Habeler (r.) and Messner (in 1975)

It was a real pioneering act – greater than its effect. Next Tuesday, 40 years ago, the South Tyrolean Reinhold Messner and the North Tyrolean Peter Habeler were the first people to reach the 8,850-meter-high summit of Mount Everest without bottled oxygen. They proved that it was possible. However, it did not become usual thereby. According to the climbing chronicle Himalayan Database, the highest mountain in the world has been scaled 8,219 times so far, but only 202 times without breathing mask. This corresponds to a share of 2.5 percent. Also this year it will hardly be higher.

“Are we still thinking clearly?”

South side of Mount Everest

There had been a lot of critics and skeptics in the run-up, Reinhold Messner once told me in an interview. That spurred him. “Basically, I just wanted to make an example then, to give it a try. I did not know how far I would come.” Even during their ascent on 8 May 1978, Habeler and he still doubted whether they would get out of this number without suffering any harm, said Messner: “At every break, we looked at each other: Are we still thinking clearly? Is it still responsible or not?” At minus 40 degrees Celsius, in a storm, they fought their way up. “In the final phase we reached the summit really more on our knees and hands than walking, otherwise we would have been blown off the ridge,” reported Messner.

Gotta get down!

Peter Habeler today

For Peter Habeler, it was in his own words “a very emotional moment” when they finally stood on the roof of the world. However, he could not enjoy it. “I remember being scared,” Habeler said when I met him a few months ago. “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.” After returning home, he was surprised by the huge media coverage, Habeler said: “It was a real hype.”

Tied mountain

Reinhold Messner

Even today, there is still an Everest media hype, only that it rarely has to do with ascents without bottled oxygen, but rather with the mass of climbers who tackle the highest of all mountains year after year. “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,” said Habeler. “That’s not my way of climbing mountains.” The two former pioneers agree on this point. “Nowadays, I certainly wouldn’t climb Everest without bottled oxygen,” Reinhold Messner told me on the occasion of his 70th birthday in September 2014.  “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.”

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.

Peter Habeler in the German town of Leverkusen

You would not estimate that Peter Habeler has really 73 years under his belt. Slim, wiry, tanned – just one who is still climbing mountains. Along with friends, he is currently repeating many routes in the Alps that he climbed when he was young, the Austrian told me when I met him at a mountaineers’ event in Leverkusen near my hometown Cologne last weekend: “Thankfully, I feel physically very well. But it’s going round in circles: If you train and climb a lot, you’re just in better physical shape.” Even 37 years after Habeler climbed Mount Everest along with Reinhold Messner for the first time without bottled oxygen, the highest mountain on earth is always in his mind – of course also due to the fact that he as a pioneer is questioned on Everest again and again.

Accidents in a way “homemade”

In the Khumbu Icefall

“It was good that the mountain had its peace this year”, says Habeler, when I mention that 2015 will be the first year on Everest since 1974 without summit successes: “Everest doesn’t deserve a thousand people.” Many of the numerous summit aspirants are not up to the mountain, says the Austrian, adding that the avalanche incidents in the past two years were to an extent “homemade”. The site in the Khumbu Icefall, where an ice avalanche killed 16 Nepalese climbers in spring 2014, had been an “extremely tricky place” even in his own active years, Habeler remembers: “When Reinhold (Messner) and I climbed through the Khumbu Icefall in 1978, we and all the others remained in the right part. Even in 2000, when I was there again, we didn’t climb on the left side of the Icefall because it was too dangerous.”
Habeler means that this spring’s avalanche, which hit Everest base camp and killed 19 people, did not take place without warning too. One of the reasons that the avalanche triggered by the earthquake could reach the base camp at all was that the tent city has spread more and more towards Pumori, “like a millipede”, says Habeler: “It has been known for a long time that avalanches often occur on this mountain.”

Limit for Everest

Habeler (r.) and Messner (in 1975, after having climbed Gasherbrum I for the first time in Alpine style)

Habeler is in favor of limiting the number of climbers on Everest but considers the probability to be small: “Tourism is the number one source of income in Nepal. It will be very difficult to make an example on Everest, of all mountains, because a lot of money is involved. It’s not incredible much money coming from the climbing royalties, but Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. Therefore every dollar or cent counts. Nevertheless, a limit should be set, at least for Everest.”

Next year to Nepal
He has traveled to Nepal almost 70 times so far, says Habeler adding that he has many friends there and tries to help them after the devastating 25 April earthquake. Next year, he wants to fly to Nepal again and calls on all mountain lovers to do the same in order to support the country. “I plead one hundred percent: Go to Nepal!”, says Peter Habeler and continues with a smile: “But not all need to go to Everest.”