Hayden Kennedy (1990-2017)

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

“Unbearable loss”

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

Two times Piolet d’Or winner

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

Alexander Huber

Ogre has on the Huber brothers almost the same effect as the singing of the Sirens in Greek mythology: the two German top climbers can hardly escape the call of this fascinating granite giant. Time and again in their long careers Alexander and Thomas Huber have set off to the Ogre massif in the Karakoram or the nearby peaks of the Latok group. In 1999, they failed in their attempt to climb the 7,285-meter-high Ogre I. Thomas succeeded the second ascent of the mountain in 2001, along with the two Swiss Urs Stoecker and Iwan Wolf. The first ascent was made almost 40 years ago, on 13 July 1977 by the British climbers Chris Bonington and Doug Scott. The descent became a drama with a happy end: Scott broke both ankles, Bonington two ribs. Nevertheless, both of them, supported by the other team members, reached the base camp one week after their summit success – one of the great survival stories on the highest mountains in the world.

Easier doing it with friends

Yesterday Alexander Huber set off to Ogre. His team includes the two East Tyroleans Mario Walder and Christian Zenz and the Swiss Dani Arnold. With Dani (and Thomas Senf), Alexander had opened a new route through the Matterhorn North Face last March. With Mario and Christian, he had succeeded  the first ascent of a route on the mountain Ritterknecht in East Greenland in summer 2016. “It’s good to be on the road with partners you know,” says Alexander Huber. His three companions are not only good, competent climbers, but also friends, says the younger of the two Huber brothers. “You have to spend a lot of time together, often moments of tension. The better the human chemistry fits, the better it is.” I talked with the 48-year-old about his expedition before he left for Pakistan.

Alexander, you are heading to Ogre, a seven-thousander in the Karakoram. What exactly are you planning?

Ogre I (l.) and Ogre II, the East Pillar leads from col to the left

We would like to climb the East Pillar. This route has not yet been completed. (Several attempts on the east side of Ogre failed, e.g. in 1992, a Spanish team turned around in a snowstorm at 6,500 meters.) But it is not so much the idea to create a first ascent on this mountain, but to reach the summit at all. It is one of the most exclusive peaks of our planet, one of the most difficult spots to reach. Thomas realized the second ascent of Ogre in 2001, since then there was only one further ascent (in 2012 by the Americans Kyle Dempster and Hayden Kennedy). That shows, this is not an easy summit, but that’s exactly why we want to go there.

Only three ascents – and there was no lack of attempts, there were well above 20 expeditions on this mountain. What makes it so difficult?

The Ogre is simply an incredibly complex mountain with many objective dangers, arising from the seracs, which are practically on all sides. That’s why the East Pillar is our goal – because, from my point of view, it is free from objective dangers. Seen from a distance, I believe we can avoid all the seracs on this route. We will see what happens in reality. But I hope that we can explore and realize the maximum safe way to the summit of Ogre.

Ogre means “man-eater”. Does this mountain justify its name?

The first ascenders of Ogre, Bonington (l.) and Scott (in April 2015)

Actually you cannot really say that. There was an accident in which a climber was killed. (On a German expedition, which tried in 1993 to climb via the Ogre South Pillar, the Swiss Philipp Groebke fell to death.) However, it’s certainly not the man-eater in itself. For this, the mountain is too challenging. Meaning that all of those who try to climb Ogre are  competent, strong climbers who know exactly what they are doing. Usually mountaineering becomes dangerous when incompetent people try to reach a summit. The best example of this in the Himalayas is surely Mount Everest. There will be a lot of fatalities in the future too because many people want to climb the mountain without having the necessary skills. In this respect, Ogre doesn’t deserve its name. It’s not a man-eater.

However, Ogre is not its original name, but Baintha Brakk. Baintha is a meadow on the edge of the Biafo Glacier, from where the highest point of the mountain can be seen as the dominant peak. Brakk means peak. So it is the peak that you can see from the meadow Baintha. In any case, I think we should return to the original names of the mountains. Mount McKinley is Denali, Mount Everest from the Tibetan side Chomolungma, from the Nepalese side Sagarmatha, K 2 is Chogori, and Ogre is Baintha Brakk.

Alex, Mario and Dani (from l. to r.) on the summit of the six-thousander Panmah Kangri in 2015

The past summers in the Karakoram were very warm. This led to the failure of many expeditions. What kind of weather will give you a real chance on Ogre?

If we have the same conditions as two years ago (then the Huber brothers were en route with Mario Walder and Dani Arnold in the Latok group), when the zero-degree line was at 6,500 meters and higher over several weeks, we will get into trouble again. I think mountaineering will change in the future due to climate change anyway. The mountaineers have to adjust to this. If the zero-degree line continues to move up, we will have to switch to the fall or spring season. I have now chosen the summer season again, because I am convinced that on the way to the summit of Ogre it is important that you do not have low temperatures in the summit area. Perhaps we are lucky that this time the conditions fit. The weather is difficult to interpret. But these are the challenges we are now confronted with.

You have already canceled an expedition to Pakistan in 2014 because of the explosive political situation. Do you go there again with a queasy feeling?

Unfortunately, you cannot travel in Pakistan like you did 20 years ago. I have been able to get to know Pakistan at a time when the division did not exist between the Western world and the Muslim, Arab world. At that time you could move freely in this country. If you are traveling across the countryside today, you can never be sure that there will not be any terrorist attacks, especially against tourists. That’s why there is no more tourism in Pakistan. The people who still travel to the country are exclusively mountaineers who have a very specific goal. When we go there, we are really undercover on the road, which means we are not visible.

Latok I (2nd mountain f.l.)

A footballer would say: The ball wasn’t round. “The expedition has definitely run roughly,” Thomas Huber tells me about his trip to Latok I in Pakistan. As reported, the older of the two Huber brothers, along with German climbers Toni Gutsch and Sebastian Brutscher, had planned to tackle the north side of the 7145-meter-high granite giant in Karakoram this fall –only a few weeks after his 16-meter-fall from a rock face and a subsequent brain surgery. So the unbalance of the expedition began. “We could not get together as a team because I was so busy with my situation after the fall and the head injury,” Thomas concedes. “Nevertheless the motivation was high, and from my point of view the team fit perfectly. We maintained this euphoria, to Skardu, to Askole, to our Base Camp on the Choktoi Glacier. When we got there, everyone agreed: This is the place per se for climbing in highest perfection. But then everything ran differently.”

Only the skies

First, Thomas Huber’s help was needed in a rescue operation on nearby Ogre II (6,950 meters). The US climbers Kyle Dempster and Scott Adamson were missing, after they had started to climb the North Face of the almost 7000er some days ago. “I had met them last year,” says Thomas. “They were really cool guys. They belonged to the best alpinists in the US.”
Huber knows the mountain massif well. In 2001, he succeeded, along with Swiss climbers Iwan Wolf and Urs Stoecker, the second ascent of Ogre I and the first ascent of Ogre III.
Thomas flew by rescue helicopter twice – in his pocket his emergency medication, because he did not know whether he would be able to stand the flight up to an altitude of 7,200 meters with his head injury. The 49-year-old had no problems, but there wasn’t any sign of the two missing climbers: “We searched the planned ascent route through the North Face, the summit region, the Northwest Ridge, via which they wanted to descend, even the crevasses at the foot of the wall. We did not find anything, really nothing.” Except for the skis of the two Americans at the access of the route.

The next rescue

Max Reichel’s rescue

Huber, Gutsch, and Brutscher climbed once more via the Northwest Ridge up to 6,200 meters, but again they didn’t discover any sign of Dempster and Adamson. The trio had to descend when the weather suddenly turned bad. The search was canceled. After all, the three Germans were now well acclimatized to tackle their own project on Latok I. “But the rescue operation had been on my mind all along, so much that I could not think of normal climbing during this first phase of the expedition.” Even in the second phase, that didn’t change. Max Reichel, the cameraman of the team, suffered from high altitude sickness due to a protracted myocarditis. Doctors in Germany said that he had to be brought back to civilization as soon as possible. Thomas accompanied his friend to a point 40 kilometers downhill, 1,000 meters lower. There Max asked Thomas to return to Base Camp to tackle his project. “That freed me completely,“ says Huber. „I just wanted to think of climbing, nothing else.”

Cold shower

He returned to Base Camp full of euphoria. There, however, a new “cold shower” awaited him – the last one. Huber’s team partners Gutsch and Brutscher told him that they were not willing any more to climb the North Face. “They said they had a bad feeling and didn’t see any chance to climb through the wall under these circumstances. They did not even want to try it.” Thomas Huber fell into a deep emotional hole: “Sadness, total disappointment, also rage. I just could not believe that at a moment’s notice they said they wanted to go home. I could not understand it.” From his point of view the conditions were “acceptable”: “Of course they were not optimal. The area was snowy, it was relatively cold. But there were no real avalanches in the wall, only spindrift. In addition, I thought that the situation would change in a positive way during some days of good weather. And the meteorologists predicted good weather.”  It was pointless for him to try to persuade the other two climbers, says Thomas: “I cannot set off to climb the wall with such partners, who have been mentally already at home for a long time.”

When the mountain gets bigger and bigger

Thomas Huber

For the 49-year-old, it was a deja vu. Also in 2015, his teammates – his brother Alexander, Swiss Daniel Arnold and Austrian Mario Walder – had outvoted him to abandon their Latok I expedition. “I cannot blame anyone saying: Thomas, maybe something is wrong with you,” says Huber. “It’s now 5-1 against me. And these five are really five top climbers. That beats me.” Maybe it is a question of mentality, says Thomas: “I am just someone who speaks less but rather goes to the mountain to learn what it offers and how to deal with it. There is often a lot of discussion in Base Camp. And I notice that during these discussions the mountain is mentally getting bigger and bigger and in the end impossible.” The momentum then falls by the wayside, Thomas means: “The big crux at Latok is not the wall, but the man. The secret of these walls is what they make out of people by and by. They have such a great power and charisma. On the one hand they are magnetic, on the other scary. You require considerable strength to remain defiant.”

The critical point

Despite his frustration, Thomas Huber has not yet banned the Latok I North Face out of his mind, but he does not yet want to set a date for another attempt. “I’m not afraid of this wall and this mountain. I know I’ll be back,” says Thomas. “I’m just afraid that I’ll be back with a team that again says: No, we don’t want to go.” In hindsight, it was a mistake to set off without having climbed a lot together before, Thomas believes: “These mountains belong to the most difficult in the world. If you tackle these mountains, you must be a team already before setting off. You must know how the others work. You also have to know the abysmal depths of their mind. Only then can you go to the limit.” Why then doesn’t he choose his brother Alexander as his partner, with whom he has already climbed and experienced so much in the mountains? “My brother does not want to go to the North Face, that’s perhaps the critical point,” says Thomas.