Alex Megos at the IMS in Brixen

There are people who seem to be able to override the law of gravity. Alex Megos is one of them. The 25-year-old German from the city of Erlangen is one of the best sports climbers in the world. At the age of 19, he was the first in the world to master onsight a route in the Spanish climbing area of Siurana in French grade 9a, which corresponds to eleventh grade according to the classic UIAA difficulty scale. For comparison: Reinhold Messner climbed the seventh degree in his best days. Onsight means that Alex simply climbed straight on without having got any information about the route beforehand. This coup opened the door to professional climbing for him. This spring, Megos added another highlight: He managed the first ascent of the route “Perfecto Mundo” in the climbing area Margalef in the northeast of Spain (see video below showing one of his failed attempts), his first 9b+ (according to UIAA scale a climb in the lower twelfth degree). A single route worldwide is currently considered even more difficult.

I met Alex Megos during the 10th International Mountain Summit (IMS) in Brixen, South Tyrol, where the big names of the mountain scene have been passing the mike to each other for years.

Alex, you are one of only three climbers in the world who have climbed a route with difficulty level 9b+. So you’re right at the front of the pack. How does that feel?

Of course it doesn’t feel so bad. But actually I don’t do it to become famous, but simply because climbing is good for me and because I want to know how difficult I can climb, how far I can push my own limit.

Please explain to a layman what a 9b+ route is like.

It means many, many difficult climbing moves one behind the other in a very steep, partly overhanging rock wall. For example, if someone has a normal door frame of two centimeters, then I can hang on it with one arm. That’s not very difficult. But 9b+ is difficult. (laughs)

Strained fingers

What kind of training are you doing?

I actually train every day. About five days a week I go to the climbing wall, the rest of the time I do balance training and other strengthening exercises on the rings, the pull-up bar, the fingerboard, etc.

The Czech Adam Ondra, who has climbed probably the most difficult route worldwide with a 9c, employs his own physiotherapist who shows him new movements that he can integrate into his climbing moves. Do you also have such consultants?

I don’t have my own physio, but I have two trainers, Patrick Matros and Dicki (Ludwig) Korb, with whom I have been working together for twelve years. We analyze together where I can get even better, work on training, invent new exercises. Compared to running or cycling, climbing is still a very young sport, but I think it is much more complex. You have very varied movements, never the same ones. That’s why there are so many different world-class climbers. One is perhaps 1.50 meters tall and weighs 50 kilograms, the other measures 1.85 meters and weighs 80 kilograms. Both are world class, but in different climbing styles. That’s why climbing is so special for me. You just have to find out for yourself where your strengths and weaknesses lie and then work on improving yourself holistically as a climber.

In vertical rock

When you climb spectacular routes, the same names always appear in your surroundings: Chris Sharma, Stefano Ghisolfi, Adam Ondra. Is this a small clique in high-end climbing?

Absolutely. We know each other both in rock climbing and in competition climbing. After the two days here at the IMS I will go to Arco to visit Stefano and climb with him. You know each other, you visit each other, you climb together. It is really a small clique.

The mentioned 9b+ route, which you were the first to master, had actually been drilled by Chris Sharma years ago, but he didn’t manage it himself. Does that bother him?

I think he’s out of his age. (laughs) He drilled the route nine or ten years ago, tried it for a few years and failed again and again. Then he turned to another project, the “Dura Dura” route, which four years ago became the world’s first 9b+. He then also climbed it. He was already 33 years old. He became a father, opened a climbing hall and simply had less time. When Stefano (Ghisolfi) and I tried the route in Margalef, it naturally motivated him mega, and he tried it again himself.

You are now 25 years old. Do you already feel at the zenith of your performance?

I definitely don’t see myself at my limit yet. I have found so many weaknesses that I can work on so that I can climb even more difficult things.

Climbing in overhanging rock

There is a 9c route called “Silence” in the cave “Hanshallaren” near Flatanger in Norway, which was first climbed by Adam Ondra in 2017. Doesn’t this extremely overhanging route excite you?

I don’t think this route is ideal for my climbing style. It’s a climb that doesn’t suit me very well. My strengths lie in other climbing fields. If I really want to climb at my limit, then I have to find something that serves my strengths. Only then will I be able to make it.

Whereby Adam Ondra said: If someone can do it, it’s you.

But for that you would have to invest a lot of time. There aren’t that many people who have a) the level to climb something like that and b) also the will to invest so much time. I would rather invest time in something that suits me better.

You originally came from competition climbing.

As a teenager I did many, many competitions, about until I was 18 years old. Then I stopped completely for six years. At the end of 2017, I came back again with some competitions and won again my first World Cup competition in Briancon in France. I would like to get more involved in competition climbing again.

With the long-term goal of Olympia 2020 in Tokyo, where climbing will become an Olympic sport for the first time?

Of course that’s an issue. But I have to think about it carefully, because I haven’t competed at all in recent years. That’s why I’m a little behind. The format presented at the Olympics – a combination of the three disciplines bouldering, lead and speed climbing – doesn’t suit me, because until recently I’ve never been speed climbing. And even in bouldering I still have deficits, because I lack competition practice. So I have to think about it: Do I want to use the next two years to reduce these deficits and qualify for the Olympic Games? Or is that too time-consuming for me and I lose too much time on the rock?

Despite gravity

There have been heated discussions in the climbing scene about the decision to combine the three climbing disciplines into one competition for the Olympic Games. What do you think of that?

I take a very critical view of the format. In the end, the 20 best combiners will go to the Olympic Games. It is not said that the best speed climbers, the best boulderers and the best lead climbers will be there. From the speedclimbing aces – except for the world champion, who automatically qualifies – nobody has a realistic chance to compete in Tokyo, because the time is too short to make up for the deficits in the other two disciplines. The best in bouldering and lead climbing may be there, but they won’t cut a very good figure in speed climbing. I don’t know what sort of impression this will make on the spectators. It’s not really the way we want to present our sport.

In what ways can competitive climbing benefit from the Olympic Games?

More funding will then be available to make sport climbing more popular and to enable more climbers to make it their profession. That would, of course, be desirable. Nowadays it is rare for someone to say that he or she is a professional climber and can really make a living from it.

Body tension

You started climbing when you were a toddler. Has it become an addiction? Could you even be without it?

No. I couldn’t live without climbing at the moment. It has really developed into a kind of addiction. I started when I was five or six years old. It was great fun for me. Then it became more and more. I just couldn’t get enough of it. And it’s still like that. (laughs)

If you hang in these rocks and climb these moves that seem impossible to us, what is going on inside you?

I think for me it is ultimately a way to test my limits. Everyone has his own thing in which he is good and wants to see how good he can become. For me that’s just climbing. It is my way to let out energy and to live my dream.

Are you actually a fair weather climber?

No, I like it when it’s cold and uncomfortable. (laughs)

Chris Sharma once told me that he prefers to climb in the sun. That’s why the very high mountains are out of the question for him.

The very high mountains are also out of the question for me. There are minus 20 degrees and snow, it makes no sense to climb. But for me, it doesn’t have to be fine weather. I also go climbing when it rains or when it is cloudy.

The Huber brothers, Thomas and Alexander Huber, also came from sport climbing, but at some point they switched to the high mountains. Would that also be a perspective for the future for you?

Just now I can’t imagine going on an expedition and climbing any seven or eight-thousander in ten or fifteen years. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t happen sometime after all. At the moment, I think, I will leave it at sports climbing. (laughs)

Jeff Lowe (1950-2018)

“The climb will go. Get rid of the rope. It’s only distracting you,” Jeff Lowe once said. He was an uncompromising climber. Lowe loved to be alone or in small teams on extreme routes. The American succeeded more than 1,000 first ascents in his climbing career. Jeff was born in 1950 in Ogden, Utah, as the fourth of eight children. When he was four years old, his father took him skiing and two years later climbing. The family was enthusiastic about mountain sports. Aged 14, Jeff climbed his first new route: on Mount Ogden, doing it solo. He was often en route with his brothers Greg and Mike and his cousin George Henry Lowe.

Legendary attempt on Latok I North Ridge

Two of Jeff Lowe’s projects in particular are legendary. In 1978, Jeff and George Henry Lowe together with their compatriots Jim Donini and Thomas R. Engelbach tried to reach the 7,145-meter-high summit of Latok I in the Karakoram in Pakistan via the extremely difficult North Ridge. 150 meters below the highest point they had to turn around in a storm. After more than three weeks in the wall, they returned exhausted, but safely from the mountain. More than 30 attempts to complete exactly this route to the summit have since failed. As reported, the Slovenians Ales Cesen and Luka Strazar and the Briton Tom Livingstone after all reached the summit of Latok I for the first time over the north side on 9 August. However, the trio had deviated from the North Ridge in the upper part of the mountain.

Spectacular route via Eiger North Face

Jeff Lowes legendary route “Metanoia”

No less spectacular was Jeff Lowe’s legendary route “Metanoia” through the north face of the Eiger. In a life crisis Jeff had come to Switzerland in the winter of 1991 and had opened the extreme Eiger route in nine days – solo and without using bolts. It was not until the end of 2016 that the German Thomas Huber and the two Swiss Stephan Siegrist and Roger Schaeli succeeded in repeating the route for the first time. “We were three, Jeff was alone then. During every pitch, that I led, I tried to imagine how it was for him climbing alone. He must have been totally stressed. But he did it!,” Thomas wondered afterwards. “I have left the route with a great deal of awe.”

Incurable illness

In recent years Jeff Lowe had been bound to a wheelchair and needed care. He suffered from a rare, still incurable illness, with similar symptoms like MS or ALS. When, in 2017, Lowe was awarded the Piolet d’Or, the “Oscar of the Mountaineers”, for his lifetime climbing achievements, he was no more able to collect the trophy personally.

R.I.P.

“I will miss him beyond measure and yet I am glad that he is free of his physical body and all the pain and suffering he has endured for many years,” Jeff’s partner Connie Self, who cared for him for the past eight years, wrote on Facebook. Jeff Lowe died at the age of 67 years.

Alex Honnold

At the latest since today, Alex Honnold knows what is the opposite of free solo: The “Press Walk” of the International Mountain Summit. The 32-year-old can neither move freely nor is he alone. On the Plose, the home mountain of Bressanone in South Tyrol, about sixty reporters, camera men and photographers are bustling around the American top climber. “Crazy,” says the 32-year-old with a smile in his face. Since 3 June, his name resounds not only throughout insiders of the climbing scene but worldwide. On that day he pushed into a new dimension. Alex succeeded the first free solo – means climbing alone and without any rope – through the legendary 900-meter-high granite wall of El Capitan in the Yosemite Valley. He climbed via the route “Freerider”, which had been opened by Alexander Huber in 1995 and had been free climbed for the first time by Alexander and his brother Thomas in 1998. For comparison, the ascent with ropes for belaying had taken the Huber brothers more than 15 hours.

Modern nomad

Up for every fun

Alex Honnold does not correspond to the stereotype of an extreme climber. He wears his hair short, does not drink alcohol, does not smoke and is a vegetarian. For many years he has been living as a modern nomad, quite modest in a mobile home which he uses to drive from rock wall to rock wall. For five years, he has been supporting with his foundation environmental projects around the world. Despite his coup on the El Capitan, he does not show any airs and graces.

Already during the ascent to the mountain restaurant Rossalm, where the organizers of the IMS have scheduled a press conference with Honnold, I manage to ask Alex some questions – according to the motto “walk and talk”.

Alexander and Thomas Huber as well as Tommy Caldwell compared your free solo on El Capitan with the first moon landing. How did you personally feel after having completed your project?

I found it similar. As a younger person I dreamt that would be the craziest thing I’ve ever done. But then, as I actually did it, I felt relatively normal because I spent so much time preparing that it felt like reasonable. I mean it was really special to me, but did feel like relatively normal. Anyway it’s complicated. I wouldn’t have been able to do something like that if I didn’t make it feel normal. But at the same time climbing El Cap without rope feels pretty crazy.

Alex Honnold: Pretty crazy

Was there any moment of doubt during your climb?

No, I was just 100 percent climbing. I wouldn’t have started without being totally committed. I spent a lot of time working on it. I spent nine years actually dreaming about it.

Many people wonder whether free solo climbs are responsible, especially this one in a 900-meter-high, extremely steep wall. What do yo answer them?

I thought it was responsible. I was going to make good decisions, doing my best. I think I’m pretty intentional about the risks that I’m going to take.

Alex Honnold: Intentional about the risks

Was it for you a kind of life project?

For me, it was very much like a life dream, definitely the biggest inspiration in my whole life.

Climbers on El Capitan

After having fulfilled this long dream, did you have to go through a mental valley?

I don’t know. If so, I am in the valley right now, because it was only a couple of months ago and I am still a sort of processing and looking for my next inspiration, what my next project is. There is a film about it coming next year. I am still talking about El Cap all the time. It doesn’t feel like the past.

You did a lot of amazing climbs before this free solo, for example the Fitz Traverse along with Tommy Caldwell. For this climb in Patagonia in February 2014, you were later awarded the Piolet d’Or, the “Oscar of the climbers”. How do you value the free solo on El Capitan if you compare it with the Fitz Traverse.

I mean, the Fitz Traverse was an amazing climbing experience, because it was with Tommy. He is a great friend, a great partner. The Fitz Traverse has never been like my big lifetime dream whereas freerider was something I was thinking about for years and years. Freerider was my personal private dream, the Fitz Traverse was more Tommy’s idea, because I had never been in Patagonia so I didn’t have any special agenda. Tommy said, we should do this. Then we did and it was an amazing experience, but I hadn’t built it up ahead that time.

What exactly did you to prepare for your free solo on El Capitan?

For many years beforehand it was more the mental, the imagining, the dreaming, the thinking about whether it was possible. And the last year beforehand, it was more the physical preparation, memorizing the moves, the rehearsal, and the actual training to get fit.

So you had every step of this climb in your mind before you started into the wall?

I had definitely every step that matters. Not the easy stuff, but the hard stuff I had fully memorized.

What was mentally the most difficult part of the climb?

Probably the biggest step was just believing that it’s possible. Because for years I thought how amazing it would be to do it but never really thought that I could. So I think the biggest mental step was like believing that I actually could and then starting the actual work.

Alex Honnold: The biggest step

And when you set off into the wall, you left everything behind?

I wouldn’t have started unless I was ready. By the time I got into the wall everything was in order.

“Compared with El Cap, the Dolomites look like pieces of garbage”, says Alex

Why did you choose “Freerider” and not another route?

It’s the easiest route on El Cap. (laughs) It’s not that easy but the other ones would have been harder.

Thomas Huber told me, he hoped that you would now stop free soloing because you probably die if you continue to push your limits.

I agree, if you constantly push, it gets more and more dangerous. But Alex (Huber), for example, was constantly pushing himself in different ways but staying safe. I think it’s possible to continue the challenge yourself without going to far.

Alex Honnold: Not going too far

So it was not your last free solo?

No, I did some in the Dolomites a couple of days ago, (laughs) but very easy ones. I think in my mind the free solo on El Cap was the hardest thing ever, because I can’t really think about anything more inspiring. But in the past, like in the last ten years, when I thought of things that were hard and I was proud of, I always had six months or a year between things that I was excited on. So we’ll see.

Hayden Kennedy (1990-2017)

What a tragic end of one of the best climbers in the world. The American Hayden Kennedy took his own life at the age of 27 years.  On Saturday, Hayden and his partner in life Inge Perkins, like Kennedy an experienced climber and skier, had been on a ski tour on Imp Peak in the US state of Montana. They were caught by an avalanche. Perkins was fully buried by the snow masses, rescuers recovered the 23-year-old dead. Kennedy, who was partially buried, survived. On Sunday he committed suicide.

“Unbearable loss”

Hayden survived the avalanche but not the unbearable loss of his partner in life”, wrote his father Michael Kennedy,  editor of the magazine “Climbing” for several decades, on Facebook. “He chose to end his life. Myself and his mother Julie sorrowfully respect his decision.”

Two times Piolet d’Or winner

In January 2012, Hayden Kennedy had made world-wide headlines when he and his compatriot Jason Kruk had repeated the “Compressor Route” of the Italian Cesare Maestri on Cerro Torre in Patagonia and  then removed the most bolts set by Maestri in 1970. In the same year, Kennedy – along with Kyle Dempster and Josh Wharton – opened a new route throught the South Face of the 7,285-meter-high Ogre in the Karakoram in Pakistan. He and Dempster reached the summit, it was only the third ascent of the mountain. For their first ascent of the route, the US trio was awarded the Piolet d’Or, the “Oscar of the Climbers”. In 2016 he got the renowned award for the second time, for the first ascent of the South Face of the 6176-meter-high Cerro Kishtwar in the Indian Himalayas, along with the Slowenians Marko Prezejl and Urban Novak and the Frenchman Manu Pellissier.

Nasim Eshqi

Donald Trump stands between her and El Capitan. Nasim Eshqi would also like to climb the legendary granite walls in the Yosemite National Park, but the US president has imposed, as is known, an entry ban for Iranians. The 35-year-old from Tehran takes it with humor. “I mean, he is unlucky if I am not there,“ Nasim says, laughing. The female climber does not correspond to the Western cliché of an Iranian woman at all: off-the-shoulder shirt, sunglasses, no headscarf. And she says what she thinks. “The traditional culture in Iran doesn’t accept me or other girls who are the same style like me as real women they want to marry or stay with,” says Nasim. “But it was okay for me from the beginning. I have friends from all over the world who are supporting me mentally.”

Simply continued

The female climber is used to deal with rejection. Even her open-minded parents, a university professor and a teacher, had a hard time to come to terms with the ambitions of her daughter, who first achieved successes as a kickboxer and then, 14 years ago, discovered her passion for mountaineering and climbing. “You go out of the city and come back late, so your parents say: ‘Where have you been?’ They were afraid of dangers happening, or police or bad people. But I just kept doing this. They still don’t like what I do, but I cannot change it.”

Nasim Eshqi: I have an open family but they don’t like what I do

Equality on the rock

Nasim Eshqi in action on the crag Polekhab near Tehran (Route “Iran-Swiss”, 8a+)

Eshqi consistently cuts her own way, and it leads across rock. “The most important thing I feel when I climb anywhere in the world is feeling equal,” Nasim describes her motivation. “In climbing, we all have the same rules. It’s gravity. It doesn’t care from where we are, which gender or how much money we have. It’s just a way, and it’s only us and what we can do.”

Nasim Eshqi: Climbing makes me feeling equal

Nasim climbs routes up to the tenth degree. She spends about half of the year in her home country, where she works as a climbing trainer. But she can not make her living on it. The other months, Nasim is staying abroad, where she keeps her head above water by giving lectures. “Whatever I earn I spend. Sometimes I borrow money to pay my flight tickets.”

With luck and will

Traveling to countries like Georgia, Armenia or Turkey is no problem for her, says Eshqi. But for European states, USA or the largest part of Africa, she needs invitations from there. However, these invitations are not a guarantee that she is later really allowed to enter the countries. With a bit of pride, Nasim points out that she has already climbed in more countries than many others from states without travel restrictions: “If I am lucky and I really want it, I think it will really happen.” Thus the Iranian already climbed on rocks in the Elbsandstone Mountains in eastern Germany, the Italian Dolomites, the Swiss Rätikon or the mountains around Chamonix.

More than 70 new routes

Climbing in Iran (here on Alamkooh mountain )

In these countries, there are no strict clothing regulations like in Iran. In her home country, Nasim is obliged to wear a headscarf under the climbing helmet and to keep her arms covered. “I can live with it. It’s not as hard as for example getting no visas. I am focused on climbing and want to share my passion with many other people.” Eshqi has already opened more than 70 new routes in several countries. Just now the climbing community in her home country is very small. “The most climbers in Iran are more like picnic climbers. They simply want to be outside and use the good weather. There a not more than ten climbers in the whole country who are really pushing their limits,” says  Nasim.

Too impatient for expeditions

High altitude mountaineering is in Iran much more popular than climbing. But the 35-year-old does not see herself in this tradition. “I would love to climb K 2, everyone likes to, but I don’t have enough patience to do enough training for such a long expedition. So I found out, it’s not my way, “ says Eshqi. “I would do all this effort for walking in the Himalayas if there is a wall at the end which I want to climb. This is more in my path than only an expedition up to 8000 or 7000 meters.”

Nasim Eshqi: Not patient enough for expeditions

From enemies to fans

Convincing with performance (Route “Man o to”, 7c+, on Baraghan)

Nasim Eshqi sees signs that the Iranian society is opening up more and more – thanks to Internet use and increased traveling. The hostility, which she was often confronted with in the beginning, has decreased, says the climber, adding that reports of western media about her have played their part in this development: “When people in Iran see that the Europeans have this kind of respect for a girl who does a lot of effort on her way, they start to think: ‘Oh, she’s good. If the Europeans respect her, then we respect her too.’ So at the end all my enemies are my fans now, which I think is a success for me.” Maybe one day, Donald Trump will ask Nasim Eshqi for an autograph – after he has seen her climbing El Capitan.

Nasim Eshqi: Enemies turning into fans

Chris Sharma (© PRana)

Actually, it is recommended to use superlatives only with caution. But it’s undisputed that Chris Sharma has been one of the best rock climbers in the world for many years. The 35-year-old American and the 24-year-old Czech Adam Ondra have so far been the only climbers who have mastered a 9b+ route (on the French grading system) – partly extremely overhanging, actually impossible to climb. Currently the measure of all things. Chris is living with his wife Jimena Alarcon and the little daughter Alana in Barcelona.

Chris, you have been climbing at the highest level for so many years.. Do you think that you one day  get tired of doing it? 

For me, climbing is my life, my passion, the way I realize myself. I don’t foresee myself getting tired of climbing forever. It’s something that is so connected to who I am and I am so grateful to the position I am in. As we go through life, it’s always that our relationship is changing, because of the different phases. I am a father now, I have a daughter. For sure, this changes my relationship with climbing a little bit but it’s actually only enhance my passion for the sport. I’ve gone through many different cycles in my life. Every time you go into a kind of a new phase, I’ve noticed my love of climbing is actually deepening. If anything, I am more passionate about climbing than before.

Chris Sharma: My love of climbing is deepening

Do you have the feeling that you’ve already reached your limit or do you think you’re able to push it on and on?

I feel like I have potential to climb harder things. That’s interesting, after climbing for over 20 years, to still be able to push further. It’s like an existential question in climbing, because climbing is so much about progression. There are so many different ways to progress as a climber. One way, for sure, is to climb more difficult things. That’s something that inspired me a lot that I loved to work on. But at the same time there a lot of different ways to deepen our experience as climbers. And these are all forms of progression. For me, even as an example, starting a climbing gym, finding to share my passions with more climbers, is a progression in climbing. The point is like our life journey and climbing is totally connected. As we develop in different ways as people, our sort of relationship evolves and progresses in different ways.

You are now 35 years old. Other sport climbers say that they have passed their zenith at this age. Do you feel that you have to change your priorities?

For now, I feel like still climbing on my highest level. So I don’t feel like that right now. But as I said before, it’s important to look at it in a bigger picture way. I think, that’s the beautiful thing about climbing, it’s not like typical sports, like gymnastics or soccer. It’s really like a lifestyle sport that you can do for your whole life. To look at just in terms of extreme sport climbing is a very limited vision of it. For now, I feel this potential to continue pushing. So, of course, that’s what I’m gonna do. But that’s just one side of the experiences of climbers. You have little kids climbing as well as old people in their seventies. That’s really the essence of climbing to push your limits, to try something that is outside of your comfort zone and maybe appears impossible for you. And then through this process of working hard towards your goals you’re discovering that you’re capable something more than you thought. That’s really like a universal thing, whether you’re climbing a 6 a or 9 a, it’s the same experience – for you, for myself, for anybody.

Chris Sharma_ The essence of climbing

You have been living in Spain for many years now. Would you say you’re a sun climber, needing the warm climate around you?

I am from Santa Cruz, California, it’s like a town of surfing. When I got into climbing, it was through a climbing gym. In this way I am really one of the first climbers of this new generation from climbing gyms. In this way my introduction to climbing wasn’t like for example other people in the Alps. So my connection to climbing has been through sport climbing. Now what I love is Psicobloc, deep water soloing [climbing sea cliffs completely solo, without ropes or gear. If you slip, you just fall in the sea]. For me this is combining my two worlds, the mountains with the sea. I’m more of a beach person than an alpine person.

Psicobloc, extreme climbing on coastal rocks (© PRana)

Many sport climbers who are getting older turn to the Himalayas, saying: We are good rock climbers, very experienced now and try to transfer our climbing from the rocks at lower altitude to high altitude. Is it an option for you to do it this way?

You never know. It’s a point of my life I can’t imagine going there, honestly. I have other things to work on closer to home, but you never know. I mean, see what happens. I am open to anything, actually.

Have you ever been in the Himalayas?

I’ve been in India and Nepal, just walking around, not climbing mountains.

Didn’t you experience that thrill, looking at these mountains and thinking, I have to climb them?

I have a really big appreciation for mountains and for alpine climbing. But honestly, the dangers of climbing in the Himalayas with avalanches and all this stuff, it’s not so interesting to me right now.

Chris loves the warmth (© PRana)

Are you speaking as a father now?

Yes, for sure. I think, for that sort of thing, it’s worth it for the people, this is their life passion to do that. But to do it as just kind of a side thing maybe it’s not worth the risk. If it’s your mission in life to do that, then you are comfortable with that risk. But I’m not a mountain climber, I’m a cliff climber. I think, whatever you do, you have to be very focused and make a strong decision that you gonna do this. At least now in this moment I don’t have that. That’s not very clear in my head, so it doesn’t make sense so much to me in that way.

In November 2016, Adam Ondra made headlines by free climbing the “Dawn Wall” on El Capitan in Yosemite.  Many compare you and Adam. Is there a kind of competition between you or would you say, I only compete with myself?

I’d say I have only competition with myself. Honestly, it’s an honor to climb together with Adam. For me sometimes it has been hard in the past that I always climbed alone on these projects. Adam and I have been climbing together in Spain. It’s really great to climb with somebody. That can push me also.  There are so many different ways to approach things. Imagine, you have two of the best musicians in the world that come together. It could either be like an ego thing and try to decide who is best. That’s kind of a waste. The interesting thing would be that they sit down and play music together and make something even more incredible. That’s what Adam and I have been able to do. It’s pretty cool. I appreciate Adam, all the stuff he’s doing. I really like to have a chance to climb together with him.  

Chris Sharma about Adam Ondra

What do you feel when you have completed a climbing project successfully?

As I said, for me climbing is the way I realize my potential. It’s what I dedicate my life to. When you have these moments that everything comes together in a perfect way, these are really like transcendental moments, in climbing and life, when all this work, everything is perfected in a way that it flows perfectly. There are really magical moments.

Royal Robbins (1935-2017)

One of the great pioneers in rock climbing has gone: Royal Robbins died yesterday in Modesto, California after a long illness at the age of 82 years. “My father faced challenges in his climbing, his writing, his business, his role as a father and husband, and later in life in his debilitating illness,” said his daughter Tamara Robbins. “Through it all, he rose to the occasion, taking the challenges on with grace and humility. For that, he’s my hero.” In the late 1950s and 1960s, Robbins had set standards in bigwall climbing.

Legendary routes

Robbins in the “Salathé” in 1961

Robbins opened numerous routes on the granite walls of the Yosemite National Park, among others, along with Tom Frost and Chuck Pratt, the legendary 1,000-meter-high “Salathé Wall” on El Capitan, which was then considered to be the most difficult rock climbing route through a big wall. Robbins fought for a clean climbing style. In 1995, Alexander Huber, the younger of the Huber brothers, managed the first red-point ascent of the route, means free and lead climbing, in a single push. The “American Direct” on the west side of the Petit Dru in the Mont Blanc region, which Robbins opened in 1962 with Gary Hemming, is nothing more than history. After several rockfalls, the legendary original route no longer exists in the upper part.

Hunger for adventure

In the 1970s, Robbins increasingly suffered from arthritis. He then turned to extreme kayaking. Here, too, he managed numerous first descends. “I love it very much, and it is very rewarding, but I am first, last, and always a climber,” Robbins once said. “I will climb until I drop, and it would be the last thing I would give up.” Later, Robbins also led a very successful company for outdoor textiles bearing his name. In the heart, however, the entrepreneur always remained an adventurer: “We need adventure. It’s in our blood. It will not go away,” wrote Robbins. “The mountains will continue to call because they uniquely fulfill our need for communion with nature, as well as our hunger for adventure.”

Thomas Bubendorfer in action (©bubendorfer.com)

The Austrian extreme climber Thomas Bubendorfer had a ten-meter-fall during ice climbing in the Italian Dolomites and was very seriously injured. According to Italian media reports, the condition of the 54-year-old has improved slightly, but is still critical. The accident happened on Wednesday. Bubendorfer was climbing with a partner on a frozen waterfall in the gorge Serrai di Sottoguda on the Marmolada, a popular ice climbing area. For unknown reasons, he fell and landed in a creek bed. Reportedly water penetrated into his lungs. He had to be given artificial respiration. In addition, Bubenhofer is said to have suffered head injuries, rib fractures and internal injuries. He is now in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Padua.

Many free solo projects

Bubendorfer had made headlines in the 1980s and 1990s with spectacular free-solo climbs, for example in 1983 in the north faces of Grandes Jorasses, Matterhorn and Eiger. In 1986, it took him 23 hours to solo climb the granite giant Fitz Roy in Patagonia. In 1991, Bubendorfer first climbed solo and without rope through the South Face of Aconcagua, the highest mountain in South America. In the past 15 years, he has succeeded in many first ascents as an ice climber.

Update 4 March: At the request of Bubendorfer’s family a news blackout was imposed. As long as he is in critical condtion, the hospital in Padua does not want to give any further information about his health. So keep your fingers crossed!

Update 7 March: Good news! Thomas is out of danger and on his way to recovery, says his family.

Thomas Huber at the ISPO

Thomas Huber radiates pure joie de vivre. “I’m doing well, more than in a long time,” says the 50-year-old German top climber, as we meet at the ISPO sporting goods trade fair in Munich. On 30 December, the older of the two Huber brothers had provided another highlight of his career: Along with the Swiss climbers Stephan Siegrist and Roger Schaeli, Thomas succeeded the second ascent of the legendary route “Metanoia” in the centre of the Eiger North Face: “How can a year end better? I have just taken this flow with me,” enthuses Huber.

“Wow, it’s okay!”

Jeff Lowes legendary route “Metanoia”

2016 was an extreme year for him. First the 16-meter-fall from a rock face in the Berchtesgaden region in Bavaria, which he survived with incredible luck; then the almost miraculous turbo recovery from the scull fracture he had suffered; the journey to Pakistan to climb the North Face of the seven-thousander Latok I; the unsuccessful rescue action for the US climbers Kyle Dempster and Scott Adamson at the nearby Ogre II; then the veto of his companions against an attempt on Latok I. “These were all difficult moments, which I had to work up mentally,” Thomas admits. “I have accepted my fall, and that I had made a mistake there. I have also reflected that I simply need to be more conscious. Maybe I too – like Jeff Lowe – have become a new person through climbing Metanoia, because I can say now: Wow, it’s all right. I am strong. We had so much fun, although we were pretty close to the limit.”

Rare illness

For 25 years, the extreme route that Jeff Lowe had opened in winter 1991, climbing solo, without bolts, had been a too hard nut to crack for many climbers. The American had come to the Eiger North Face in a life crisis. “I’m not sure that he really wanted to return home,” says Roger Schaeli in the video on the second ascent.

Not for nothing, Lowe called his route “Metanoia”, which means “repentance”. Today, the climbing pioneer, who has made more than 1000 first ascents in his career, is sitting in a wheelchair. The 66-year-old suffers from a rare, still incurable illness, with similar symptoms like MS or ALS. Thomas Huber had visited Jeff Lowe before his expedition to Latok I. In 1978, Lowe had belonged to a rope team of four, who had climbed via the North Ridge of Latok I to a point not far below the 7,145-meter-high summit, when a storm had hit them back. 22 days after setting off, the quartet had returned to the base camp, completely exhausted, but safe.

Awe and gratitude

Huber, Schaeli and Siegrist (from l. to r.)

“I met Jeff and saw him confined to his wheelchair,” says Thomas. “I realized at once that I would like to repeat his route Metanoia. I wanted to roll out a red carpet to tell him: Hey, guy, what you did at that time was a doozie!” After the many failed attempts to repeat it, Lowe’s Route had become a “mystery”, says Thomas. “At some point everybody said: Metanoia, crazy, strange.” The American had spent nine days in the wall. In their second run, Huber, Siegrist and Schaeli needed two days to repeat the route. “We were three, Jeff was alone then. During every pitch, that I led, I tried to imagine how it was for him climbing alone. He must have been totally stressed. But he did it!” Thomas wonders. “I have left the route with a great deal of awe – and also gratitude: that I am still living.”

Stefan Glowacz

Mountaineers and climbers travel. Frequently and as self-evident. Finally mountains do not come to them. This is precisely why it should be self-evident that people involved in mountain sports should raise their voices when the freedom of travel is restricted or even abolished – as now by US President Donald Trump for people from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen. So far, the great outcry of the climbing scene has stayed away. Is it perhaps because in these countries – with the exception of Iran – the number of mountaineers and climbers is limited? Or because those countries are (still) not among the favorite destinations of the mountain friends? After all, German top climber Stefan Glowacz didn’t mince his words.

For freedom, tolerance and respect

“With the restriction of freedom of travel for certain nationalities, I feel indirectly affected because friends and acquaintances are directly affected,” the 51-year-old writes on Facebook. “Like the Iranian climber Nasim Eshqi, whom I personally know and appreciate.” The 36-year-old woman is one of the best rock climbers in her country.

Nasim Eshqi in action

Climbers, says Stefan Glowacz, define their sport above all by freedom: “No rules, no referees. We appreciate and live the freedom to be able to set off at any time (and almost everywhere). Freedom is the decisive part why climbing is so fascinating for many of us.” Democratic values ​​are in danger, says Glowacz: “Have the incidents and wars of the past not shown us that it only works by cooperation? With tolerance and respect, such as we climbers experience again and again – no matter what country we are traveling to?” Glowacz warns against burying our heads in the sand in the face of Trump’s policy: “Dodging or staying silent means accepting. We should want to change something.”

A shame!

Farnaz Esmaeilzadeh is angry

The Iranian sports climber Farnaz Esmaeilzadeh does not know what to do after Trump’s entry ban. “I am just an athlete and I did not choose where to born,” the 28-year-old writes on Facebook. “Even though I love my culture and country, I’m just trying for progress, better living and working on my goals as many other successful people do.” Trump’s decision is “racist and inhuman”, says Farnaz. “It’s a shame! If all people in the world had the same conditions, we could see who is really talented.”

Adam Ondra cheered after his success

What a hotshot! The 23-year-old Czech Adam Ondra succeeded his free climb through the mostly vertical, partly overhanging “Dawn Wall” in the granite of El Capitan within only eight days. It was the only second free ascent of the rock route, which is regarded as the most difficult in the world. At the beginning of 2015, the Americans Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson had “freed” the “Dawn Wall” after 19 days in the approximately 900-meter-high wall, a milestone of climbing history. They had been preparing for it for more than seven years. Ondra spent just two and a half weeks on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Kevin Jorgeson finds the success of the young Czech “totally badass”, as he wrote to the magazine “Rock and Ice”: “For Tommy and I, the question was whether it was even possible. We left lots of room to improve the style and Adam did just that! Super impressive that he was able to adapt to the Dawn Wall’s unique style and sort out so many complex sequences so quickly.” The German climbing scene is also thrilled.

“As if Bolt had won the marathon”

Climbing also in the night

Alexander Huber, aged 47, the younger of the Huber brothers, writes to me, that Ondra’s performance “equates to his ability: masterly, brilliant”. Alexander’s older brother values Adam’s success in a similar way. “This is the statement of the new generation per se,” tells me Thomas Huber (who, by the way, celebrated his 50th birthday on Friday last week): “For me it is the greatest achievement in climbing of our times. Now the bar is high!” Stefan Glowacz is also blown away. “I’ve been climbing for more than 40 years, but this performance is simply unbelievable,” writes the 51-year-old on Facebook. “It is amazing to see how the young generation catapult climbing into ever new dimensions that were hardly thought possible hitherto.” Ondra’s performance is “a kind of fusion of passion, obsession and extraordinary ability, but above all, an unprecedented mental performance,” says Glowacz, pointing out that it was Adam Ondra’s first big wall experience: “Somewhere I read this comparison: It is as if Usain Bolt had won the marathon race too.”

“Dawn Wall” within in 24 hours?

For years already, experts believe Adam Ondra to be the world’s best sports climber. During his climb of the “Dawn Wall” on El Capitan, he was accompanied by his countryman Pavel Blazek and the Austrian photographer Heinz Zak. Ondra led all 32 pitches ofthe route. “The first two days I was as nervous as a cat,” Adam said in an interview with the Czech climbing website emontana. In his words climbing the two key pitches (No. 14 and 15) was “like holding razor blades. But apart from them there are the pitches which I consider to belong among the best ones I have ever climbed.” It is quite possible that Ondra will soon be back on the route. “I would love to climb it a lot faster than this time”, says Adam, putting the bar high: “I think climbing ‘Dawn Wall’ in 24 hours is a nice challenge. It won´t be my ambition for the next year, that´s what I am sure of. I would like to take a mental rest for a few seasons but it would be interesting as a dream for life.” As absurd as this dream may sound, this hotshot could really do it.

Sebastian Halenke in action

The Olympic flag is already there, the climbers will come in four years. Today Governor Yuriko Koiki presented at Haneda airport in Tokyo the flag with the Olympic rings which the Mayor of Rio had handed over to her at the closing ceremony of the Olympics in Brazil. In 2020 in Tokyo, sport climbers will officially compete for medals for the first time (one week before the Winter Games in Albertville in 1992, there was already a demonstration event won by German climber Stefan Glowacz). “Of course, as a competition climber I welcome this development in principle,” says Sebastian Halenke regarding the Olympic premiere. “Until now, climbing as a competitive sport is barely represented in the media and even within the climbing scene there are rather spartan reports on the competitions.” The 21-year-old climber from the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, whose trademark is his red mohawk haircut, belongs to the World Cup’s top ten in the discipline Lead. In these competitions the participants have to climb a long, difficult route after only a brief glance at it as far as possible within a time limit and without falling.

Depending on the family

The support for competition climbers is “still very inadequate and it is not easy to get along,” Sebastian writes to me. He is young enough to have a realistic chance to start in Tokyo. “Personally, I hope that the Olympics 2020 could be a door opener to make competitive climbing more popular and to get a perspective of a higher level of support.” So far, climbers “depend on their family’s support, and only with a solid financial background they have a real chance to develop their skills as competitors,” says Sebastian.

Season goal no. 1: World Championships in Paris

When he was just twelve years old, Halenke took part in a youth climbing competition for the first time. Today he belongs to the best competition climbers in the world. Last weekend he finished the World Cup event in Imst in Austria in fifth place, his best result this year. His performance is improving. Sebastian’s season goal no. 1 is the Climbing World Championship in Paris from 14 to 18 September, for which he has big plans.

The other side of the Olympic medal

Like all other climbers I’ve talked to so far, Sebastian criticizes the plan for Tokyo 2020 to combine the three different disciplines Lead, Bouldering and Speed in a single competition. The best all-rounders are to win the medals. “It won’t be easy to present climbing with all its disciplines in such a format,” says the specialist in Lead.
So far, sport climbers have been a close fellowship. Sebastian Halenke fears that this could change after sport climbing has become an Olympic sport. “I hope that climbing will escape the rampant corruption and that the very familial relationship of the international climbing community will remain in the future. So far, all athletes have a very close, social relationship.” It would be the other side of the Olympic medal, if it gets lost.

Colourful spectacle

Thomas Huber

His younger brother Alexander and he themselves had participated in some competitions as young climbers, “rather poorly,” says the 49-year-old. But at that time climbing competition was in its infancy. “When I look at the Boulder World Cup today, I am thrilled: Colourful, spectacular routes, almost artistic. There’s a lot going on.” Indeed climbing, as the Alpine clubs mention, is adventure, but not only, says the older of the two Huber brothers: “It’s an attractive, serious sport. I also train like a competitive athlete when I want to go on expedition e.g. to Pakistan.”

“That’s nonsense!”

Czech Adam Ondra, aged 23, one of the world’s best, if not the best sport climber currently, rejects the plan to combine all three disciplines – Lead, Bouldering and Speed Climbing – at the Olympics and to give medals to the best three of the overall standings. Thomas Huber agrees with him: “These are different disciplines. You cannot lump everything together. That’s nonsense! If the officials do that, they haven’t understood what’s climbing. In this case forget about that.”

Turning away from the essence

David Lama has a more fundamental problem related to sport climbing at the Olympics. The 26-year-old top climber from Austria was a very successful athlete when he was a teenager, but then left the climbing competitions to concentrate completely on alpinism. Climbing, says David, “developed from man’s urge of discovering, from the motivation to climb mountains and to get into adventure. That is the essence of climbing, and in this form, there are still no rules.” However, clear rules need to be introduced to guarantee a fair competition, says Lama. For that reason alone, competition climbing had to distance from “real climbing”.

“Apples and pineapples”

Lama believes that the sport will distance even further from its essence after it will have become Olympic: “But is that bad? As long as we are aware that a competition has never reflected and will never reflect the basic idea of climbing, it is neither good nor bad. It simply doesn’t matter.“ It is difficult to compare apples and oranges, says David: “If I myself had to make the decision, I would clearly vote against the Olympics Games, so that the climbing DNA won’t be further diluted in competion climbing. Otherwise the appropriate comparison would soon be between apples and pineapples.”

Thomas Huber (in 2014)

Approximately 1.8 seconds. That was the time it took when Thomas Huber fell 16 meters deep from a rock face on the Brendlberg in the Berchtesgaden region in Bavaria – now two weeks ago. As previously reported, the 49-year-old German top climber, the older of the two Huber brothers, landed on soft forest floor. As it turned out later, Thomas suffered a skull fracture and had to undergo surgery immediately. The doctor’s reassuring prognosis afterwards: no permanent damage. Meanwhile, Thomas has left the hospital and is recovering at home. I have phoned him.

Thomas, first things first: How are you?

I’m doing very well. I am aware of the immense luck that I had. I received it gratefully. I don’t look back what could have happened, I’m just happy that it happened the way it happened. Of course, it would have been better if I had avoided it and the accident had not even happened. But that’s what’s happening in climbing. I felt totally safe in my routine, and that’s often where the devil is in.

The rock face on the Brendlberg

Are all your injuries curable?

It’s like a miracle that nothing more happened to me. That’s what the surgeons have told me too. After all, I fell 16 meters deep, we have measured it. All my injuries are curable. And it seems I’ll be 100 percent fit in the near future.

16 meters, that’s as high as one and a half single-family houses. Have you still thought anything during your fall or was it just pure instinct?

All was instinct. You do no longer think but only act. At every second I was fully conscious and obviously I have instinctively done everything right. But I was no longer able to control it. It happened so quickly and it was so surprising. You are then no longer in reality, it is like being on a second level, where only your body reacts and makes you survive in the end. I had 1,000 guardian angels. I’m sure there was anything that has made me survive. Otherwise I would not have been able to get back on my feet afterwards and walk down the mountain without help. I’ve not a single bruise. I have suffered only the skull fracture, a dislocated finger and a few broken spinous processes of vertebrae that had scraped over the rock.

Thomas after the surgery

You have probably abseiled already ten thousands of times in your life. One wonders how this incident could happen to you at all? Was it just a short moment lack of concentration?

No, the routine was to blame. When you are climbing a wall for the first time, it is frightening, not only on El Capitan, but also on Brendlberg, even though this wall is only 70 meters high but very steep, very alpine. I have been constantly climbing there in the last two months and have opened several routes. The wall has become for me a kind of a living room, I felt totally comfortable there. It was my second home, my summer job before the expedition. We filmed in the route “Watzmannflimmern”, which is a (difficulty) 9+. I wanted to fix a rope for the cameramen. When I had trained in the route that I finally climbed during the preceding months, I had always used a 60-meter rope. It was long enough to get to the ledge, five meters were still left then. But the rope, I used now, belonged to a friend. I did not know that it was cut off.
I abseil and remove three quickdraws from the first pitch of a neighboring route. Everything is good, I abseil to the ledge. And – tamm! – I fall. I was really fully concentrated. It was another story that was responsible, just the full routine that everything had always gone well during the previous months. Just like a master carpenter who, after 10,000 cuts with a circular saw, cuts off his finger.

Going to climb on

It was very close, you have cheated death. Do you ask yourself: Do I continue as before?

If you are not able to deal with a story, you really have to ask this question. But if you are aware of this immense luck you had and if you are grateful that you are staying alive, then you can continue to go the mountains. You simply always have to be aware of what you are doing. The most dangerous thing is when you think you have everything under control. I have learned from my accident: Actually you must not rely on anyone or anything except on yourself. Put on your harness and check that the buckle is closed! Even if it is routine, look always at it, as a backup! Even though I have abseiled there for the 20th time, a new rope means just a new situation. Michael Schumacher (the Formula 1 record world champion had a serious ski accident in 2013)  has not fallen so deep as I did, and alas he is not well. Others fall half a meter deep and may be dead. I just say: Thanks, thanks, for staying alive.

Initially you had planned to travel along with some friends to the seven-thousander Latok I in Pakistan to tackle the legendary North Ridge route. Of course, this plan is out-of-date now. What will you do now?

Actually, I don’t want to talk about it now. I’m under medical treatment. I just had a first EEG, which was very positive. Now let’s see that I recover and get perfectly healthy again. Too often, people make the big mistake to look too far into the future. I look at the present. And I am just happy now and grateful that I am still living.

Thomas Huber is on his feet again

“I already feel a lot better again,” Thomas Huber writes to me from the hospital in the Bavarian town of Traunstein. If that’s not good news! After all, the 49-year-old German top climber – as reported yesterday – had fallen twelve meters deep from a rock face on the Brendlberg near the village of Scheffau. According to the German website bgland24.de, the accident happened when Huber was abseiling. Thomas was standing on a small ledge, unclipped from the belay to take another rope, when he lost his balance. This could have ended in catastrophe. Probably owing only to “1000 guardian angels” (Thomas) and his instinct, nothing worse happened to him.

No permanent damage

Thomas landed “like a cat” on the soft forest floor, he told bgland24.de. Huber was even able to walk along with his climbing partner Michael Grassl to the place where the ambulance was waiting. However, the diagnosis at the hospital in Traunstein was alarming: skull fracture. Thomas immediately had to go under the knife. It was a surgery without complications. The doctors’ prognosis is positive: No permanent damage. The other injuries – broken or partially fractured spinous processes of a few vertebrae – will heal. If everything goes well, Thomas will be able to leave the hospital next week.