Mount Everest

No more permits for solo climbers, blind and double amputees – following the argument of the Nepalese government, this makes the highest mountains in the world safer. A look at the facts shows that a sledgehammer is to be used to crack a nut. For example, let’s take a look at what’s happening on Mount Everest. The Himalayan Database (now freely accessible to all, thus also to the government of Nepal) has so far recorded 1967 expeditions to the highest mountain in the world. Of these, only six – say 0.3 percent – were classified as solo expeditions.

Only Marshall’s solo attempt in 1987 ended fatally

Reinhold Messner’s ascent in summer 1980 on the Tibetan north side was the first and only successful one so far. In summer 1986 and spring 1987, the Canadian Roger Gough Marshall tried in vain to climb through the North Facel. In the first attempt he made it to 7,710 meters – in the second to 7,850 meters; on the descent, he fell to death from 300 meters above the Central Rongbuk Glacier. In winter 1992, the Spaniard Fernando Garrido abandoned his solo attempt on the Nepalese south side at 7,750 meters.

In addition there are the two failed attempts of the Japanese Nobukazu Kuriki in fall 2016 (up to 7,400 meters on the North Face) and in spring 2017 (up to 7,300 meters) on the Tibetan north side. His other “solo” attempts on the south side and on the West Ridge are not listed as solo climbs, because he had ascended on the route through the Khumbu Icefall which had been prepared by the “Icefall doctors”, in some cases other members of his expedition had joined him up to Camp 2.

0.3 percent climbers with handicap

Kim Hong Bin who lost all his fingers is among the listed disabled climbers

The number of disabled mountaineers on Everest is statistically negligible too. According to the Himalayan Database, there were only 44 climbers with a handicap among the 13,952 registered Everest expedition members, this is 0.3 percent – all types of disabilities are grouped here, e.g. also Kuriki’s nine amputated fingers. 15 of the listed disabled mountaineers reached the summit at 8,850 meters. Two died: in 2006, the visually impaired German Thomas Weber (at 8,700 meters on the Northeast Ridge probably due to a stroke after he had returned just below the summit) and in 2014 Phur Temba Sherpa, whose disability is not specified in the database (he died in the avalanche incident in the Khumbu Icefall on 18 April 2014).

So if you add the deadly fall of solo climber Marshall, we have a maximum of three deaths from the “risk group” identified by the government of Nepal – which is about one percent of the total of 290 dead on Everest so far.

Double amputee sticks to his Everest plan

Hari Budha Magar wants to scale Everest

Hari Budha Magar is one of the mountaineers who, according to the new regulations, will not receive a permit this spring. The 38-year-old Nepalese lost both legs above his knees as a soldier of the British Gurkha Regiment during a bomb blast in Afghanistan in 2010. On Facebook, Hari described the decision of the government of Nepal as “discriminating”  and a “violation of human rights”. He is not willing to give up his plan. “I’ll look at all of the options,” said Budha Magar. “If I need to climb from Tibet I’ll do that, if I need to go to the courts I’ll do that.”

Hari received public backing by the US Ambassador in Nepal. “Ability not perceived ‘disability’ must guide rules on who can trek Mt. Everest,” Alaina B. Teplitz posted on Twitter. “Climbers like Hari Budha Magar shouldn’t be banned because of false assumptions about capabilities.”

Everest, Lhotse, Makalu (from l. to r.)

The time has come. According to reports of the newspapers “Kathmandu Post”  and “The Himalayan Times”, the government of Nepal has adopted some new rules for expeditions – “to improve the safety of the climbers”, as Tourism Secretary Maheswor Neupane said. The new rules apply to all mountains above 6,600 meters – these fall under the responsibility of the government – and will be in force already in the spring season 2018.

No more permits for double amputees and blind climbers

In future neither blind climbers nor double amputees are to receive permits for the highest mountains in the country. “Besides, we have also adopted a strict provision to check the medical certificate of the climbers to determine whether they are physically fit to climb the mountains,” Neupane said. It will be interesting how these checks will be operated.

Missing experience

Andy Holzer on the Rongbuk Glacier near Everest (in 2015)

In recent years, the Nepalese government has repeatedly said that it wanted to keep blind and physically disabled people away from Everest and other very high mountains. “I think very few climbers on Everest are prepared so exactly for their very special challenge Everest as the disabled adventurers with their personal teams are or need to be”, the blind Austrian climber Andy Holzer wrote to me already in 2015. “The real problem is more the climbers who put on their crampons for the first time on Everest and are quite surprised about it.” Last spring, Holzer scaled Everest in his third attempt: as the first blind man from the Tibetan north side.

No solo climbs anymore

Another now adopted amendment will probably also cause a heated debate. According to the new rules every mountaineer will be obliged to climb with a mountain guide. “From now on, foreign climbers will be banned from making a solo attempt on Mt Everest,” Tourism Secretary Neupane said. Supposedly, the government expects this provision to increase employment opportunities for Nepalese guides.

Not one bit safer

So much is certain: These rules will not make Everest or any other crowded eight-thousander one bit safer. Blind or physically handicapped mountaineers are only a tiny minority among the summit aspirants on Mount Everest, as well as those who want to climb the 8850-meter-high mountain solo. The much more important question of mountaineering skills does not seem to be taken into account in the new regulations. After all, in the first reports on the amended expedition rules there was no mention of new minimum requirements for all (!) Everest climbers – such as having climbed at least one seven-thousander or another eight-thousander before.

Andy Holzer on the Rongbuk Glacier near Everest (in 2015)

Andy Holzer has climbed already six of the “Seven Summits”, the highest mountains of all continents. Only the very highest is still missing in the collection of the blind mountaineer from Austria. This spring, the 50-year-old from the town of Lienz in East Tyrol wants to tackle Mount Everest for the third time. During his first go in 2014, the season had been finished prematurely after an avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall had killed 16 Nepalese climbers. In spring 2015, the devastating earthquake in Nepal, with nearly 9,000 deaths, had resulted in no Everest ascents from the south and the north. Like two years ago, Holzer plans to climb Everest via the Tibetan north side. He will be accompanied by his (seeing) East Tyrolean friends Wolfgang Klocker and Klemens Bichler.

Andy, again you are going to Mount Everest – after two attempts in 2014 and 2015, when, for different reasons, you actually were not been given the opportunity to tackle the highest of all mountains. Third time is a charm?

Andy Holzer

Once, twice, three times, four times, people have invented this. I go back again, because I think I know: If everything fits, my physical condition that day, the condition of my friends there, the weather, the conditions on the mountain … then it could work for us.

Like in 2015, you want to climb Everest from the Tibetan north. Why did you choose this side?

Because my small experience, which I could make in my previous attempts on Everest, has clearly shown to me that the Khumbu Icefall is like Russian roulette. The steeper rocks and the route on the north side are, apart from an earthquake, relatively static. I prefer it to be a bit more rejecting, somewhat “unfriendly”, but more reliable than to take the route on the Nepali side which is – besides the objective risks that I described – easier to climb.

How did you prepare for the expedition?

I get the feeling that my whole life is a preparation for so many challenges. I was able to complete a lot of them successfully, others not. The older I get, the more I realize that the number of passed tests doesn’t matter. For me it’s more and more about this free spirit which today almost only children have: simply set off, without guarantee of success guarantee in your pocket! In addition a bit of life experience as well as rational thinking, given to me now at fifty years of age, and then I feel prepared.

Blind climber Andy Holzer on Carstencz Pyramid (© Andreas Unterkreuter)

Quite pragmatically, the technical answer to your question: My nature, my team, my friends are my basis. We are a well-coordinated team, as only a few can have – partly from the same village.
Like for 30 years, I have been spending about 200 days a year in the mountains. Especially now in winter we have done a lot of extensive ski tours, in blocks without rest days. We are also completing a hypoxic training program. All of us have been sleeping in altitude tents in our bedrooms for week before our departure. We can simulate high altitude by oxygen deprivation at night and stimulate the body to produce more red blood cells.

So far, only the American Erik Weihenmayer has scaled Everest as a blind climber – via the south side of the mountain in 2001. How high do you estimate your chance to reach the 8850-meter-high summit?

I have known Erik for years, and we have become friends long ago. Of course, I pumped him for information on Everest. But I won’t and can’t tackle Everest in the way Erik did on 25 May 2001 along with his team. At that time a whole country stood behind the first attempt of a blind man on Everest. Erik had a large number of partners, friends and team members at his side, who could support him by turns. In our case, only Wolfi and Klemens can alternate from time to time to tell me the difficulties of ascent and descent. We three will climp up to the highest point of Mount Everest, only accompanied by our Sherpas. But that does not mean that we have lower chances. We are a compact team, flexible and fast in decision making. So I think and hope: Our chance is strongly alive.

You’ll climb with companions, with bottled oxygen. Experts are predicting a record number of Everest aspirants this year, so it could become crowded on the normal routes. What tactics have you considered?

This was a smaller reason to choose the Everest north side. Compared with the south side, only one-third permits are issued there. But honestly, if I go to Everest and then complain about too many other climbers on the mountain, I should go home right away. Then there would be one climber less on Everest.

Andy on Shishapangma (in 2011)

Indeed, we will use bottled oxygen during our summit push. I would like to experience the mountain of the mountains so that I am able to notice something up there consciously and maybe enjoy it and be really happy about it. In addition, supplemental oxygen gives us the opportunity to climb in exactly the same rhythm. Perhaps too few people know this: When Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler were the first to climb Everest without bottled oxygen in 1978 and then descended separately, this had nothing to do with egoism, but with the fact that the extreme lack of oxygen at high altitude forces every climber to use his own rhythm of walking and performance. If you go one step too fast, you are in danger of dying from oxygen deficit. If you go a step too slowly, perhaps out of consideration for your partner, you freeze to death.

Oxygen deficiency does not mean in the first place the risk of choking, but rather the extremely increased danger of frostbite, because the body has less oxygen available for the “own heating” or metabolism.

North side of Everest in the last daylight

If Wolfgang (or Klemens) always has to go a bit slower in front of me, because I have to correct many missteps and therefore walk slower, he’s getting too cold and I am getting too hot. And if my partner is walking at his own pace, the distance between us will increase. With more than about five meters distance, I can not hear his crampons any more exactly and therefore have to slow down even more because I myself have to search for the steps.

But this has been clear to me and my guys already for a long time. We expect an adventure which is not easier than climbing the mountain without supplemental oxygen. We try to climb this great mountain with a “person without light”. And that requires from my point of “view” enormous cohesion and feeling for the other.

Why, at all, has it to be Mount Everest? What does attract you to go there?

If you have planned, financed and tackled a project several times, you get a great relationship to this project. That’s the way, Wolfi, Klemens and I feel about it. We know, of course, that there are so many other beautiful mountains, and, and, and … But climbing Everest does not mean that we can not tackle the countless other beautiful mountains as well.

South side of Mount Everest

The Nepalese government has triggered a medial avalanche. A week ago, Tourism Minister Kripasur Sherpa mentioned the possibility of stricter rules on granting permits for Mount Everest. The government is considering age limits – from 18 to 75 years – and a reduction of permits for disabled climbers. “The disabled or visually impaired people usually need someone to carry them, which is not an adventure”, Sherpa said. “Only those who can go on their own will be given permission.” The American Erik Weihenmayer, in 2001 the first blind person ever to climb Mount Everest, is outraged. The statement is an overreaction that represents the biases, prejudices and superstition that are very prevalent in Nepal government, Erik writes on Facebook: “It’s a shame that the Minister of Tourism is using the tragedies of the last two years to scapegoat the tiny number of disabled climbers and enact a policy that won’t fix the problem. Frankly, being faced with additional challenges, disability, age, etc. forces a climber to be more prepared and make more cautious decisions.”

First Kibi, then Everest

Andy Holzer

The blind Austrian climber Andy Holzer agrees. “I think very few climbers on Everest are prepared so exactly for their very special challenge Everest as the disabled adventurers with their personal teams are or need to be”, the 49-year-old writes to me. “The real problem is more the climbers who put on their crampons for the first time on Everest and are quite surprised about it.” In spring 2014, Andy was on the Nepalese south side and this year on the Tibetan north side of Everest trying to climb the highest mountain on earth. But both times he returned home empty-handed: in 2014 because of the avalanche incident in the Khumbu Icefall, in 2015 due to the consequences of the 25 April earthquake. Last year in Nepal, he met Everest aspirants who proudly proclaimed that they had already climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and Everest would now be their second of the Seven Summits, says Andy: “Such facts rather make me wonder. Considering this, I can also understand that not everyone at any time should go to Everest.”

Competence should decide

The New Zealander Mark Inglis, who was in 2006 the first ever double leg amputee to reach the summit of Mount Everest takes the same line. “I think if you have a look at the analysis of the data over the years it’s not the disabled or the elderly perhaps that are the problem but it’s the inexperienced”, Mark told the Canadian broadcaster CBC. “It’s about a person’s competence on the mountain and that’s the thing that we really need to get sorted.” He assured that no one had carried him up Mount Everest: “To suggest that all disabled need to be carried up is completely wrong and the only people that should be going there should be people that can do it under their own steam.”

Blind climber Andy Holzer on Carstencz Pyramid (© Andreas Unterkreuter)

“I have decided to make a big journey with my friends.” With these simple words Andy Holzer has announced his so far most spectacular project. The blind climber wants to get upon the roof of the world, the summit of Mount Everest. On 2 April the 47-year-old Austrian will start with his friends Andreas Unterkreuter, Wolfgang Klocker and Daniel Kopp to Nepal, in order to climb the highest mountain on earth. “My motivation is simply that I want to use an opportunity in life”, Andy writes on his homepage. “Never before I was, and due to the quickly passing years probably never after I will be in such a physical, mental and logistical constitution to be able to reach this secret dream of every true mountaineer.” In short: Now or never!

More than just “a cool idea”

Andy at the IMS 2013

Last October, when I asked Andy at the International Mountain Summit in Brixen about his Everest plans, he had called a trip to the highest mountain “a cool idea” but had played down the issue. Mount Everest was “not my absolutely focused goal now”, Holzer said then. It is the only one of the “Seven Summits”, the highest mountains of all continents, which is still missing in his collection. But talking to me, Andy intimated how much he was fascinated by Everest: “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?“

Always in the dark

Andy and his helpers will use bottled oxygen. That is a matter of course, writes Holzer and refers to the greater risk for him as a blind climber to cool down. “Due to the control of body temperature it is actually impossible to climb without oxygen in step with another climber. If my friend is only ten meters away from me, I can not go on because I am no longer able to hear exactly the creaking of his crampons. And I fall by the wayside.” By the way, he is waiving of another tool, Andy says jokingly: “I am climbing without headlight, even in daylight. Always in the dark.”

If the Austrian reaches the highest point at 8850 meters, he would be the second blind man on the summit of Mount Everest. The American Erik Weihenmayer was the first in 2001. Together with Erik, Andy has once formed a “double-blind” rope-team climbing in the Dolomites of Lienz in East Tyrol.

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.