Tima Deryan

She does not fit into the clichés that many people in the West have of Arab women. Fatima, called Tima, Deryan does not stand in the shadow of a man. She is cosmopolitan, self-confident and independent. She has founded a company in Dubai where she lives – and she is a mountaineer: Tima has already scaled five of the “Seven Summits”, the highest mountains of all continents. Mount Everest and Mount Vinson in the Antarctica are still missing from her collection.

On 23 March, the 26-year-old will fly to Nepal to climb the highest mountain on earth. On the trek to Everest Base Camp, Tima will certainly pay special attention to the yaks. In October 2017 on her way to Island Peak, she was attacked by a yak when she had just crossed a bridge over the Dudh Kosi between Phakding and Namche Bazaar. She was flipped over by the yak. The horns hit her at the thigh, Deryan was slightly injured.

Tima, how did you become a mountaineer?

On the summit of Aconcagua (in 2017)

I was born in Kuwait, my family moved to Lebanon when I was two years old and then moved to Dubai when I was nine years old. I‘ve been always into sports in general. During my teenage, I was into bodybuilding and then started bungy jumping by the age of 16. I then started my scuba diving and got my advanced PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) license, then I thought I should also get my skydiving license and I did.

In 2015 I attended a speech by Omar Samra, the first Egyptian man to climb Everest (in 2007) and I was reminded about my goal: I’ve always wanted to climb Everest ever since I was 14. I have visited Nepal five times and flew over Everest twice and I always said I will climb to the top of this mountain one day. So I took the first step to see if I like mountaineering or not and took off to climb Mount Elbrus in Russia. This was when I got hooked and my mountaineering journey started.

How would you describe your character?

I’m am a strong woman both physically and mentally. I love laughing and I enjoy the simple things in life. I‘m a minimalist, so to me it’s all about the experience rather than material. I have two jobs when I’m not on the mountain, one is in finance, the other is my own business which means I work hard for my money.

I‘m a loud person when I’m happy and I try to control it. I would consider myself between both an extrovert and introvert at this stage in life. Mind over matter is what I believe in. A positive, balanced and happy life is what I try to achieve all the time.

On the ladder across a crevasse (on Island Peak)

Which of your qualities do help you the most in the mountains?

Believing that I’m strong, being positive and laughing (especially when the altitude hits me) and of course now that its all about mind over matter which I actually tattooed on my hand as a reminder.

What does mountaineering mean to you today?

I honestly wish mountaineering is my job but this doesn’t work in my world. My dreams are big and I need to earn a lot to be able to achieve them. So now mountaineering for me is a run away from the standard city life and mainstream world. It‘s when I refill all my positive energy and boost my confidence. It‘s when I’m in peace with myself and I push all the limits happily. It‘s when I rebalance my thoughts and mentally heal. Mountaineering is literally my heaven on earth and happy place.

How do you prepare for Everest?

While rock climbing

Given that Everest has been a long time dream of mine, when I decided that I want to do it, I discovered that it takes about two months! As a newbie, I continued climbing for three years until I gained confidence and learned enough to take such a decision.

As for training, I do my strength training from 6am to 7am then I’m off to a long day at work. I come back and do my HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) in the evening.

I run ten kilometers one or two times a week, do indoor climbing two, three times a week and I’m always hiking over the weekend.

How do you finance the expedition?

I’m a minimalist, I live with my family so I really do not spend much of what I earn. Everything goes into mountains and trips. As for Everest, it is a launching event for my new company Yalla Cleaning (an online portal for cleaning industry). Part of my initiative is contributing to cleaning Everest, so currently working with the Nepalis on how I can help to bring the trash off the mountain through a system.

South side of Mount Everest

What are your expectations for Everest?

I think anyone wanting to climb a mountain would have the ultimate goal of reaching the top. For Everest, my ultimate goal is definitely reaching the top but I am very well aware that things might go against my expectations. The fact that I have the chance to spend around 50 days on the mountain, be there and live the experience, it is way too beautiful. But to top the cake with the cherry, it’ll be great to come back home with the summit! So I really do not have a lot of expectations besides – expecting the cold, stainless-steel ladders, Khumbu Icefall, crevasses, and the epic basecamp life!

A woman as a mountaineer – there are not many in the male-dominated Arab world. What resistance did you have to overcome?

I always say the Arab world is in a transition phase. It is true that it is male-dominated but women are rising up in all domains. Women in the Middle East are achieving the impossible whether it is in fitness, business, culture, music and entertainment.

Nepal, I’m coming

As I started my mountaineering journey, it was difficult to convince my family to travel alone knowing that I will be disconnected and they might not hear from me for a while. It was very hard for them to accept it but I managed to convince them. Otherwise, I did not really face a lot of difficulties kick-starting my passion.

As for society, I usually have a lot of respect from both men and women when they know what I go through to reach the peak. Just like in any other part of the world, some people think I’m too crazy and my future will be complicated. I don’t really bother explaining instead I climb more and prove them wrong. It’s all about action at the end of the day.

How do Arab men react to your mountain successes, how do Arab women?

Both Arab men and women react in a beautiful way towards my summit successes. It makes me so happy to hear “we are proud of you”. I must say, I do get challenged by some men when it comes to fitness so they can prove a point. I accept it for fun. Whether I lose or win doesn’t matter but I make sure my message goes through which is: Women are strong creatures with a high pain threshold.

Is there also a message that you want to give to Arab women by climbing Everest?

On expedition (to Denali)

Yes. Through my Everest climb I would like to demonstrate that an Arab woman is able to fight all sorts of limitations that society imposes upon her. She can earn her freedom only by action. If she wants something she must work really hard to get it! Being strong does not mean not being feminine enough. Being strong is way more attractive than being “soft”.

Arab women are still going through the phase of being independent and doing anything on there own. Most women still find it difficult to date to depend solely on themselves. So If I can climb Everest and depend on myself on the mountain then they can do anything. All it takes is courage and hard work.

I want Arab women to know that they are beautiful, they are strong and they can conquer the world. But only with the right mindset.

P.S.: By the way, the first Arab woman on Everest was the Palestinian Suzanne Al Houby, who reached the highest point at 8850 meters in spring 2011.

Jost Kobusch in Alaska

US President Donald Trump has also slowed down Jost Kobusch with his shutdown of the federal administration. The German climber was suddenly standing in front of a locked door in Talkeetna in Alaska. Jost read on a sign behind the glass pane that the rangers’ office was closed “due to the lapse in funding of the federal government budget”. The Denali National Park administration sent an email to the 26-year-old informing him that he would probably not receive any more news due to the shutdown for the time being. “Just watch the news,” he was recommended.

“Government bullsh..”

Kobusch had planned to climb solo the 6,190-meter-high Denali, the highest mountain in North America, this winter. He had completed all the formalities – except for the visit to the Ranger station in Talkeetna. One and a half years preparation a dog’s breakfast. “It’s kind of a very big failure,” Jost told the Canadian TV station KTVA (see the video below). “It’s one thing if you are on a mountain and its windy and you are forced to return by storm. It’s another thing if you are forced to return because of some government bullshit.” In order not to have to travel home to Germany empty-handed, Kobusch at least wanted to climb the 3,773-meter-high mountain Kahiltna Queen in winter. But that didn’t happen either, the avalanche danger was too great. “I’ll come back next year,” Jost announced.

In 2015, Kobusch had become well known all over the world. The young German had shot a video of the giant avalanche – triggered by the devastating earthquake on 25 April 2015 – which had destroyed the base camp on the Nepali side of Mount Everest and had killed 19 people. In spring 2016, Kobusch scaled Annapurna, his first eight-thousander – without bottled oxygen. In fall 2017, Kobusch, climbing solo, succeeded the first ascent of the 7296-meter high Nangpai Gosum II in eastern Nepal. Last fall, Jost according to his own words opened a new route on the Carstensz Pyramid, with an altitude of 4,884 meters the highest mountain in Oceania. Denali should become his next solo attempt on one of the “Seven Summits”, the highest peaks of all continents. But Trump couldn’t care less about climbers. But who does he actually care about?

Mount Vinson

Christmas with the family beneath the Christmas tree – this might not happen for about 40 mountaineers in Antarctica. For about a week now, several teams have been stuck in the base camp at the foot of the 4,852-metre-high Mount Vinson, the highest mountain of the continent. Severe storm with speeds of around 100 kilometers per hour and heavy snowfall have been preventing aircrafts from taking off or landing there for days. “We rationed the food for one warm meal a day,” writes Manuel Möller, with whom I was on an expedition to the 7,129-meter-high Kokodak Dome in 2014, where we succeeded the first ascent. Manuel had actually wanted to be home again on 21 December: “We are now prepared for still spending Christmas here.”

Turned around 150 meters below the summit

The Vinson Massif

Jürgen Landmann, who like Manuel belongs to the five-member team of the German expedition operator Amical alpin, writes on Facebook about a possible “mini good weather window” on 27 December: “Let’s hope that we get away from here then!” According to him, the team had to turn around 150 meters below the highest point during their summit attempt. One of the climbers suffered frostbite on her nose and cheek during the ascent, Manuel adds, “but things are looking better again”.  The team had good weather only on two out of ten days on the mountain, he says.

Mood in base camp still calm

“The season here is completely crazy,” writes Manuel. “The rangers said they’d never seen so much bad weather before. Yesterday there was 15 centimeters of fresh snow. Normally it snows here one centimeter a year.” The atmosphere in the base camp is calm despite the delay, says Manuel, adding that there is enough food for another two weeks, and petrol is still available too. “So there is no immediate danger of starving or dying of thirst,” reassures Manuel. “Nevertheless it is somehow stupid, since it is not foreseeable when the conditions will improve.” So keep your fingers crossed!

Kim and Co., in the background Annapurna I

“The man without fingers” wants to get his twelfth eight-thousander. Kim Hong-bin is the only foreign mountaineer to whom the Government of Nepal issued a permit for the eight-thousander Annapurna this spring. However, that does not mean that the 53-year-old Korean will be traveling alone. In the picture from the north side of the 8091-meter-high mountain, which was published by the South Korean newspaper No Cut News, I count 20 other people besides Hong-bin. “He probably has a large base camp support team,” Billi Bierling from the chronicle Himalayan Database writes to me, adding, that the Korean will be accompanied during his climb by four Sherpas.

Accident on Denali

Kim Hong-Bin

In 1991, Kim Hong-bin had suffered severe frostbite on the 6190-meter-high Denali in Alaska, the highest mountain of North America. All ten fingers had to be amputated. In 2017, he scaled Lhotse in spring and Nanga Parbat in summer, his eight-thousanders number ten and eleven. Apart from Annapurna, only Gasherbrum and Broad Peak, both located in Pakistan, are still missing in his collection. Under optimal circumstances, he could climb all three mountains this year.

Paralympics athlete

The 1.76 meter tall South Korean, who lives in the city of Gwangju in the south of the country, has never let his disability slow him down. Kim is also a ski racer. So he took part in the Paralympic Games 2002 in Salt Lake City and finished both Slalom and Super G ninth. In winter 2017, he won – at the age of 52 – the gold medal in slalom at the Korean alpine ski championships of disabled athletes.

On top of the Seven Summits

On the summit of K 2 in 2012

In spring 2007, Kim Hong-bin scaled Mount Everest. Barely two years later, in early 2009, he completed his collection of the “Seven Summits” by climbing Mount Vinson in Antarctica. “If the accident at Denali hadn’t happened, I would have remained an ordinary climber,” Hong-bin once said. “The hardship made me challenge the seemingly impossible. I overcame the handicap a mountain gave me by climbing mountains.”

Helga Hengge in Cologne

You have only successfully climbed a mountain when you reach after the summit also the valley safe and sound. In this sense, Helga Hengge was the first successful German female mountaineer on Mount Everest. As a member of a commercial expedition team in spring 1999, she climbed from the Tibetan north side to the 8850-meter-high summit. Hannelore Schmatz had been the first German woman to reach the highest point of Everest in fall 1979, but she had died of exhaustion at 8,300 meters on her descent.

In 2011, Hengge became the first German female climber to complete the collection of the “Seven Summits”, the highest mountains of all continents. Helga is now 51 years old. She lives with her husband, her twelve-year-old daughter and her eleven-year-old son in Munich – and still goes to the mountains. Last fall, she tackled the 6543-meter-high Shivling in the Indian Himalayas. I met her on the margins of a lecture in Cologne.

Helga, it’s almost 19 years since you were on Mount Everest. Do you have any special relationship with the mountain?

Helga on top of Everest in 1999

Yes, for sure. I always thought that would disappear after a while. But I even think that this relationship is getting stronger. Only now I do feel how much I have taken from this mountain for myself and my life.

What exactly?

A very deep serenity. A lot of confidence. And belief in a power from within. And in a divine power in the mountains too.

Do you still follow what happens on Everest, e.g. now the winter expedition of Alex Txikon?

Yes, with great fascination. After Christmas follows this rather quiet time in January. I always feel like everyone is going to Everest, but not me. (laughs) Friends or acquaintances set off, as well as other mountaineers who are posting on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. There is so much energy and great anticipation. And this always reminds me of my anticipation back then.

What has changed in your view on Everest since 1999?

It was still relatively quiet on the north side. We were a total of about 150 people on the mountain, including kitchen crews and base camp managers. That did not feel so crowded. If I now see the pictures, there is much more going on there. But that’s the way it is in our world. There will be more and more going on everywhere, of course on Everest too.

Do you feel that the mountain loses its dignity?

No, it can not. I also find it very difficult to say how the Nepalese government is currently doing: Some are allowed, others not. I think it’s very difficult and always unfair to exclude people from ascending there. The mountain has a tremendous aura and attraction. There are just a lot of people who really want to climb it. I can understand that very well.

North side of Mount Everest

Do you sometimes still dream about your ascent?

No. But for a while I had something of a horror dream about Everest – perhaps caused by the pictures of the accidents or even the giant queue of people, hundreds of climbers on a single route. That’s terrifying. At that time I dreamed that the Chinese would have built a lift from the middle of the mountain to just below the summit. Upstairs there was a little house where you could take a break. From there they all went off, with trainers! In the dream I was quite excited: They can not climb up wearing trainers, that’s too dangerous. I have to hold them back!

You were the first German woman who reached the summit of Everest and in addition came down alive. Do you have the feeling that the public has realized this?

I think so. In my lectures, I am often asked about it. I was living in New York at that time and just traveled to Everest. I had no sponsors. Back then I was not aware that I would be the first German woman to succeed. I found it out only afterwards. If I had known it before, I would probably have exerted myself more than I did and lamented less. That would certainly have benefited my team.

Did they pull you up to the top?

No, it was not that bad. But without the Sherpas, the tigers of the Himalayas, I certainly would not have climbed up there.

For some, Everest is the highlight, after which they scale down their mountain activities. For you, it was obviously more of an initial spark to set off to the mountains of the world.

At first. I tried to scale four eight-thousanders and succeeded on one of them, Shishapangma [She reached the 8008-meter-high Central Peak in 2001]. Then I met my husband, started a family. With two small children, you can not just leave. Later I focused on the Seven Summits, which I completed by 2011. One summit every year.

View downwards from Shivling

Last fall, you were back in the Himalayas, in the Indian part, on the six-thousander Shivling, a prestigious mountain. What did attract you?

It is the holy mountain of India and has fascinated me for a long time. It is a technically very difficult mountain, certainly at the limit of my ability. But the climb was not so important to me. I really wanted to make this pilgrimage and spend time there. It is truly one of the most impressive mountains I have ever been to. A great happiness shines out of it. Whenever I think back to the expedition, I have to smile because it was so beautiful.

Although you had to turn around 400 meters below the summit due to the risk of ice debris?

We turned around with a heavy heart because we had worked so hard on this mountain. Three days later we were trekking back. Near the glacier snout of Gomukh, the holy spring of the Ganges, we met a sadhu [a “holy man” in Hinduism] who was hiking up the pilgrim’s path. He asked me, “Where have you been?”- I replied, “On Shivling.” We were disheveled, with sun-burnt faces, we really looked wild. Then he said: “Lucky you!” Only then I realized how right he was. May be it was just one day missing to succeed. But we were so lucky to take this special trip at all.

Mount Damavand

Are there any other big mountain dreams you still have?

One after the other. I would like to travel again to Mount Damavand [5,611 m, the highest mountain in Iran] where we were not able to reach the summit last year because of a wild storm. And then there is another holy mountain in Iran, Mount Sabalan [4,811 m, the third highest mountain of the country]. I would like to visit it too.

It sounds like you’re not just looking for high altitude, you’ve changed your priorities.

A lot. After Everest I fell into a deep hole. Three years of preparation and I never asked myself, what will I do after having climbed Everest? It was hard. After that I strenously tried to climb other eight-thousanders, that was not my scene. Then, thank God, I found the Seven Summits. But when they were over, it was again very difficult for me. Finally, it had been a project over 14 years. Suddenly you stand on the last mountain and should actually be the luckiest person on earth. But you have no more reason to prepare for something. However, now I have the holy mountains and they are endless. They exist on all continents, in all religions and cultures. That’s actually the much nicer goal.

Andy Holzer on the Rongbuk Glacier near Everest (in 2015)

Andy Holzer has climbed already six of the “Seven Summits”, the highest mountains of all continents. Only the very highest is still missing in the collection of the blind mountaineer from Austria. This spring, the 50-year-old from the town of Lienz in East Tyrol wants to tackle Mount Everest for the third time. During his first go in 2014, the season had been finished prematurely after an avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall had killed 16 Nepalese climbers. In spring 2015, the devastating earthquake in Nepal, with nearly 9,000 deaths, had resulted in no Everest ascents from the south and the north. Like two years ago, Holzer plans to climb Everest via the Tibetan north side. He will be accompanied by his (seeing) East Tyrolean friends Wolfgang Klocker and Klemens Bichler.

Andy, again you are going to Mount Everest – after two attempts in 2014 and 2015, when, for different reasons, you actually were not been given the opportunity to tackle the highest of all mountains. Third time is a charm?

Andy Holzer

Once, twice, three times, four times, people have invented this. I go back again, because I think I know: If everything fits, my physical condition that day, the condition of my friends there, the weather, the conditions on the mountain … then it could work for us.

Like in 2015, you want to climb Everest from the Tibetan north. Why did you choose this side?

Because my small experience, which I could make in my previous attempts on Everest, has clearly shown to me that the Khumbu Icefall is like Russian roulette. The steeper rocks and the route on the north side are, apart from an earthquake, relatively static. I prefer it to be a bit more rejecting, somewhat “unfriendly”, but more reliable than to take the route on the Nepali side which is – besides the objective risks that I described – easier to climb.

How did you prepare for the expedition?

I get the feeling that my whole life is a preparation for so many challenges. I was able to complete a lot of them successfully, others not. The older I get, the more I realize that the number of passed tests doesn’t matter. For me it’s more and more about this free spirit which today almost only children have: simply set off, without guarantee of success guarantee in your pocket! In addition a bit of life experience as well as rational thinking, given to me now at fifty years of age, and then I feel prepared.

Blind climber Andy Holzer on Carstencz Pyramid (© Andreas Unterkreuter)

Quite pragmatically, the technical answer to your question: My nature, my team, my friends are my basis. We are a well-coordinated team, as only a few can have – partly from the same village.
Like for 30 years, I have been spending about 200 days a year in the mountains. Especially now in winter we have done a lot of extensive ski tours, in blocks without rest days. We are also completing a hypoxic training program. All of us have been sleeping in altitude tents in our bedrooms for week before our departure. We can simulate high altitude by oxygen deprivation at night and stimulate the body to produce more red blood cells.

So far, only the American Erik Weihenmayer has scaled Everest as a blind climber – via the south side of the mountain in 2001. How high do you estimate your chance to reach the 8850-meter-high summit?

I have known Erik for years, and we have become friends long ago. Of course, I pumped him for information on Everest. But I won’t and can’t tackle Everest in the way Erik did on 25 May 2001 along with his team. At that time a whole country stood behind the first attempt of a blind man on Everest. Erik had a large number of partners, friends and team members at his side, who could support him by turns. In our case, only Wolfi and Klemens can alternate from time to time to tell me the difficulties of ascent and descent. We three will climp up to the highest point of Mount Everest, only accompanied by our Sherpas. But that does not mean that we have lower chances. We are a compact team, flexible and fast in decision making. So I think and hope: Our chance is strongly alive.

You’ll climb with companions, with bottled oxygen. Experts are predicting a record number of Everest aspirants this year, so it could become crowded on the normal routes. What tactics have you considered?

This was a smaller reason to choose the Everest north side. Compared with the south side, only one-third permits are issued there. But honestly, if I go to Everest and then complain about too many other climbers on the mountain, I should go home right away. Then there would be one climber less on Everest.

Andy on Shishapangma (in 2011)

Indeed, we will use bottled oxygen during our summit push. I would like to experience the mountain of the mountains so that I am able to notice something up there consciously and maybe enjoy it and be really happy about it. In addition, supplemental oxygen gives us the opportunity to climb in exactly the same rhythm. Perhaps too few people know this: When Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler were the first to climb Everest without bottled oxygen in 1978 and then descended separately, this had nothing to do with egoism, but with the fact that the extreme lack of oxygen at high altitude forces every climber to use his own rhythm of walking and performance. If you go one step too fast, you are in danger of dying from oxygen deficit. If you go a step too slowly, perhaps out of consideration for your partner, you freeze to death.

Oxygen deficiency does not mean in the first place the risk of choking, but rather the extremely increased danger of frostbite, because the body has less oxygen available for the “own heating” or metabolism.

North side of Everest in the last daylight

If Wolfgang (or Klemens) always has to go a bit slower in front of me, because I have to correct many missteps and therefore walk slower, he’s getting too cold and I am getting too hot. And if my partner is walking at his own pace, the distance between us will increase. With more than about five meters distance, I can not hear his crampons any more exactly and therefore have to slow down even more because I myself have to search for the steps.

But this has been clear to me and my guys already for a long time. We expect an adventure which is not easier than climbing the mountain without supplemental oxygen. We try to climb this great mountain with a “person without light”. And that requires from my point of “view” enormous cohesion and feeling for the other.

Why, at all, has it to be Mount Everest? What does attract you to go there?

If you have planned, financed and tackled a project several times, you get a great relationship to this project. That’s the way, Wolfi, Klemens and I feel about it. We know, of course, that there are so many other beautiful mountains, and, and, and … But climbing Everest does not mean that we can not tackle the countless other beautiful mountains as well.

Ranulph Fiennes on Aconcagua

Is he really getting old after all? Sir Ranulph Fiennes has back trouble. Britain’s best-known adventurer had to be flown off from Aconcagua by a rescue helicopter at the beginning of the week. On the highest mountain of South America, the 72-year-old suffered from so bad back pain that he could not continue his ascent to the highest point on 6,962 meters. “I was within just a few hours of the summit but problems with my back meant I couldn’t continue,” Fiennes said. “I’m very frustrated, but I’ve learnt that at my age you can’t ignore any pain.”

Across the poles and summits

Fiennes wanted to climb Aconcagua as part of his project that he has called “The Global Reach Challenge“. The Briton wants to become the first ever who will have crossed the Arctic Ocean and the Antarctic as well as climbed the “Seven Summits”, the highest mountains of all continents. Besides Aconcagua, only Denali (6,194 m) in Alaska and the Carstensz Pyramid (4,884 m) in Indonesia are still missing in his success list. Fiennes is using his project to collect donations for the British aid organization “Marie Curie”, which is supporting terminally ill people and their families.

New obstacle

Aconcagua

The Briton will now return home and have a thorough checkup before doing anything new. “Another obstacle I will face is that things aren’t as they were in the past,” the adventurer conceded: “The body, with the same amount of training, can’t achieve the same things, so success in this challenge is by no means guaranteed.”

Nearly unstoppable

Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who was knighted for his numerous expeditions and charitable activities in 1993, has demanded a lot from his body. He became (along with Charles Burton, who died in 2002) the first man to reach both poles from the coast in 1982. Fiennes rounded the earth along the zero meridian. In 2003, he completed seven marathons within seven days on seven continents – only four months after a bypass operation. In 2009, Fiennes, aged 65, summited Mount Everest. In early 2013, Fiennes had to be rescued during an attempt to cross the Antarctica for the first time in winter because he had suffered frostbite. A new attempt that was planned for this winter was not approved by the British Foreign Office. This man can hardly be stopped.

P.S. Before you start to google: Sir Ranulph Fiennes is a third-grade cousin of the British actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes.

Maxut Zhumayev

“When I was approaching the highest point I saw Vassiliy sitting in the snow, ten meters away from the summit. I was very happy because my friend had waited for me”, said Maxut remembering his summit day on K 2 on 23 August 2011. “This was very special.” That day Maxut Zhumayev and Vassiliy Pivtsov completed their 8000er collection, ten years and ten days after they had climbed Gasherbrum I, their first 8000-meter-peak. The two Kazakh climbed 13 of the 14 eight-thousanders as a rope team, only on Manaslu they joined different expeditions. That is unique, says Maxut: “In the history of climbing we don’t have the same story that two climbers have reached so many 8000-meter-summits together.”

Hard job on K 2

Maxut and Vassiliy on the very last meters

I met the 37-year-old climber at the trade fair ISPO in Munich where there was a little reunion of the 2011 K 2 team: Maxut was talking to Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, who had also summited the second highest mountain of the world, her last 8000er that was missing, and to her husband Ralf Dujmovits, who belonged to the team, but had not joined the final summit push. “K 2 was really hard”, said Maxut. “It was my sixth and Vassiliy’s seventh attempt.” Zhumayev had climbed the other 8000ers on his first try. He never used bottled oxygen.

From below to the top

Maxut, born in the steppe in the west of Kazakhstan, became a climber fairly late: “I started climbing when I was 20 years old. I was working like a Sherpa, as a porter. I carried some luggage for a trekking group from France.” In this group he met some guys who did climbing as a sport. “I am happy that I touched this philosophy, this way of life. That’s the reason why I am still in the mountains and why I have been climbing until now.” Like his friend Vassiliy Pivtsov, Zhumayev earns his living as a lieutenant of the Kazakh army.

Founder of Kazakh Alpine Club

Zhumayev on Mount Everest in 2007

After having finished the 8000ers, Maxut had to cross a mental valley. “It took me about a year to find my new dreams and new goals.” At the beginning of 2013 Zhumayev founded the Kazakh Alpine Club. He wants to change the attitude of his compatriots to the mountains: “It’s a philosophy how to live inside nature. For me nature is not a toy, but my home.” Maxut knows that it will not be possible overnight to establish structures like those of Western Alpine clubs in Kazakhstan and to spread his mountain philosophy: “That is my new Everest. Its altitude is more than 8848 meters, because my life is not long enough for developing this project.”

No more dangerous climbs

Taking responsibility for his wife, his four-year-old daughter and five-year-old son, Maxut is staying well clear of dangerous climbs. Zhumayev wants to complete the Seven Summits, the highest peaks of all continents. Having already climbed Mount Everest (Asia) and Kilimanjaro (Africa) he plans to add the ascent of Denali (North America) in May, Aconcagua (South America) in autumn and then – if he is able to find sponsors – Mount Vincent (Antarctica).

Blind climber Andy Holzer

The blind can see, just in a different way. This is demonstrated by the Austrian Andy Holzer. The 47-year-old from Lienz in East Tyrol has been blind since birth. But that does not prevent him from rock climbing, ski touring or even mountaineering in the Himalayas. 16 August 1975 was a special day in Andy’s life: As a nine-year-old boy he was allowed for the first time to climb a rocky mountain together with his parents. After he had dragged himself for hours through the debris he turned to rock climbing and suddenly he regarded his father as climbing too slow. His mother couldn’t follow them. “I felt like someone had freed me from chains”, Andy recalled, as we recently met during the International Mountain Summit in Brixen.

Andy, the first question is probably always the same. How do you manage to climb a rock face without being able to see anything?

I don’t climb without seeing it. That would not work.

Please explain what you mean!

I generate the topographical details of a rock face with other sensations, for instance when I touch the grip, which later becomes my tread. This is simply intuitive climbing. Also seeing climbers train – of course in a protected environment – to climb blindly. These are completely different movement sequences. You don’t take a grip because you see it, but you grab for the place where your body’s center of gravity wants to go to. That’s the difference when you are climbing blindly. I habe been refining this technique for 25 years now. It’s no top climbing, no bid deal, but a lot of fun.

Andy on Carstencz Pyramid

You must have a huge memory to combine all these sensations and informations in your brain to a 3-D-image of the rock face.

I am not even aware of this. I only notice that I have a much higher metabolism than my friends or other climbers. This is a very different deal of energy. I have to imagine much more, to invest more mental strength to climb on the same level as my seeing friends. The difference for me makes two, three or four degrees of difficulty. It’s just another dimension.

You are mostly climbing roped up with seeing partners. Are you also able to lead a route after having finished it with your mates?

For me that is the great motivation to climb steep mountains. I want to know: What does it look like? What do the seeing climbers see? Which shapes and structures has the mountain? I can not do it with my eyes. Not even with my ears. No matter how exactly you are listening into nature, you do not hear the mountain in its details. But I have my sense of touch. It is limited just to the point where my arm ends. I have to climb up the mountain to see him. It’s a huge motivation. To save it in memory is not strenuous but rather an emotional impulse, as if seeing people remember faces or sunsets.

Guiding in rock (Image by Martin Kopfsguter)

Are you experiencing a rush of adrenaline like others when they hang in the wall, look down and are suddenly overwhelmed by what they are doing?

Many people confuse blindness with foolishness. Blindness is only the failure of one of five sensory nerves. You still have four, 80 percent of sensory perception are there. If I climb and a 600 meter deep abyss opens beneath my legs, I perceive the yawning depth that seems to pull me down. It’s tremendous. The knowledge is quite enough to get this feeling of exposure, the knowledge that the next step decides about fall or summit victory. There is no difference. Many people say to me: You are surely free from giddiness, because you do not look down. I reply: It’s a ferocious story to fall and see where it will end. But it’s much worse to fall into the dark, into uncertainty.

In the North Face of Cima Grande in the Dolomites (Image by Martin Kopfsguter)

You have already climbed six of the “Seven Summits”, the highest peaks of all continents. Only Mount Everest is still missing. In 2001 it was already climbed by a blind man, Erik Weihenmayer from USA. You have already climbed together with him, as a “double-blind” rope team. Has he encouraged you to dare climb Everest too?

For me the “Seven Summits” are less a planned project. Until I had climbed the  fourth of these summits I was not even aware of this collection. I climb about 200 mountains a year, not only here in the Alps. From Greenland to Antarctica, I’ve been everywhere. This “six of seven” were simply among these mountains. I’ve also left my traces on the two 8000ers Shishapangma and Cho Oyu, on which I, alas, couldn’t reach the summit. But I know what it feels like in Tibet, in Nepal, in the Himalayas.

Venture Everest? Everyone knows that Everest is the safest of 8000ers. It’s not an expedition but a journey. If I could now, aged 47, pack my bags and start together with my friends a trip to the highest mountain in the world, that would be very interesting. Others make a trip to Venice or to the Kitzsteinhorn (a mountain in Austria), and we just go to Everest. This is a cool idea. Because I think that anyone who does not feel tears in his eyes when he climbs up the Hillary Step and the last few meters to the highest point in the world, has no business being there. If there is no emotion on Everest, where else? Let’s see if it will happen. Maybe it will. But Everest is not my absolutely focused goal now.

So there is no concrete plan to try it next year? Also your biological clock is ticking. You know, it will be harder to climb in high altitude if you are 50 or older.

I’m totally aware of this fact. My friends are telling me, no problem, a 70- or 80-year-old has also climbed Everest. But that’s only a compliment of my friends to me. They all climb with headlamps. I am the only one who climbs in total darkness. This is a completely different thing, in a physical sense, concerning metabolism or body’s energy balance. At the age of 50 you have probably no business being there, and I’m probably already standing on the verge. For me as a blind Everest is just another mountain than for a seeing climber. We need not discuss this.

You tried to climb 8000ers twice. Was it for you another kind of self-experience climbing in this great altitude?

Up there the seeing and I converge further, because the speed is reduced. Going slower means for me as a blind person that I have for each step a few milliseconds more time to analyze whether I have to give more pressure on my crampon rear left or front right to stay in balance. Down here where the altitude does not matter I have to make my steps quickly one after another to keep pace with the others. In this case each step is like to do a lottery. In the long run it’s extremely exhausting. Compared to this it’s almost like a game if you have suddenly two seconds time for each step. The high altitude excites me that way because I feel good up there.

Andy during skitouring on an Austrian mountain (Image by Erwin Reinthaler)

A Paralympic winner once told me that he didn’t like the term “disabled athletes”. Do you also feel pigeonholed when someone calls you like this?

No. I’m rarely called like this because I am not in competition. In addition: At 7500 meters above sea level everyone is disabled. I have never met anyone up there who was not disabled. And if we do rock climbing in the Dolomites and my seeing friend is not disabled, we have probably chosen the wrong route. In this case it was too easy, no challenge. We are climbing mountains just because we want to handicap ourselves, to escape the paved roads and to avoid tracks. That’s the great thing about mountaineering.

You also do skitouring.

In the last ten years I have spent at least hundred days per winter with skitouring, last winter even more. Snow suits me. In contrast to stones you can form snow by carving and balancing. Of course I had to learn special techniques. Again, the ears are extremely important. By the turns of my friend I immediately hear the inclination. It’s not necessary that he cautions me about an icy patch because I have heard it long since. Furthermore speed is important. If you are not fast enough you will sink into deep snow or in snow that is frozen at the top. I have intensively worked to get better during the last ten years so that now I can really enjoy it.

I skied down Shishapangma from 7100 meters, also from Mount McKinley or Mount Ararat in Turkey. Not because I want to be particularly cool, but because it’s a great relief for me. For this you don’t need eyes, it’s a matter of feeling. I also had to get used to the material. My skis are very short and very wide, so that the manoeuvrability is guaranteed.

All that sounds as if your life always is a workshop too.

Ha! I hope that everyone’s life is a workshop. Because if it’s not, you don’t further your personal development. I am constantly developing myself. What I am living day by day is my workshop of life. You have said well.

At the summit of Everest in 1999

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.

Elevator to the ridge

„I dream that there is an entrance at the bottom of the glacier, a kind of cave where you can use an elevator from its depth up to the ridge.” The crowds push upwards using steep iron ladders via the Second Step, Helga continues. „At the summit there is a restaurant with a large terrace. Tea and cake are served. Suddenly the wind is getting stronger, clouds are gathering, a storm is coming up. The people with their colourful sneakers continue to climb up on the ridge. They are laughing, joking. I have to stop them, to tell them that it’s too dangerous, that they will die – but then they enter a long slide and rush down happily. And I wake up drenched in sweat.” In reality we’re not there yet, but Helga’s nightmare is initiated by what’s currently happening on Everest. „If everybody in addition would get a bravery medal and candy floss at basecamp only the mountaineers would be left to complain. This make me sad”, Helga writes.

From sport climbing to high-altitude mountaineering

Helga Hengge spent her life alternately in Germany and USA. She was born in Chicago and grew up in Bavaria. From the village of Deining, located between the cities of Nürnberg and Regensburg, on clear days she could see the Alps in the distance. Aged 25 Helga moved to New York, studied and worked as a fashion journalist. In her leisure time she did freeclimbing and later turned to high-altitude mountaineering. In 1997 she reached the summit of Aconcagua (6962 metres), the highest mountain of South America. Afterwards she climbed several other 6000-metre-peaks. In autumn 1998 Hengge reached 7500 metres on Cho Oyu. The following spring she succeeded on Everest, as the only woman in the commercial expedition team of the New Zealander Russell Brice.

On occasion of the 60th anniversary of the first ascent Helga wishes Mount Everest, that „year by year it shall grow a little bit higher in the sky with the objective to give a good life to the local people. And to inspire the climbers to push their limits, for the benefit of all.” (You find Helga Hengge’s  full statements on the two Everest-60-pinboards on the right side of the blog.) 

Eureka moment in a library 

Helga Hengge

Meanwhile she is a mother of two children and is living in Bavaria again, in Grünwald near Munich. After she had climbed Everest she continued going on expeditions. Among other things she reached the central summit of Shishapangma (8008 metres). At that time Helga already had her next major goal in mind: She wanted to climb the Seven Summits, the highest mountains of all continents, as first German woman. She had found a book of Dick Bass in a New York library. The American had firstly completed the collection of the Seven Summits in 1985 – however with Mount Kosciuszko in Australia and not as mostly common today with the Carstensz Pyramid in Ozeania. „What a great idea! At that time I regarded it as being a fantastic dream far away from realization. But that didn’t minimize my enthusiasm to dream that dream”, Helga writes. „Today I’m happy that this treasure has become a part of my life.” On 23th May 2011 she reached the top of Mount McKinley, the highest mountain of North America. Helga Hengge had managed to climb the Seven Summits. As first German woman. 

P.S. Sometimes Maria Gisela Hoffmann is called the first German woman on the Seven Summits. She completed her climbs on 21th May 2011, two days ahead of Hengge. But Hoffman was born as a boy and climbed the first of her Seven Summits as a man.