The last meters to the summit of Lunag Ri (picture taken by a drone)

“I traverse the last few metres over wind packed snow that sticks to the granite on the Nepalese side of the mountain. Even though my head is full with the impressions that I absorb every moment up here, my thoughts are somehow empty. The knowledge that I must not make any mistake is constantly present and dominates all other feelings. It results in an intense, almost exhausting concentration – a feeling I know only from other solo ascents in the mountains,” Austrian top climber David Lama writes on his website about the moment when the 28-year-old was the first to set his foot on the summit of the 6,907-metre-high Lunag Ri about a month ago (see video below). The technically difficult mountain is located in the Rolwaling Himal on the border between Nepal and Tibet, more than 35 kilometers as the crow flies northwest of Mount Everest. “Having arrived at the very front of the summit spur, I stand still. It feels strange that suddenly I have no more further to go. I sink down to my knees, tired and happy, even though I wouldn’t be able to express it that way right now. Briefly I think about Conrad. He is the only one I would have liked to share this moment with.”

Successful in the third attempt

David Lama alone en route

In their first joint attempt in fall 2015, Lama and US climber Conrad Anker, who’s up to every Himalayan trick, had to turn back 300 meters below the summit because of a tactical mistake. A year later, Conrad suffered a heart attack on the mountain and had to leave early. David then tried a solo ascent reaching a point about 250 meters below the summit. After the 56-year-old Anker, meanwhile having recovered from his myocardial infarction, had cancelled for the third attempt this fall out of consideration for his family, David meticulously planned another solo attempt and was – as reported – successful on 25 October. Since then, the mountaineering scene had been eagerly awaiting further information from Lama.

“Quite close to my limit”

On the ridge

According to David, he fought his way up the mountain for three days in icy temperatures of up to minus 30 degrees Celsius and stormy winds of up to 80 kilometers per hour via the Northwest Ridge. In challenging combined terrain, Lama had to overcome steep snowfields and fragile ice as well as rock passages. David says, he belayed himself only in particularly exposed passages and climbed most of the time without rope. The Austrian spent two nights in the bivouac tent, after the summit success he descended in one go and reached the base camp in the dark. “On the last day I came quite close to my limit,” David says in retrospect. “The three days at Lunag Ri were sometimes the most intense time I have ever experienced on a mountain. Being alone has reinforced this feeling, as well as everything I have experienced since my first attempt with Conrad Anker in 2015.”

David Lama

It looks as if he has made it. David Lama is said to have succeeded the first ascent of the 6,895-meter-high Lunag Ri in Nepal.  I am even a little more cautious than many other media from all over the world, because the 28-year-old top climber himself has not yet confirmed his coup. Even his office at home in Austria is still in silence. My inquiry there remained so far unanswered. The only source so far is American climber Conrad Anker, who congratulated David a few days ago on the social networks, “on your successful solo ascent and descent of Lunag Ri. Third time is a charm!“

With light backpack

Lunag Ri

In the first two attempts in 2015 and in 2016, Lama and Anker had tried together to first climb the technically difficult mountain in the Rolwaling Himal at the border between Nepal and Tibet, about 35 kilometers as the crow flies northwest of Mount Everest. During their first try via the Northeast Ridge, they had had to turn around 300 meters below the summit. In the second attempt one year later Conrad had suffered a heart attack on the mountain and had had to leave the expedition prematurely. David had then tried it spontaneously solo, reached a little higher than the first time, but then returned. “It was no longer about reaching the summit – that would have been suicidal – it was about gathering my strength to descend safely,” David summed up his experiences at that time.

After Conrad Anker had cancelled his participation this time with consideration for his family, David Lama had prepared himself for a solo attempt from the beginning. He decided to climb up with as little material as possible in order to be able to climb long passages without rope.  Obviously his tactics worked. It seems extremely unlikely that Conrad Anker would congratulate him without having been informed on David’s success from a safe source.

David Lama

There is a proverb in German speaking countries saying: “Three times is divine”. Once again David Lama is currently tackling the still unclimbed 6895-meter-high Lunag Ri in Nepal – however, this time on his own from the very beginning. The technically difficult mountain is located in the Rolwaling Himal on the border between Nepal and Tibet, more than 35 kilometers as the crow flies northwest of Mount Everest. In 2015 and in 2016, the 28-year-old top climber from Austria had failed on the “almost seven-thousander”, both times about 300 meters below the summit – on the first attempt via the Northeast Ridge along with the experienced American climber Conrad Anker. Lama and Anker had also been team mates for the second try, but Conrad had suffered a heart attack on the mountain and had had to leave the expedition prematurely. David had then tried to reach the highest point solo over a slightly modified route – in vain. He had run out of time and strength.

As light as possible

David with Conrad Anker (r.) in 2016

“It was no longer about reaching the summit – that would have been suicidal – it was about gathering my strength to descend safely,” David summed up his experiences at that time. He hadn’t felt comfortable with his solo attempt: “What’s missing is the shared experience on the mountain, and the shared responsibility for success.” Also this time Lama asked Conrad Anker, who has meanwhile recovered from his heart attack, to join him on Lunag Ri. But the 55-year-old declined out of consideration for his family. So David decided to try it again solo – in contrast to 2016, however, planned. He wants to take as little material as possible with him on his solo ascent to the summit. “Being lighter en route, I can climb more often without using a rope,“ David said before his departure to Nepal in an interview with the Austrian daily “The Standard”.

Better fail than cheat yourself

David climbing on the Northeast Ridge of Lunag Ri

Lama is confident that he can reach the summit of Lunag Ri in his third attempt. But if not, David’s world would not collapse either. “For me, success is not defined by getting to the top of a mountain,” he once wrote. “It means that I live up to my own standards. If we are satisfied with setting humble goals, we are cheating ourselves. It is the courage to fail that makes the difference.”

Peter Habeler

Even aged 75, he appears to be a rascal. Good-humored, always good for a joke, the laugh lines on his face – and fit as a fiddle. “Climbing is my fountain of youth,” says Peter Habeler. The Tyrolean from the Zillertal is still climbing through steep walls. Shortly before his big birthday even through the Eiger North Face, along with David Lama, in winter. “It was something very special for me,” Peter tells me as we hike below the peaks of the Geisler group in the Villnöss Valley in the South Tyrolean Dolomites. “Many years ago, I discovered David’s talent when he did his first climbing as a little boy in my alpine school in the Zillertal. I saw that he would become a great climber.” Today Lama is one of the best climbers in the world. “When I climbed behind him in the Eiger North Face and watched how easily and smoothly he mastered even the most difficult passages, I felt like I was back in time when I myself was still young,” says Peter.

“I did not want to die at Everest”

The Villnöss Valley with the Geisler group

The hike with Habeler is part of the program of the International Mountain Summit in Bressanone. The fact that we are en route in the Villnöss Valley fits: Finally Reinhold Messner grew up there, and the South Tyrolean gained his initial experiences as a climber on the peaks of the Geisler group. Along with Messner, Habeler celebrated his most famous successes. In 1975, they scaled for the first time an eigth-thousander in Alpine style – without bottled oxygen, high camps, fixed ropes and Sherpa support: Gasherbrum I in Pakistan. Three years later, in 1978, they succeeded their greatest coup, the first ascent of Mount Everest without breathing mask. Next year marks the 40th anniversary of this pioneering achievement. At that time he was temporarily doubtful, admits Habeler, especially when Messner and two Sherpas had just barely survived a heavy storm on the South Col: “I really didn’t want to die on Everest. I wanted to stay healthy and get home.” After all, his first son, Christian, had just been born.

Restlessness before the descent

Habeler (r.) and Messner (in 1975)

When he and Messner finally reached the summit at 8,850 meters on 8 May 1978, it was “a very emotional moment,” Habeler recalls, “even though I no longer know what exactly I felt at the time. I only know that I was afraid. I was very restless because I wanted to go down. I thought: Oops, how can I get down the Hillary Step, without belaying? We had noticed on the ascent that the snow was there in a bad condition. I feared a step could break off and I would fall into the depth. But somehow it worked.”

Highlight Kangchenjunga

“We were lucky”

After returning home, he was surprised by the enormous media response, says Habeler: “It was a real hype.” For him, however, Everest without breathing mask was not the highlight of his career on the eight-thousanders, due to his doubts, says Peter. “My personal highlight was definitely the ascent of Kangchenjunga in Alpine style with Carlos Buhler and Martin Zabaleta in 1988. At that time I was in my best shape. On the summit day, I climbed ahead to the highest point because I was faster than the other two and the weather was getting worse and worse.” The descent turned to be dramatic, says Habeler: “We were lucky to survive.” His success on the third-highest mountain on earth (8,586 meters) was his fifth and last on an eight-thousander.

Like a via ferrata

“We will have fun”

The 75-year-old shakes his head about what is currently happening on the highest mountains in the world. “No mountain can stand too many people. If there are a thousand people in the base camp and 540 of them want to set off during a single good weather window, I feel uneasy about it. That’s not my way of climbing mountains. Today Everest is a chained mountain – even K 2 too. It’s almost like a via ferrata.” Next spring, Habeler will return to Mount Everest, along with his companions of 1978 who are still alive. “There will be quite a hustle and bustle on Everest. But we will definitely have a lot of fun,” the eternal rascal rejoices and grins from ear to ear.

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.”

Reinhold Messner

This man seems to be ageless. How on earth does Reinhold Messner do it? The first man who climbed all 14 eight-thousanders, responds with his motto from Tibetan: “Kalipé” – with steady feet.  Ahead of his 70th birthday on Wednesday, I called him at home in South Tyrolia.

Reinhold Messner, how will you celebrate your birthday?

It will be a private birthday party, in no way a public one. There is a time and a place. I can tell you that I have invited my friends to bivouac. For the last time, at the age of 70, I will spend the night after the party outdoor, under the stars, in the sleeping bag. Most of my friends will do the same, all the others will drive to the hotel in the valley.

So, you are about to turn 70-years-old, it’s quite a milestone. How are you faring? Are you happy with life?

We don’t carry happiness around with us all the time, sometimes it just happens inside of us or around us. I have it easier these days, because I have nothing more to prove. I’m not in a rush anymore, either, but I am still active. I am very lucky that my knees still work and my joints are all okay. I have had to sacrifice a bit: like a damaged heel bone, missing toes, but otherwise, for my age, I am not going too badly. I have a lot of ideas to fill the next years, to have a worthwhile life and to be happy.

Does it happen, that you are sitting in the sun at Juval castle just day-dreaming?

Yes, sometimes, with my wife and children in the evening sun, but not as a habit. I am someone who is active, who is creating ideas and is completely absorbed in doing this. It’s perhaps one of my best models of success that I can internalize an idea so that it is growing in day and night dream, up to maturity. However, an idea in your head is only a castle in the air, but still not an adventure. But if it has turned into reality, there is something that I call a flow. Then I’m fully myself, everything is flowing. And that makes me happy.

Which goals would you like to pursue in the next decade of your life?

In the next few years I definitely want to apply myself to my mountain museum and make sure that it survives. I want that to be a lasting legacy. My farms are very important to me too. And I’d like to work as a film maker too, like an author. I want to go out with an idea, into the wild and collect pictures which then tell a strong story on the screen.

Messner (l.) with Peter Habeler (in 1975)

The Spaniard Carlos Soria is in the Himalayas at the moment. He wants to climb Shishapangma. It will be the 12th of the 14 mountains over 8000 meters that he has managed. The man is 75-years-old. Are you happy that you managed to do all that by your early 40s?

I am especially pleased that I managed to get it all done before anyone else was on these mountains. Back then you just had to get a permit for your expedition and your group, whether you were alone, a pair, or whether there were five of you, just worked their way up by themselves. I am lucky to have been born early enough, that I could still experience mountains in their purest form.  These days 20,000 people try to climb the Matterhorn each year, and Mont Blanc is even worse. The mountains are now designed for mass tourism.

Earlier this year 500 Sherpas were preparing Mountain Everest so that thousands of clients could pay a lot of money to climb the mountain. Then there was an accident and 16 Sherpas died in an avalanche. It was like a type of industrial accident, I suppose you could say. There was a strike and the tourists went home. But next year they will come again. I hope that everyone can have the chance to climb these mountains, but what is going on here has little to do with real mountaineering. It is tourism – sure it’s hard work and it’s a bit dangerous – but the responsibility for the safety of the climb is being pushed onto the locals. This is all about showing off what you have done, and nothing to do with your experience of nature.

Do you think that last spring’s avalanche will change climbing on Everest?

So far there have been travel agencies from New Zealand, the United States, Switzerland or Germany which have been bringing their clients to the Himalayas and paying the Sherpas who prepare the route. This happens not only on Everest but on all 14 eight-thousanders. Because the clients believe that these 14 mountains have a particular prestige.

The young Sherpas have done the dirty work – the dangerous that caused the death of 16 Sherpas in the Khumbu Icefall. They say: If we lead the way and prepare the route at great risk, we also want to get the deal and don’t want to leave the profit to the Western agencies.

Do you expect that many Everest candidates will stay at home due to the events during the last spring season ?

Quite the contrary! There will be even more candidates because the Sherpas will prepare the piste in a better way again. It was clear for three or four years that such a disaster would happen sooner or later. I’m sorry to say that there is a joint guilt of the Sherpas. They prepared the route at the weakest point of the Icefall where the difficulties are at their lowest levels but the risk is greatest. That’s not really clever.

Messner at his Mountain Museum near Bolzano

If you were giving advice to a young, adventure-seeking mountain climber these days, what would you tell him or her?

The young people have to find their own way. I wouldn’t be able to account for all that I did, when I was a 20-year-old. But I see some young climbers, who are traditional climbers achieving great things: Such as Hansjoerg Auer who climbed a 7500-meter-high peak in the Karakoram via a terribly difficult route. Or David Lama who climbed Cerro Torre free, without the bolts of Cesare Maestri. Or Alex Honnold who traversed the whole Fitz Roy group with dozens of peaks.
There are tens of thousands of peaks on the planet that haven’t been climbed. There are hundreds of thousands of different routes up the mountains that can be explored in the next years. The young climbers have learned that they don’t need to go to the famous mountains. The key, if you want to experience an adventure, is to go where the others haven’t been, so that you can decide things for yourself and you are responsible for yourself.

How high can you climb these days?

I haven’t tested it out. But in the last few years I climbed above 6000 meters a few times. I feel better up there than I do at normal altitude. I don’t know why. Perhaps in the next ten years I will regularly start going to Nepal or to the Himalayas, just for the health benefits. There was a case of a very sick man – I won’t say who it was – who had done some amazing 8000 meter climbs with his wife in his lifetime. The doctors had given up on him. He went to the Himalayas, to see his mountains for the last time and perhaps to die there. He then climbed an 8000 meter peak and he came down healthy. This medical wonder should be an incentive to researchers to not just think about the mountains as somewhere where adventurers like to play, but also as a place to potentially heal sick people.

Nowadays, I certainly wouldn’t climb Everest without bottled oxygen. At my age I don’t want to die in the mountains, after working for 65 years to do everything I can to not die there.  To head up Everest with two oxygen bottles and two Sherpas, one at the front and one at the back, is not my idea of fun.

K 2

I felt as if I was close to K 2 but in fact I was quite far off. After the return from our first ascent of the 7129-m-high Kokodak Dome I found out the real distance between the two mountains: 300 km as the crow flies. Not just around the corner. Because of my expedition I (and thus possibly also you as a reader of my blog) missed what was going at the second highest mountain in the world during this summer.

32 on one day

Anniversary years seem to make summit successes more likely on K 2. But perhaps it is also simply because there are more climbers on the mountain in those years. In 2004, the Golden Jubilee year of the first ascent of K 2 (on this occasion I also visited the base camp), 51 climbers reached the highest point at 8611 meters. This summer, 60 years after the first ascent,  it was only short of the record: 48 summit successes, 32 of them on 26 July, are quite a view, considering that there have been several summer seasons on K 2 like that of 2013 without anyone standing at the top.

All-female?

In K 2 base camp

There were six women among the K 2 summiters in July: the Nepalese Dawa Yangzum Sherpa , Pasang Lhamu Sherpa and Maya Sherpa, the South Tyrolean Tamara Lunger, Chinese Luo Jing and the New Zealander Chris Jensen Burke (who also has an Australian passport). It is a matter of debate whether the success of the three Sherpani counts as an “all-female summit”. The National Geographic magazine reports, that three male Sherpas accompanied the women to the summit.

On the same day, 26 July, the Czech climber Radek Jaroš was on top. The 50-year-old, who climbed without bottled oxygen, completed his eight-thousanders collection, as first Czech ever. Jaroš is only the 15th, who climbed all 14 highest mountains in the world without breathing mask.

Hot feet

K 2 from above

In 2012 at the Annapurna, his 13th eight-thousander, he had lost some toes by frostbite. Now at K 2, almost the opposite happened to him. The heating coils in his expedition shoes ran hot. “When we were on our way to the summit, other climbers were kicking against the ice for better blood circulation in their feet. They felt could at their toes and tried to avoid frostbite”, Jaroš said. He had done the same, “but only to avoid to burn my toes.”

Death in Camp 4

There was one death in this K 2 season. The Spaniard Miguel Angel Perez died in Camp 4 at 8200 meters. Previously, he had reached the summit and then, apparently already suffering from high altitude sickness, bivouacked above the camp. Perez, climbing K 2 as his ninth eight-thousander, was 46 years old when he died. R.I.P.

P. S.: The attempt of the Austrian top climbers David Lama, Hansjoerg Auer and Peter Ortner Hans Jörg Auer to climb firstly via the Northeast Face of the 7821- meter- high Masherbrum (once called K 1 by British surveyors) has failed. The trio returned ​​in the lower part of the wall due to high risk of avalanches. “Climbing the Northeast Face of Masherbrum will be like nothing one of us three has ever experienced”, David Lama writes on his website. “Something completely new and so difficult it’s hard to imagine success.”

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.”