Dario Rodriguez

Bereziartu, pumped after climbing the 5.14b Batzola, Spain, July 1999

10. Josune Bereziartu
ROCK CLIMBER
Age: 28 Specs: 5-foot-9, 119 pounds
Home: Ordizia, Spain

THE CASE: The tight-knit rock-climbing community in northern Spain's Basque country presented a new international star in June with the news that Josune Bereziartu had redpointed Honky Mix, a 100-foot limestone route near Oñate, thereby becoming the first woman ever to climb a 5.14c. The feat was no surprise to European climbers, who'd seen her tick off three 5.14b's with an efficient, controlled style. A ten-year veteran of the rock, Bereziartu herself stands in something less than awe of the accomplishment. "It's nice that this was the first 5.14c climbed by a woman," she says, "but for me the most important thing is that it was the secondoverall ascent of a route that's been a project for several strong climbers."

SECOND OPINION: "Watching her do her first 5.14b, I couldn't believe how calmly she moved," says American climber Eric Fagan, who recently returned from a two-year stint in Spain. "It looked like she was climbing vertically, but the route was 55 degrees overhanging."

MOST HARROWING MOMENT: Last spring, nightfall caught Bereziartu and husband Rikardo Otegi halfway up an eight-pitch route near Riglos. They finished in the dark and hiked to their car only to realize they'd left their keys 600 feet up the cliff.

WHAT'S NEXT: Brief tastes of American crags such as Colorado's Rifles are bringing Bereziartu back for more. "The look of the American West is so different from the forests of Europe," she says. "You have incredible national parks!" —Bruce Barcott

11. Johan Reinhard
ARCHAEOLOGIST/EXPLORER

Someone once asked Johan Reinhard how many close calls he'd survived. When he finished tallying them, the total came to 34. "I haven't been broken up too badly," says the 57-year-old Illinois native, "but I've been nearly killed almost every way you can think of." To thrive as the world's foremost high-altitude archaeologist, it helps to be both lucky and wise. When an avalanche wipes the slope you just exited—that's luck. When a Nepalese tribe of hunters orders you, upon pain of death, to stop shadowing them, and you beat feet—that's wisdom.

For two decades Reinhard, who holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Vienna, has scoured remote Andean mountaintops seeking clues left behind by ancient South American civilizations. His discoveries have blown minds in the science world: In 1995 he recovered the famous 500-year-old Incan "ice maiden," the most well preserved body from pre-Columbian times. Last year he and his team battled 70-mph winds and snow to unearth three more mummies on the summit of Argentina's 22,000-foot Mount Llullaillaco. "The DNA samples we sent to George Mason University were as intact as a living person's," says Reinhard.

The archaeologist, who's been climbing mountains since college, has bagged more than 100 South American peaks over 17,000 feet, making him one of the world's most prolific Andean climbers—a record he didn't consciously seek. "What keeps me going up is that [those high mountains] have the world's best-preserved mummies," he says, "and they're soon going to be destroyed." Earlier this year Reinhard scrambled up to a burial site on an Argentinean peak to find that thieves had gotten there first. With dynamite. "All we found were remains of blown-up textiles and bones," he says.

Now funded as a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, Reinhard retreats to his home near Franklin, West Virginia, to sift through his findings when he isn't in the field. "I've had to give up a lot for this life," he says. "But I've always had the freedom to go out and explore." —B.B.