Ask the first man or woman you meet on any street in Europe after the name of a famous mountaineer and you will very likely get the response: „Reinhold Messner“. Although he did his pioneering ascents in the Himalayas andKarakorum more than a quarter of a century ago, the 68-year-old South Tyrolean is still very present in public awareness. Messner has been contributing his part by writing book after book, givings lectures and interviews – and polarizing with his statements. In my interview with him on the occasion of the upcoming 60th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest Reinhold Messner again had clear positions. Don’t wonder why I didn’t ask him about the recent incident on Everest. We met before.

Reinhold Messner, we first look back on the 29th May 1953, when the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Would you say that this was an outstanding achievement of two courageous mountaineers or rather a team performance?

It was primarily a British team performance because the British have brought the know-how and the money and made huge preparatory works.

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The top climbers Simone Moro from Italy and Ueli Steck from Switzerland and their British photographer Jon Griffith have abandoned their expedition on Mount Everest. They were responding to the fact that last Saturday they had been attacked and threatened with death by furios Sherpas in camp 2. „The history of mountaineering on Everest started with a partnership between a Sherpa and a foreigner. 60 years later this partnership has changed considerably“, Simone Moro said. He wants to stay at Everest basecamp to do some rescue flights with his helicopter. Ueli Steck headed back home. „My trust is gone. I can’t return to this mountain, even if all say that something like this would not happen again”, Ueli said in basecamp to the German journalist and climber Billi Bierling. „Who guarantees me that the furious mob will not cut my rope or burn down my tent?” 

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Actually, you think anything possible has already happened on Mount Everest. But it’s a sad novelty that in a high camp three climbers are beaten, kicked, pelted with stones and threatened with death by furious sherpas. The two top climbers Simone Moro from Italy and Ueli Steck from Switzerland and their British photographer Jonathan Griffith have been effected by the incident. „Something from another world“, Simone called what happened to them. 

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This May Stephen Venables can celebrate a double Everest jubilee: the 60th birthday of the first ascent – and his more personal anniversary: On 12th May 25 years ago Venables was the first Briton to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen. A milestone. „I was lucky enough in 1988 to help write a new chapter in the mountain’s history, when I climbed a new route up the Kangshung Face with Robert Anderson, Paul Teare and Ed Webster”, Stephen wrote to me after I had asked him for his thoughts on Everest on occasion of the 60th anniversary of the first ascent. “Thanks to those fine American/Canadian climbers and a magnificent base camp support team, I enjoyed some of the greatest days of my life of Everest, living for over two months in the beautiful Kama valley.” But his life was hanging by a thread then. 

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Ang Tshering’s biography can be assumed to be symbolic of the success story of the Sherpas in the past six decades. He was born in 1953, half a year after the first ascent of Mount Everest. In his home village Khumjung, on 3780 metres near the highest mountain of the world, Ang Tshering attended the school that was founded by Sir Edmund Hillary. The English skills which he had aquired there enabled him to work as a porter and interpreter for expeditions. In 1982 Ang Tshering founded „Asian Trekking”, today one of the leading agencies for expeditions and trekkings in Nepal. He married a Belgian woman, his son Dawa Steven studied in Scotland. Ang Tshering was and is not only a successful businessman with best worldwide contacts but has always been engaging for mountaineers. Since 1990 he is a member of the executive board of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, for nine years he was the president of the organization. In addition the 59-year-old Nepalese is the Immediate Past President of the Union of Asian Alpine Associations (UAAA) and Honorary Member of the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA). „Everest has put Nepal on the map as an ultimate (adventure) tourism destination”, Ang Tshering wrote to me after I had asked him for his thoughts about Everest on occasion of the 60-year-jubilee of the first ascent.

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In fact she was the second but in a way the first too. Helga Hengge summited Mount Everest on 27th May 1999. As second German woman after Hannelore Schmatz. But Hengge also survived the descent – in contrast to Schmatz who died from exhaustion on 8300 meters on the south side of the mountain on 2nd October 1979. For years climbers passed the corpse called „The German woman” which was sitting in the snow. Later the storm blew it into the depth. Almost twenty years after Schmatz Helga Hengge reached the highest point on 8850 metres after she had climbed up from the Tibetan north side. „I felt like a goddess”, Helga later said, „as if I could float.” Hengge was 32 years old when she stood on top of the world. Today Mount Everest sometimes gives her a nightmare, Helga, aged 46 now, wrote to me after I had asked her for her thoughts on occasion of the 60th anniversary of the first ascent.

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Will Apa Sherpa feel melancholy these days? Climbers from all over the world are arriving at Everest basecamp on the south side of the mountain. Meanwhile the so called „Ice Doctors” have prepared the route through the dangerous Khumbu icefall up to Camp 2 on 6600 metres. The climbing season on the highest mountain of the world is ready to start. For more than two decades Everest was an integral part of Apa’s life. Nobody has reached the top of the world as often as this 1.63 metre tall man: He reached the summit 21 times and became a living legend. In 2011 Apa finished his Everest career. Now he is about 53 years old. He doesn’t know for sure because in the 1960s no birth certificates were issued for Sherpas in his home village Thame in the Everest region.

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Just now Russell Brice has a lot on his plate. The 60-year-old climber from New Zealand, owner of Himalayan Experience, is leading his 18th commercial expedition to Mount Everest. The most prominent of his ten clients who want to climb the highest mountain of the world is Evelyne Binsack. In 2001 she was the first woman of Switzerland who scaled Everest coming from the Tibetan north side of the mountain. This time Evelyne, aged 45, will try it from the south, for a documentary she also wants to carry her camera to the summit. Russell will stay at the bottom as basecamp manager, also looking after six climbers for Lhotse and four women who want to scale the 7861-metre high Nuptse. German journalist and mountaineer Billi Bierling is a member of this last mentioned team. Although Russell is „quite busy”, as he wrote me, he has taken time to send me his thoughts on occasion of the 60-year-jubilee of the first ascent of Mount Everest.

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Hiro has experienced a lot on Everest. „It is a very special mountain for me”, Hirotaka Takeuchi wrote to me, after I had asked him for his statements on the 60-year-jubilee of the first ascent. „I learned a lot from climbing Mt. Everest, and all those lessons and experiences were very important and helpful to me to climb all the fourteen 8,000 m peaks. Thus, I think Mt. Everest was a great learning place forme.” In one of the ‘classrooms’ the Japanese climber had been close to lose his life. 

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Mount Sherpa. That would be a better suited name for the highest mountain of the world, which instead was named after Sir George Everest, a Surveyor-General of India in the 19th century. The history of Mount Everest is also a history of the Sherpas. The „eastern people” who had fled from Tibet to Nepal in earlier times were engaged for the early British expeditions in the 1920s. One of the two climbers who scaled Everest first in 1953 was a Sherpa: Tenzing Norgay. At the latest since commercial climbing was established on Everest sherpas have become indispensable. Without their support most of the clients wouldn’t have any chance to reach the summit. Due to this important role sherpas have an excellent reputation all over the world, many have achieved modest prosperity. Sherpas are also working as successful entrepreneurs, doctors or pilots. They know that these achievements are due to Everest. „As a Nepali, Mount Everest is my identity to the world. As a Sherpa, Mount Everest is the reason we have education, health care and prosperity”, Dawa Steven Sherpa wrote to me. „As a mountaineer, Mount Everest is the playground where I learned to explore myself, my limitations and my abilities as a person.” 

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Perhaps I have exaggerated. Following my request to send her comments on Mount Everest 60 years after the first ascent Elizabeth Hawley replied: „Your questions seem to anthropomorphize Everest, and I don’t see it that way at all.” The world’s preeminent chronicler of Himalayan mountaineering is already 89 years old. For more than half a century the Amercian, living in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, has been documenting expeditions to high Himalayan mountains. It’s an unwritten law that you haven’t been on the summit until Miss Hawley has confirmed that you really have been on the top.

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Not only formerly French actor Gerard Depardieu has become a Russian, but also Denis Urubko. The 39 years old climber wrote me that he had left Kazakhstan and had now a passport of Russia. This spring Denis – together with his new countryman Alexei Bolotov – wants to climb Mount Everest on a new route (look here) via the southwest face. Urubko has already climbed all fourteen 8000ers without supplementary oxygen. Together with his friend Simone Moro from Italy Denis succeeded the first winter ascents of Makalu(2009) and Gasherbrum II (2011). In 2010 Denis and Kazakh Boris Dedeshko were awarded with the Piolet d’Or, the ‘Oscar’ of mountaineering, for their new route via the south face of Cho Oyu. I asked Urubko about his new plan on Everest.

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End of February. It’s still quiet at the foot of Mount Everest. The calm before the storm. Or should I say before the rush? There will be again hundreds of climbers who turn the basecamp on the Nepalese south side into a small town, with helicopter base, mini-hospital and wireless internet connection. It’s time to call my friend Chomolungma on his mobile phone – before she is stressed out.

Namasté, Chomo! Stefan speaking.

Oh no, you again.

Take it easy!I haven’t woken you up from your hibernation, have I?

Look at your calendar! Pre-season. I’m still on vacation.

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Bernd Kullmann has a unique place in the annals of Mount Everest. When he stood on the summit on 8850 meters on October 17,1978, he wore an original Levi’s blue jeans. „I wasn’t only the first, but probably the only one, who ever did it”. Kullmann, now aged 58 years, said, at that time it was common to wear knickerbockers in the Alps. „We as young people wanted to provoke. We climbed the north face of Eiger in Jeans. So I found it logical to use Jeans on Everest too.” Above Camp 3 at about 7000 meters Kullmann covered his jeans with padded overtrousers. „We had not enough money for down garments. I didn’t even have long johns beneath.” Kullmann wore his jeans for all seven weeks they spent on Everest – with consequences: „In Kathmandu I could put it literally in the corner of my hotel room.” Kullmann didn’t dispose his durable trousers even then. „Later it was washed and I used it again. Jeans were simply my favourite garments.” 

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In sports the second is often seen as the first looser. On May 17,2010 Edurne Pasaban from Spain finished the climbing of all fourteen 8000ers. But up to now it’s not clear whether she was the first or second woman who achieved this. Oh Eun-Sun completed the 8000ers three weeks earlier, but it remains disputed, whether the Korean really reached the summit of Kangchenjunga. When I talked to Edurne at the trade fair ISPO in Munich, I felt that the 39 years old climber is in harmony with the world around her, with the mountains and herself:

Edurne, you completed the fourteen 8000ers in 2010. Have you been in the Himalayas since then?

I came back to Everest in 2011. Everest was my first 8000er in 2001, I used (supplementary) oxygen for the summit. So after I had finished all 8000ers I wanted to try Everest without oxygen. But we didn’t make the summit. 

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