Climbing Lessons from the School of Tomaz Humar (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine June 2002

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Climbing Lessons from the School of Tomaz Humar (Cont.)


	Solo Faces: Humar sans rope outside Chamonix (Antonin Kratochvil)

EVEN AMONG RISK-LOVING mountaineers, there are insane levels of danger that 99.9 percent of climbers won't accept. The other 0.1 percent tend to come from Eastern Europe. They have names like Kukuczka, Wielicki, Groselj, Jeglic, or Belak. They share a fanatical and almost comical embrace of suffering.

"A huge chunk of the sickest climbers in the Himalayas are Polish, Russian, Czech, or Slovenian," says American big-wall climber Mark Synnott, 32. "They're hard-core. Everyone knows that. You can tell when you meet them."

This toughness is rooted in history, of course. Eighty years of Lenin, Stalin, World Wars I and II, the Cold War, regional conflicts, and ethnic cleansing have produced durable people. For the survivors who emerged from the rubble of communism, a long and happy life is not an entitlement, but an exception. The prospect of getting killed in the mountains is simply not as tragic for a climber from Minsk as it is for a climber from Boulder.

"In the West, the art of rock climbing is growing because it has to do with less risk, good muscles," says Reinhold Messner, 57, the first man to climb (and then to solo) 29,028-foot Mount Everest without oxygen and to summit the world's fourteen 8,000-meter peaks. "But the people seeking high goals in high places are in Eastern Europe, and they reach their goals because they are willing to suffer more."

And willing to do more to escape. During the Cold War, Eastern Bloc climbers were on the same short leash as everybody else. They couldn't travel without government permission, and so, when state-sponsored clubs mounted expeditions to the Himalayas, competition was fierce. "If you're in a club and your ticket to an annual trip to Tian Shan is by staying on that team, you're going to do far more to stay on that team," notes American alpinist Carlos Buhler, 47. "In our system, anybody can go to Tian Shan who wants to bang nails for a month to earn enough money to go there."



	Sledding with his kids in the Julian Alps (Antonin Kratochvil)

Some of the greatest modern climbers have come from the former Soviet Union and Poland—Russian Anatoli Boukreev and Pole Jerzy Kukuczka, both killed in the Himalayas—but starting in 1991, when Slovenia won its independence from Yugoslavia, Slovenian mountaineers came on strong, with fast-and-light ascents up dangerous faces that have astonished even the Great One himself. "The Slovenians are the very best climbers in the world," Messner says matter-of-factly. "They are young, and they are hungry for difficult things. I like them."

Slovenian achievements in Nepal alone include new routes up the west ridge of Everest and the south face of 27,824-foot Makalu, solo ascents of the south face of 27,923-foot Lhotse and the west face of Annapurna, and the first complete ski descents of both Annapurna and Mount Everest. Slovenian casualties have piled up as well. Among those who've died in the past seven years are Slavc Sveticic, who soloed Annapurna's west face; Stane Belak, Tomaz's first mentor; Vanja Furlan, who climbed Nepal's Ama Dablam with Tomaz; and Janez Jeglic, Tomaz's partner on Nuptse—until he was blown off the summit.

Tomaz, however, has managed to live through some of the riskiest climbs ever attempted. "At the moment, Humar is the greatest high-altitude climber of the world," Messner says. "His power is in surviving in very difficult situations on huge walls. What he has done is special. I know these walls, and they are very difficult, especially Dhaulagiri." When Tomaz flew home from Dhaulagiri, Messner was among the throng of admirers at the Ljubljana airport. He'd come to Slovenia to congratulate the young man who was leading climbing back to its essence.

"The climbs Tomaz has done in the Himalayas in the last five years have set an entirely new standard for danger combined with difficulty—and probably danger before the difficulty," echoes Ed Webster, 46, whose 1988 four-man ascent of Everest's east face was as audacious in its day as Dhaulagiri.

"It's almost a shame when one person alone raises the bar so high, because people might classify him in the freaky, sci-fi category," says American climber Mark Twight, 40, who specializes in extreme alpine ascents. "Dhaulagiri—I don't think anyone considered going up it by himself. Climbers are not prepared for that kind of difficulty, in that length of time, in those conditions. The great evolutionary steps in climbing take place because of people expanding their psychological capacity. We can improve our gear and our training, but it doesn't matter unless you can see with enough clarity what is possible. The rest of us just aren't seeing what he is."

So what exactly does Tomaz see? That's a mystery to everyone. "I've climbed Dhaulagiri," says Buhler. "I know the energy it takes to go up the northeast ridge. The south face—I've never been on it. I've looked down on it. I've climbed with people who have attempted it. My reaction is—OK, you're standing at the bottom, and you launch yourself up that route. Where did that energy come from? Where did he get that push?"

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