Carlos Carsolio and his subtle greatness
By Paul Roberts

In the record book for high-altitude mountaineering, Carlos Carsolio may soon need his own category.

The 33-year-old Mexican climber has bagged 13 of the planet's 14 tallest peaks, without using supplemental oxygen. He's a specialist in the "alpine style"--moving fast and light with no fixed ropes and at most only a single climbing partner, or alone. He has successfully soloed seven of the world's biggest mountains.

This March, Carsolio is heading back to the Himalayas for the 26,780-foot Manaslu, which, if he succeeds, will make him the first Mexican climber--and only the fourth in the world--to have done all 14 ochomilistas, or 8,000-meter-plus peaks.

"Yes," concedes Carsolio, taking a break from preparations at his mountain home near Mexico City. "I'm very excited."

Friendly, humorous, and almost painfully modest, the 5-foot-8-inch, 165-pound Carsolio has quietly become a giant among the new generation of climbers. Only three other climbers--Italian Reinhold Messner, Jerzy Kukuczka of Poland, and Swiss Erhard Loretan--are members of the "complete" 8,000-meter club, and Carsolio would be the youngest initiate.

As impressive is his success in climbing without supplemental oxygen, a self-imposed handicap that transforms already difficult ascents into almost unimaginable tests of physical and mental will.

"Basically, Carlos is strong as a bull," says Seattle climber Ed Viesturs, another high-altitude specialist who partnered with Carsolio on Pakistan's 26,360-foot (8,035-meter) Gasherbrum II last July. "He has incredible endurance, which makes him perfect for this kind of climbing. He just goes and goes and goes."

Manaslu will demand such stamina. This is Carsolio's second try on the difficult, rarely climbed summit, and, weather permitting, he'll do it alpine style, with just one partner, his brother Alfredo.

Such an approach marks Carsolio as something of an anachronism. In this post-Messner era, large expeditions, with multiple high camps linked by fixed ropes, are the norm among big-mountain specialists. But Carsolio is a confessed romantic. He admires the solo pioneers of the past, regards climbing as "adventure," and has little time for the risk-adverse sensibility of the new "sport" climbing. "Sport climbing is very safe,'' he acknowledges. "But it's also only a sport."

Climbing came early to Carsolio. Both parents were avid hikers and his father climbed the Mexican volcanoes, South America's Aconcagua, and in the Alps. At age 8, Carsolio, the eldest of seven children, took up rock climbing on the cliffs around Mexico City (his birthplace), gradually moving up through the volcanoes to big-wall climbing, which remains his preferred arena.

"We didn't know all the techniques they were developing in Yosemite," Carsolio recalls. "I climbed with boots, pitons, old ropes, and a Tyrolean hat. It was very romantic. Then my friends came back from Yosemite with the new training and shoes and chalk and knots. It was still romantic, but it was different."

Carsolio traveled to Yosemite in 1981, and climbed throughout the Rockies for several years. In 1985, he followed Messner's tough route up the south face of 22,835-foot Aconcagua in the Andes. That same year, he made his first trip to the Himalayas, putting in a new route on the south face of 26,666-foot (8,125-meter) Nanga Parbat, the biggest wall in the world, and Carsolio's first ochomilista.

On Nanga Parbat, Carsolio teamed up with and befriended Kukuczka, the Polish legend and a man whom Carsolio regards as the ''best Himalayan hard climber in the world--always trying a new route on a hard face." Carsolio and Kukuczka climbed together for four years.

Yet as with so many mountaineering partnerships, this one was short-lived. In spring, 1989, while Carsolio was making his first bid for Everest, Kukuczka took a fatal fall from the unclimbed south face of nearby Lhotse.

It was one of Carsolio's darkest moments and one that, unfortunately, he has been forced to endure repeatedly. Five mountaineering friends died in an avalanche during that same Everest trip. In 1992, when Carsolio soloed Nepal's 28,168-foot (8,586-meter) Kanchenjunga, top Polish climber Wanda Rutkiewecz was lost on the mountain. In all, he has lost nine friends in the mountains. "Sometimes, you're too sad even to continue," he says.

Carsolio himself nearly died on his first attempt of Manaslu, in 1986. Going alpine style with Kukuczka, Carsolio had blasted a new route, reached the smaller east summit, then, just two hours from the prize, was overcome by severe frostbite. Exhausted, pumped full of drugs to keep blood flowing to his failing extremities, Carsolio was too spaced-out to climb and very close to his physical limits. He got home with all his fingers and toes, but required grafts of skin from his legs to repair his hands and, more importantly, lost some of his resistance to temperature. "Now," he says, "I have to be extremely careful about the cold."

Remarkably, Carsolio's appetite for altitude wasn't dulled. The following year, he climbed another of the Big 14--the 26,403-foot (8,048-meter) Shisha Pangma in the Himalayas, then followed that with a steady string of 8,000-meter-plus successes.

Between 1992 and 1995, Carsolio recorded a series of solo feats, many of them done at unusually high speed and involving new routes. In 1994, he traveled from base camp to the summit of Nepal's 27,922-foot (8,511-meter) Lhotse in 23 hours and 50 minutes.

And last year, Carsolio knocked down four big ones--26,544-foot (8,091-meter) Annapurna; 26,793-foot (8,167-meter) Dhaulagiri; 26,360-foot (8,035-meter) Gasherbrum II; and 26,469-foot (8,068-meter) Hidden Peak.

But Carsolio says his best climb, in terms of pure adventure, was a 1994 conquest of Pakistan's 26,400-foot (8,047-meter) Broad Peak, when he became only the fifth climber in history to solo a new route on an 8,000-meter mountain. "It was very hard," Carsolio says. "My route was on the west face, a wall [of] steep rock and ice. It was the most satisfying climb."

Carsolio, with a wife, Elsa, and a 2-year-old daughter and a 6-month-old son, hopes for a slightly less arduous experience on Manaslu. Although he and brother Alfredo (who holds the speed record for an unsupported ascent of Aconcagua) plan to tackle Manaslu alpine style, they're taking the traditional route, and will fix ropes if the route looks perilous.

Even so, Manaslu isn't likely to give Carsolio his prize without a fight. The main glacier is complex, and will require careful navigation. "It's not a [highly] technical route," he says, but "it's a long glacier, so you really have to watch for avalanches." As well, the summit region is very exposed, meaning Carsolio will likely find strong winds and bitter cold.

Focused so intently on completing the Big 14, Carsolio doesn't appear to have given much thought to his long-term plans. With the major mountains done--and with a wife and young children at home--he could easily retire a hero, without the slightest harm to his reputation (or his drawing power--the Manaslu trip has big-name sponsors, including Mexico's Televisa, Pepsi, Fuji, Ciba, Scott, and Lanix.)

But Carsolio, for all his lack of bravado, is still very clearly in love with the mountains, and with the adventure they hold. "I would like to climb always," he says. "Maybe easier climbs, but hopefully, even in my old age, I'll still be going to the mountains."