Beat Kammerlander (at the IMS in Brixen)

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

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

In the wall

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

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

Have you been ordered to rest?

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

En route in rock with (almost) no grips

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

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

Does being able to bite through make you stand out?

Probably.

Do you need that to stay in business that long?

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

The view upwards

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very small ledges

Has your role shifted in the decades, from greenhorn …

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

… to mentor?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do what you love!”

Have you ever been lucky while climbing?

Of course. Frequently.

And what did that teach you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think so. (laughs)

Robert Jasper (at the IMS in Brixen)

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

Jump between two worlds

Alone in Greenland

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

Inner peace and strong nerves

Kayaking through the fjords

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

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

Preserving lived stories

During the solo ascent

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

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

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

More like a decathlete

On the summit of Molar Spire

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

Tamara Lunger at the IMS

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

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

Close to death

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

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

Much learned

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

Lack of respect

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

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

Never again a base camp with others

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

Relief in the cold of Eastern Siberia

During the first winter ascent of Gora Pobeda

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

Living what she feels

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

IMS walk to the Latzfonserkreuz

I will miss the IMS. After ten years of “International Mountain Summit” in Brixen it’s over. The voluntary organisers, Alex Ploner and Markus Gaiser, who had put a lot of heartblood into this extraordinary mountain festival every year, are throwing in the towel. The reason: Lack of support from outside. A real pity! Year after year at the IMS, former and current stars of the scene were streaming in and out: Reinhold Messner, Sir Chris Bonington, Doug Scott, the Huber brother, Steve House, Alex Honnold, Ueli Steck, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, Ralf Dujmovits and so on. Not only did they give lectures, but they also went hiking with other mountain friends in the mountains of South Tyrol. That was the special attraction of the IMS. I have always enjoyed this “walk and talk” very much.

Vicarious embarrassment on Kangchenjunga

Tamara Lunger (in the background the pilgrimage church Latzfonserkreuz)

Yesterday, for example, we hiked with the South Tyrolean professional climber Tamara Lunger up to the Latzfonserkreuz at 2,305 metres. The hut there is (still) run by her parents. I talked to Tamara about her experiences during the first winter ascent of Nanga Parbat in February 2016. While her teammates Simone Moro, Alex Txikon and Muhammad Ali “Sadpara” had reached the summit, Lunger had had to turn back 70 meters below the summit. Throughout the whole day she had felt sick. God gave her a sign, Tamara tells me: “On that day ten hours of praying did not help. I knew then that something was wrong.” In spring 2017, she was back again at an eight-thousander: With Simone Moro she wanted to traverse all peaks of the Kangchenjunga massif. This did not happen, this time Moro had health problems. After the expedition Tamara was fed up with the eight-thousanders. What she experienced in the base camp, where commercial expeditions had pitched up their tents too, left scars. “I can’t believe what some people are doing. I was partly ashamed of them,” says Tamara. “It really broke my heart what was going on there.”

Wellness holidays for the soul

IMS organizer Markus Gaiser, Tamara Lunger and Robert Jasper (from l.)

Robert Jasper also attended the hike to the Latzfonser Kreuz yesterday. The 50-year-old German top climber had been on a solo expedition to Greenland this summer. With a folding kayak he paddled from the last inhabited settlement through a fjord towards the mountain he had chosen for his first ascent. “To travel by folding boat, then to open a new route in a big wall, all this with reduced means – that was an absolutely ingenious adventure,” Robert enthuses to me. Even if he had had a queasy feeling before the start, he coped well with being alone. “Through the silence you quickly get to yourself. That was a wellness holiday for the soul.” On his return to civilization after four weeks, he needed a few days until he could speak properly again, says Robert.

Don’t waste any time!

Beat Kammerlander

Beat Kammerlander prefers to find his climbing goals near home, in the Rätikon region. The 59-year-old Austrian from Feldkirch is a living climbing legend. He has been doing world-class alpine sport climbing for decades. Last year he opened an extremely difficult route which he called “Kampfzone” (Combat Zone). On the IMS hike, I ask Beat if he has to fight more today than he used to in earlier days. “You always fight as well as you can,” Kammerlander replies and laughs. “But today I probably have even more motivation and more consistency to achieve a goal. I don’t waste any more time.” Beat doesn’t think about the end of his career as an extreme climber yet. “Do what you love! Why should I stop doing what I like to do best?”

If that were also so easy at events like the “International Mountain Summit” …

P.S.: Detailed blog articles about my talks with Tamara Lunger, Robert Jasper and Beat Kammerlander will follow. So the IMS will linger.

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)

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.

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.