Reinhold Don't Care What You Think (Cont.)

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Reinhold Don't Care What You Think (Cont.)


	Stomping grounds: Messner on Monte Rite; Behind him are the jutting spires of the Dolomites, where the Great One learned his craft and still looms large. (Anton Corbijn)

WELCOME TO THE GOLDEN YEARS of Reinhold Messner, 58, a man who, when he's not doing chores, leads one of the more regal and hectic lives in all of sport. Twenty years after his heyday, Messner is still the most popular climber on earth. He's the subject of dozens of books, not counting the 20 or so he's written about himself. He's a valuable commodity and an eager salesman, having pushed everything from yak steaks to sportswear. Outdoor festivals and book fairs pray he shows up, because he fills auditoriums. Young adventurers seek his esteemed approval for their own expeditions in hopes of basking in stray beams of reflected glory.

What's the explanation for all this success? "Great things happen when man meets the mountains," he likes to say.

Indeed, great things happened when Messner ventured into the high country, whether it was the Alps or the Himalayas, both of which he pretty much owned in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. No individual in history has done more to revolutionize climbing, and Messner has surpassed even Sir Edmund Hillary in his genius for capturing people's imaginations, turning their eyes to the snowy ramparts of the world's highest peaks.

Messner's accomplishments are mind-boggling, and rank as some of the greatest in the history of any athletic endeavor. In 1978 he and Austrian Peter Habeler became the first climbers to conquer Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, something that was considered flatly suicidal at the time. He was the first person to solo Everest, which he did in 1980, again without bottled oxygen. By bagging 27,824-foot Makalu and 27,923-foot Lhotse in a single Himalayan season in 1986, he became the first to climb all 14 of the world's 8,000-meter peaks. Along the way, Messner reinvented climbing with his mid-seventies introduction of fast and light alpine-style techniques to high-elevation routes. No extra oxygen, no fixed ropes, no established camps, no support teams—just a clean break from the siege tactics that dominated the game until then.

There are so many moments that bear mentioning, but most climbers say Messner's most influential feat was his Everest solo, in which he scurried up the mountain's North Face carrying everything he'd need on his back, returning to Base Camp in an astonishing four days.

"It was like landing on the moon," says Conrad Anker, 39, an Everest veteran from Bozeman, Montana. "After that, everything else kind of pales in comparison."

Lists don't tell the whole story. Messner was a personality as large as the Himalayas themselves. When he summited a mountain, you heard about it. He was a living, breathing PR machine who expertly marketed himself all over the world. "He was cashing in on climbing while other people were just climbing," says veteran British alpinist Adrian Burgess, 52. "Of course, he had something to cash." Messner's books have played a large role in his economic success. They aren't the usual dull drivel of climbing journals. The best of them—including The Crystal Mountain and Everest: Expedition to the Ultimate—are deeply introspective works, often reading like Wagnerian psychodramas.

Later, when Messner set his sights on polar exploration, he broke new ground there, too, in 1990 becoming part of the first team, with German polar explorer Arved Fuchs, to cross Antarctica without assistance. Three years after that, he and his brother Hubert trekked across Greenland. Such accomplishments still astonish Messner's elite colleagues.

"Reinhold Messner really is a great tour de force," says Tom Hornbein, the 71-year-old U.S. climbing legend and physician. "He's one of those people who shake paradigms."

Peter Athans, a 45-year-old American climber who's summited Everest seven times, says, "Reinhold simply changed people's thinking. What he did was so far ahead of everyone." According to Ed Viesturs, 43, the accomplished Seattle-based climber who's trying to repeat Messner's ascent of all the 8,000-meter peaks, his contribution was more fundamental than that: "He proved that your head does not explode if you go very high up."

Of course, the man has always had his detractors. British climber Doug Scott, 61, once complained that Messner, while great, was a showman who packaged accomplishments that would resonate with the public—ˆ la the tidy-sounding 8,000-meter tick list—rather than doing truly cutting-edge routes. "Reinhold did some very good climbs," he said. "But then he took some routes with very little technical difficulty, just to get up them quickly."

Most criticism, however, has centered not on Messner'sbulletproof feats, but on his arrogant, brusque way of dealing with people. Although he's known to be occasionally charming, he's famous for his tirades and grudge-nursing, both on and off the mountain. After the 1978 Everest climb, he abruptly ended his 12-year relationship with Peter Habeler after Habeler published a book that implied Messner exaggerated his leadership role in their expeditions. The two have barely spoken, nor have they climbed together, since. Habeler—now 60, still climbing and living in Finkenburg, Austria—has publicly depicted Messner as a control freak who didn't want anybody showing him up.

"We never had any problems as long as I was not making anything out of myself," he said a few years after the climb. "It seems to me that Reinhold simply wants to be number one, and he doesn't want anybody to be beside him."

Possibly. But many people will tell you that Messner's big ego is a big part of why he succeeded in the first place. "His arrogance is what made him so strong and focused," says Viesturs. "He walked his talk, like Muhammad Ali."

"Like him or not," says Greg Child, 45, an author and veteran of many Himalayan climbs, "all roads lead to Messner."

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