On the third of June 1950, French mountaineers Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal completed the first ascent of Annapurna I, one of the fourteen Himalayan peaks above eight thousand meters high. Around Sixty-five years later, swiss climber Ueli Steck completed a free solo ascent of the Eiger North face in the swiss Alps in a record time of two hours twenty-two minutes and fifty seconds. From the big expeditions of the nineteen-fifties and nineteen-sixties in the Himalayas to free solo speed ascents, the practice of mountaineering has considerably changed over the course of the years. As most of the highest peaks on earth have already been climbed, both in winter and summer (except for K2 which remains unclimbed in winter), mountaineers had to rethink the practice of mountaineering to find new possible goals and achievements, which has led to different approaches to the mountains. Society too, has evolved, and it also has had its influence on the world of the mountains, with more and more people venturing in high altitude and paradoxically, risks, accidents and death less and less accepted by the public.
Initially, mountaineering was a question of national pride, a competition between countries. The aim behind it was to be the first country to send its explorers in the hostile and dangerous environment of high altitude, to have its own flag floating on top of the highest and most difficult peaks, to conquer those untamed territories made of snow, ice and rocks. Most of the first Himalayan expeditions from the beginning of the twenties century until the arrival of Reinhold Messner -who completely changed the idea of mountaineering in the Himalayas- were made of the best climbers of a same country, assisted by local Pakistanis or Nepalese to carry the enormous amount of gear and provisions to the base of those daunting unclimbed giants. Maurice Herzog’s book “Annapurna” gives an insight in how things worked in an expedition from the early fifties. The man power was huge. Numerous locals were hired to assist the setting up of a base camp, and in some cases, of the different camps set up on the deadly slopes which were then used for the ascents and the summit attempts. The effect of altitude on the bodies of the mountaineers was still very much unknown, as no human being had ever stepped foot on an 8000er[1], and consequently, bottles of oxygen were always part of the expedition. No routes existed. The first part of the expedition was to assess which side of the mountain would be the “easiest” and the “safest” to reach the top, and to explore little by little the slopes by making tentative ascents on different parts of the mountain. Once the route had been decided, and the different camps which would be used to rest at different altitudes during the ascent had been set up, an attempt could be made. The first successful ascent would come on Annapurna -surprisingly the deadliest and most feared of the fourteen 8000ers, even today- with French mountaineers Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal. After a brutal descent during which both climbers were seriously injured, and a long hike back to civilization, they were received as heroes in France. These men were representing a country, and their feat served the nation’s pride. After all, it was not just about the first men to reach the top of an 8000er, but more about being the first country to send men successfully planting the country’s flag on one of the Himalayan giants. France was the first country to conquer the impossible, similarly to Neil Armstrong with the American flag on the moon. It was like winning a war, like claiming an unexplored and unknown territory before other expeditions sent by other countries were able to do it. It was more perceived as a French victory than an achievement by two individuals.
Maurice Herzog with the French flag during the expedition on Annapurna I in 1950.
During the same time, things were slightly different in the already explored Alps. There still remained unclimbed famous faces, and the race was still raging between countries as to who would be the first to triumph on the Eiger North Face for instance. However, the public interest was lesser, and it was more a competition within the mountaineering community. Another difference with the big Himalayan expeditions was the approach of the climbs themselves. Here there were no need of helpers to carry lots of gear or to set up camps on the mountain before the ascent’s attempt. Gaston Rébuffat’s book “Étoiles et tempêtes: Six faces nord” depicts well the state of Alpine mountaineering at that time. It was small parties of mountaineers, most of the time from a same country, carrying their own gear, taking rest in short bivouacs on the mountain face, and moving quite fast. This is the so-called “alpine-style” climbing. However, the national prestige was still on the line, as Rébuffat’s ascent of the Eiger North Face shows it. They were on the mountain’s face at the same time with two Austrian climbers and two German climbers, each party climbing separately. If the German -non-professional climbers compared to Rébuffat and his partner or the Austrian team- climbers spent some time with the French, each team climbs on its own to the top. Mountaineering was at that time a patriotic affair, and not just in the Himalayan expeditions.
By 1964, when 10 climbers from China reached the top of Shishapangma, all the most prestigious mountains had been climbed at least once. Mountaineering had to find new goals, new achievements, to push the limits even farther. In the 1960s, a young Italian mountaineer, Reinhold Messner, had made a name for himself in the Alps. He would soon revolutionized mountaineering in the Himalayas and achieve what was deemed impossible. Feats after feats, he would reinvent the practice of high-altitude mountaineering, and set new standards for this extreme sport. One can say that modern mountaineering started with him. The list of all his achievements is mind-boggling. From the first solo ascent without supplementary oxygen of Mount Everest, to becoming the first man to summit all the fourteen 8000ers without using supplementary oxygen, doing most of the ascents in an Alpine style. He would go on to create the “Messner list” of the seven summits challenge, that is, to climb the highest peak on each continent[2]. Messner’s accomplishments had several effects on mountaineering. First, he proved that all summits on earth could be climbed without supplementary oxygen. Second, he also showed the mountaineering community that it was possible to climb any mountains in alpine style, that is, with a small party of climbers carrying their own gear on the mountain, or even climbing solo on some occasions. From then on, mountaineering has become more a personal achievement than a contest between countries involving big parties of climbers. The new grail was to climb the fourteen 8000ers without supplementary oxygen, a feat that 19 persons have accomplished up to this date.
Reinhold Messner on Nanga Parbat (8126m) in Pakistan.
In the last two decades, mountaineering has kept evolving in the direction of individual’s achievements. Nowadays, most climbing parties involve people from different countries. It is not usual to see an Italian climber going to the mountains with a Polish climber or an American climber. Nationalism and patriotism have almost completely disappeared. However, several new trends have emerged. First of all, amateur and semi-professional mountaineering’s popularity has been continually increasing, bringing more and more people to Nepal or Pakistan. A business has developed, so much so that a real high altitude “village” to accommodate the hundreds of climbers coming each year between April and June to climb in Nepal has been created at the foot of Everest. In the Karakoram in Pakistan, things have not gone as far as in Nepal, though, mostly due to the remoteness of K2, the Gasherbrums, Broad Peak or the Trango Towers, which would make it far more difficult to set up such a comfortable “base camp” as in the Khumbu Valley (Everest’s base camp).
The emergence of these “commercial expeditions” has questioned the ethic in the mountains and how much risk one can take to complete an ascent. Many of the “amateur” mountaineers are now not so much ready to accept risks and accidents. Therefore, they would require Sherpas to fix ropes, set ladders, and set up high camps on the slopes before starting to ascend in order to make it “safer”. If something goes wrong, many would also expect a rescue operation to bring them down to safety. The problem is, mountaineering and safety do not necessarily go well together. The decision of the Nepalese government to make it compulsory to summit Everest with guides questions the basis of the ethic in mountaineering. The official statement is that the decision has been taken for safety reasons but is it safer to send unprepared and not enough trained mountaineers using bottles of oxygen with guides on the mountain or skilled and highly trained mountaineers on their own? The damage on the mountain will also definitely be lesser with small parties using as little gear as possible and no oxygen bottles than big groups using bottles of oxygen, tons of gear and fixed ropes all along the way. This decision seems more motivated by the business surrounding Everest than the safety of the climbers or the protection of a natural area. Be that as it may, the Karakoram remains less impacted by the emergence of this “touristic mountaineering”. The fact that no rescue operation can be undertaken there, which implies a higher risk, is probably one of the main reason for that. How risk is perceived is something which draws a line between “commercial amateur mountaineering” and a more “ethical” and professional mountaineering born after Messner’s influence.
A very busy and crowded Everest base camp.
While “amateur mountaineering” is growing in popularity, professional mountaineering has kept evolving into different specialities, more extreme and involving only very few individuals. Those new “branches” are reserved to the best of the best and push the limits as far as possible. One of those practices began in the 1980s, with a new push in the 2000s. As written above, by 1964 all the 8000ers had been summited. However, these ascents were always done with the “best” weather conditions. The mountains in the Nepalese area were always climbed between and April and June, just after winter and before the arrival of the Monsoon. In the Karakoram, it was mostly between June and September, during summer. Therefore, some mountaineers decided to commit themselves to complete the first winter ascent of the 8000ers. The first one occurred on Everest, with polish mountaineers Krzysztof Wielicki and Leszek Cichy. Six more[3] followed until 1988. Due to their remoteness, the 8000ers in the Karakoram, along with Makalu and Shishapangma remained untouched. The second wave of winter ascents came in the early 2000s and is still going on as K2 has still not seen a successful winter ascent. This extreme practice is the kingdom of a very few mountaineers, like Simone Moro, Denis Urubko or several polish mountaineers[4]. It is difficult to imagine what could be more extreme, as mountaineers have to face temperatures as low as -60°C, an extreme avalanche danger and hidden crevasses under snow bridges due to heavy snowfalls.
Denis Urubko, Simone Moro and Cory Richards, the first men to reach the summit of Gasherbrum II (8035m) in winter in 2011.
Another “type” which is maybe a bit younger than the winter ascents is free solo speed climbing (which also exists in rock climbing). The goal cannot be more simple. One must climb solo, meaning without a rope, as fast as possible to the summit. This practice has drawn some criticism and is rather controversial: the slightest mistake and everything is over. Despite the apparent risks, some claims that such practice allows the climber to avoid all the risks inherent to a slow group ascent with a rope. First of all, if someone dies, it is because of their own mistake. Someone climbing with a rope can also be the victim of a mistake made by their partner(s), or vice versa, one may take their partner(s) with them in a fatal fall. Being alone means one is responsible for themself, and there is no need to be concerned about what climbing partners are doing. Secondly, the climber carries far less gear and is much lighter while climbing on the face of the mountain, and the ascent feels naturally easier rather than with 10 kgs or more to carry on the back. Two other advantages of not having to use / carry that much gear, is that one will not be caught in an accident because of faulty equipment, or because of an inadvertent misuse of the gear, and the climber will not waste time to place gear, or create an anchor or wait for their second and can progress much faster, thus remaining far less time in a spot possibly exposed to avalanches, rockfalls or icefalls. On a dangerous mountain like Annapurna, which is famous for its icefalls and avalanches due to huge seracs regularly collapsing, moving fast is certainly one’s greatest asset to avoid being caught in a disaster.
The two biggest names in this discipline are the swiss climbers Dani Arnold and the late Ueli Steck[5]. Both set new records on the greatest faces of the Alps[6]. The latter also climbed Annapurna’s south face in a record time of 28 hours (back to base camp). Spanish famous trail runner and mountaineer Kilian Jornet summited Mount Everest in 2017 in just 26 hours from base camp and a second time on the morrow in 17 hours, starting this time from advanced base camp. With such feats, mountaineering has clearly completed its metamorphosis from exploration to a high-level professionalized sport where the sheer athletic performance has become the main goal. In that regard, winter climbing and free solo speed climbing can however be seen as opposite. The former is still very much based on the spirit of “adventures” and exploration. It is all about surviving an extremely hostile environment while the latter is more about time records and “sport”. Both require an extremely high level of skills and experience though and are only practiced by the best mountaineers on the planet.
Ueli Steck during his record ascent of the Eiger north face in 2015 in just 2 hours 22 minutes and 50 seconds.
When comparing what mountaineering was in the early 1950s and what it is today after Messner and others have kept pushing the limits to what it is possible to do on the most difficult mountainous terrains, is almost like comparing two different universes. In a bit more of half a century, mountaineering has undergone a complete mutation. It started with national expeditions exploring the highest unclimbed peaks in the world in order to put their national flag before the others on the summits. “To lay siege to the mountain”, “to conquer”, “to vanquish” were expressions regularly used for describing those adventurous undertakings, almost giving the sense that it was a war between mankind and nature, between countries as to who will be the first to slay the untamed beasts. Progressively, as mountaineering had to find new goals after each new achievement, it has become more centred on the individual performance. With more and more people willing to venture into wild natural environments to escape modern society and a morose everyday life, two different worlds have then emerged. On one hand, there are the amateurs, with a practice heavily based on “commercial expedition”, not overtly concerned about the “mountaineering ethic”. The aim is to reach the summit in as much safety as possible, even though it means that a guide or Sherpas will do most of the work and take the risks to prepare and make the ascent possible for their “customers”. This aspect of mountaineering is now surrounded by an ever-growing business. On the other hand there are the professionals, who have kept the “ethic” of Messner and other mountaineers from the 1970s and 1980s intact, and are pushing the limits to new extremes, always finding new impossible goals to reach, going from first winter ascent of the highest mountains on earth to free solo speed ascent of the most difficult faces. However, with the emergence of time records, one has to wonder if mountaineering is not simply on the brink of becoming an individual (extreme) competition sport, and if that its original purpose of exploration and adventure into a wild hostile natural habitat, looking for the sublime which those dauting mountainous areas have to offer is not disappearing. However, if “achievement” plays a big role in the world of the mountains, there are still mountaineers like Austrian mountaineer Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner[7] who decided to commit their entire lives to mountaineering also because of the joy which fills them when they spend time in the outdoor and who do not forget to admire the wild natural spectacle which are displayed before their eyes that so many people will never be able to enjoy. After all, one must love the mountains and have a certain taste for the sublime to become a mountaineer.
Written by D.Poingt
[1] There are fourteen peaks above 8000 meters on earth, all of them being either in the Nepalese Himalaya or in the region known as the "Karakoram" between the north of Pakistan and China.
[2] Initially, American climber Richard Bass was the first one to summit the highest peak on each continent, but Messner suggested a more difficult list where Mount Kosciuszko, the highest mountain in Australia would be replaced by Indonesia's Puncak Jaya which presents a more challenging ascent.
[3] Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri I, Manaslu and Annapurna I.
[4] Gasherbrum I and Broad Peak were respectively climbed in 2012 and 2013 by Polish teams including Adam Bielecki, Janusz Gołąb, Maciej Berbeka, Adam Bielecki, Tomasz Kowalski and Artur Małek.
[5] Ueli Steck died in 2017 on Nuptse, a neighbour of Everest, while training for his big project of climbing Everest and Lhotse and coming back to Everest base camp in less than four days. Tenji Sherpa, Ueli’s friend who initially was going to be his partner on this project, climbed Everest without supplementary oxygen in 2018 in honour of his deceased friend.
[6] Both climbers broke in turn the records on the three great north faces in the Alps, Matterhorn, Eiger and the Grandes Jorasses, with Dani Arnold currently holding the record on Matterhorn and the Grandes Jorasses, while Ueli Steck’s record on the Eiger still holds to this day.
[7] Kaltenbrunner was the first woman to summit the fourteen 8000ers in the Himalayas without supplementary oxygen. She summited her last peak, K2, in 2011, completing an endeavour which lasted thirteen years.
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