confuse blindness with foolishness. Blindness is only the failure of one of five sensory nerves. You still have four, 80 percent of sensory perception are there. If I climb and a 600 meter deep abyss opens beneath my legs, I perceive the yawning depth that seems to pull me down. It’s tremendous. The knowledge is quite enough to get this feeling of exposure, the knowledge that the next step decides about fall or summit victory. There is no difference. Many people say to me: You are surely free from giddiness, because you do not look down. I reply: It’s a ferocious story to fall and see where it will end. But it’s much worse to fall into the dark, into uncertainty.

In the North Face of Cima Grande in the Dolomites (Image by Martin Kopfsguter)

You have already climbed six of the “Seven Summits”, the highest peaks of all continents. Only Mount Everest is still missing. In 2001 it was already climbed by a blind man, Erik Weihenmayer from USA. You have already climbed together with him, as a “double-blind” rope team. Has he encouraged you to dare climb Everest too?

For me the “Seven Summits” are less a planned project. Until I had climbed the  fourth of these summits I was not even aware of this collection. I climb about 200 mountains a year, not only here in the Alps. From Greenland to Antarctica, I’ve been everywhere. This “six of seven” were simply among these mountains. I’ve also left my traces on the two 8000ers Shishapangma and Cho Oyu, on which I, alas, couldn’t reach the summit. But I know what it feels like in Tibet, in Nepal, in the Himalayas.

Venture Everest? Everyone knows that Everest is the safest of 8000ers. It’s not an expedition but a journey. If I could now, aged 47, pack my bags and start together with my friends a trip to the highest mountain in the world, that would be very interesting. Others make a trip to Venice or to the Kitzsteinhorn (a mountain in Austria), and we just go to Everest. This is a cool idea. Because I think that anyone who does not feel tears in his eyes when he climbs up the Hillary Step and the last few meters to the highest point in the world, has no business being there. If there is no emotion on Everest, where else? Let’s see if it will happen. Maybe it will. But Everest is not my absolutely focused goal now.

So there is no concrete plan to try it next year? Also your biological clock is ticking. You know, it will be harder to climb in high altitude if you are 50 or older.

I’m totally aware of this fact. My friends are telling me, no problem, a 70- or 80-year-old has also climbed Everest. But that’s only a compliment of my friends to me. They all climb with headlamps. I am the only one who climbs in total darkness. This is a completely different thing, in a physical sense, concerning metabolism or body’s energy balance. At the age of 50 you have probably no business being there, and I’m probably already standing on the verge. For me as a blind Everest is just another mountain than for a seeing climber. We need not discuss this.

You tried to climb 8000ers twice. Was it for you another kind of self-experience climbing in this great altitude?

Up there the seeing and I converge further, because the speed is reduced. Going slower means for me as a blind person that I have for each step a few milliseconds more time to analyze whether I have to give more pressure on my crampon rear left or front right to stay in balance. Down here where the altitude does not matter I have to make my steps quickly one after another to keep pace with the others. In this case each step is like to do a lottery. In the long run it’s extremely exhausting. Compared to this it’s almost like a game if you have suddenly two seconds time for each step. The high altitude excites me that way because I feel good up there.

Andy during skitouring on an Austrian mountain (Image by Erwin Reinthaler)

A Paralympic winner once told me that he didn’t like the term “disabled athletes”. Do you also feel pigeonholed when someone calls you like this?

No. I’m rarely called like this because I am not in competition. In addition: At 7500 meters above sea level everyone is disabled. I have never met anyone up there who was not disabled. And if we do rock climbing in the Dolomites and my seeing friend is not disabled, we have probably chosen the wrong route. In this case it was too easy, no challenge. We are climbing mountains just because we want to handicap ourselves, to escape the paved roads and to avoid tracks. That’s the great thing about mountaineering.

You also do skitouring.

In the last ten years I have spent at least hundred days per winter with skitouring, last winter even more. Snow suits me. In contrast to stones you can form snow by carving and balancing. Of course I had to learn special techniques. Again, the ears are extremely important. By the turns of my friend I immediately hear the inclination. It’s not necessary that he cautions me about an icy patch because I have heard it long since. Furthermore speed is important. If you are not fast enough you will sink into deep snow or in snow that is frozen at the top. I have intensively worked to get better during the last ten years so that now I can really enjoy it.

I skied down Shishapangma from 7100 meters, also from Mount McKinley or Mount Ararat in Turkey. Not because I want to be particularly cool, but because it’s a great relief for me. For this you don’t need eyes, it’s a matter of feeling. I also had to get used to the material. My skis are very short and very wide, so that the manoeuvrability is guaranteed.

All that sounds as if your life always is a workshop too.

Ha! I hope that everyone’s life is a workshop. Because if it’s not, you don’t further your personal development. I am constantly developing myself. What I am living day by day is my workshop of life. You have said well.

Wingsuit-Flyer Alexander Polli

The dream of flying like a bird is as old as humanity itself. Until the moment of deploying the parachute a basejump from a cliff seems to get close to this dream, jumping with a wingsuit from a mountain maybe even closer. But there’s a catch: Mostly a mistake means death. In 2013 alone more than twenty jumpers died, among them the Canadian Mario Richard and the Briton Mark Sutton. The 47-year-old Richard was the husband of US climber Steph Davis. The 42-year-old Sutton had served as a stunt double of James Bond during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games 2012 in London when he had skydived out of a helicopter into the Olympic Stadium. Both died in August during wingsuit flights, Richard in Italy, Sutton in Switzerland.

During the International Mountain Summit in Brixen I talked to Alexander Polli. The 28-year-old Norwegian, who is living mostly in Italy, is one of the most experienced wingsuit flyers of the world. This year he caused a furore by flying through a rockhole in Spain with about 250 km/h. 

Alex, some say it’s crazy, you risk your life. For what?

I don’t necessarily see it so much of risking my life because I’ve taken so much time in preparation in what I’ve been doing. I did 1500 skydives in two years before I did my first basejump. That allowed me to gain a level of training that when I’m jumping off the cliff it’s not a question if I can fly. I’m sure I can fly. I’ve never seen it as risking my life. Honestly, I’m extremely afraid of dying. I’m extremely afraid of heights. What made me able to do this was that I wasn’t the first. There were other skydivers and basejumpers who had been doing it for twenty years. So in my eyes it was always like: Why can they and why can’t I? Am I missing something or is it just my fear that is stopping me.

But you continue to do it. What do you get from it?

I was just jumping the other day, from Mt. Brento. I had the honour of jumping with father and son. The father is 61, the son was my age, 26, and we were all jumping together. Still now, when I’m standing up there and you are standing in this wingsuit, first at one point you might feel a little bit silly. Like: What am I doing? Am I an idiot or what? And then after it you realize what you are about to do, the fact that you are very comfortable because you have all the training. And, oh my God, I’m going flying down the mountain! So even when you land and you look back up from where you came from, like when I was watching the video tonight playing on the big screen, it’s kind a like “Wow, is that me? Was that really me?” I mean it true, here is a dream becoming reality.  

Alexander Polli: Dream is becoming reality

But is it your goal to get nearer and nearer and nearer to the rock?

No, that’s definitely not the goal. It’s great to fly close to stuff because you get a good visual of how fast you’re going. My goal is more the missions. I meet up with friends and we go up to big cliffs that have potentially sometimes never been jumped before or I have never jumped before.  Me not being a climber necessarily. The mission to get up there, that little bit of climbing that for these people we have around us here at IMS is nothing, for me is horrifying, terrifying. It’s a lot more scarier than the jump when I finally stand at the edge with the parachute. I’m like finally I’m safe. It’s the going up part that is scary and dangerous.

But there are major debates because there have been many casualities recently. Many of your colleagues died. What would do you answer these critics?

My answer would be: It’s truly a very new sport. Our understanding of how the wingsuits fly is still very limited. The way that we are taught, the way that somebody who has more knowledge would teach somebody that has less knowledge is very kind of “Put your finger in the air and let’s see what works!” There is no true science to it. These wingsuits just came out eight years ago.

Alexander Polli: Our knowledge is very limited

I feel great honour and joy to have been able to meet some of these people that aren’t with us any more. I feel that some have been unlucky and some casualities are really due to meteorological conditions.  All these wingsuit flyers were not necessarily paragliders. So we don’t real understand thermics and so forth. But more and more I have been involved in the sport more and more I realize that thermics actually have a lot to do with what we do in wingsuits. Because if you have the heat that’s coming off from the mountain you’re gonna be able to fly that far. If the mountain is in the shadow you are not gonna be able to fly that far. But maybe you don’t even think about this before you’re jumping. So I think, because it’s such new sport just our knowledge is very limited.

Your videos are very spectacular. Millions of young people are watching them. Do you think you have a responsibility for these people. Maybe they say: “Wow, I also wanna do this!”,  and they try it without the skills they need.

Indirectly yes. I would like to say no, I don’t because being responsible in that way seems like a very big word and tough thing to take in my plate. But yes, I have potentially inspired or woken somebody up to potentially want to wingsuit one day while if they didn’t see that video they won’t. This is one of the reasons why this year you will not be seeing a new cave jump or a new reality of human flight like I have been releasing the last year. What you will see this year is something by me for the jumpers, speaking about state of mind – and specific guidelines. If you would include these rules, if you would impose yourself these rules, “Okay, if I jump a wingsuit from the mountain I will never do this and I will always do this”, then you can really find a way to be able to do this I believe a million out of a million.

Alexander Polli: I feel indirectly responsible

This would be better than regulations?

For sure because regulating something like this is almost impossible. The locations from where you jump, how do you gonna have a little security checkpoint on top of the mountain? “Yes, you can jump! No you can’t!” (laughs)

It’s your passion to do that. Do you think that passion one day will end?

My passion is for a massive amount of adventure, honestly. I think I’ve already been jumping and flying so much that I do want to go climbing more. The climbing really fascinates me. I’m truly very, very challenged, inspired, amazed by these people that actually go up big walls and do that amazing climbs. I think what they do is totally nuts (laughs) compared to what I’m doing. I would like to learn that better. I would like to learn how to surf better.  I would like to wild water rafting, trekking over long distances. There are plenty of other adventures that I can find myself really liking.

David Lama

Considering his age of 23 years, David Lama has already faced a lot of criticism. “I have learned from my mistakes”, says the Austrian Climber. In 2010 his team had set dozens of new bolts for filming David’s attempt to free climb the legendary “Compressor Route” on Cerro Torre in Patagonia. Then Lama failed, but two years later he succeeded, together with his Austrian climbing mate Peter Ortner. For the summer of 2014 the two climbers are planning another “blockbuster”.

Impossible to climb?

Masherbrum (in the centre)

Lama and Ortner want to climb the East Face of the 7821-meter-high Masherbrum in the Karakoram for the first time. “Not many have actually tried to climb the wall, because most consider it as impossible”, David tells me at the International Mountain Summit in Brixen. “But meanwhile I can imagine to climb through this wall. This is currently one of the most exciting ideas.” Perhaps his compatriot Hansjoerg Auer would join the team, Lama reveals. When I met him a few days ago Reinhold Messner called these two Austrian climbers “young people who are creative”. They would find their playing fields.

Extremely cool

Chogolisa

Currently the Karakoram is “one of the most exciting playgrounds” for him, David says. “Huge, beautiful, especially difficult mountains with big walls. I’m fascinated by them.” In 2012 Lama and Ortner climbed the 7665-meter-high, shapely Chogolisa, it was David’s first 7000er. “After 26 years we were the first climbers who reached the summit. It was an extremely cool experience to climb up to the summit ridge. Secondly, it was a kind of preparation for higher mountains because it’s my goal to climb big and difficult walls.” Like the East Face of Masherbrum .

Practice makes perfect

David Lama is the son of an Austrian mother and a Sherpa from Khumbu, the region around Mount Everest. At the age of five David proved his extraordinary talent at a climbing camp organized by Peter Habeler. That was the start of a successful career as a sport climber. At the age of ten Lama was climbing extremely difficult routes. Today, he sees himself “more as an alpinist,” says David, adding with a smile: “And also a little bit as a mountaineer.”

Everything under control

He is not a gambler, says Lama. However, he only turns back on a mountain if it is absolutely necessary. “I believe I have the ability to balance and evaluate the risk. But it is also clear that someone who has just taken his driving test will move faster than someone who has the licence for forty years.” Does he think about death? On Masherbrum, David answers, “one would like to have everything settled before climbing into the wall.”