The record taken from the legend Reinhold Messner or how technology rewrites the history of mountaineering

The Italian Reinhold Messner is considered by many experts – by almost everyone – as the best mountaineer in history. In 1986 he was the first to complete the 14 eight-thousanders without artificial oxygen and before and after he climbed the unclimbable, opened countless routes, explored the Earth, like this, in capital letters. The Everest, the Annapurna, the Gasherbrum I… There are paths towards the roofs of the planet that he created, but there are also paths in Antarctica or the Gobi.. In recent times, now retired – today he is 79 years old – he has been the protagonist of a thousand controversies, some even against his former teammates, but there has never been any doubt about his figure.. Until this week. Messner ya no es Messner. Or so the Guinness Book now says.

As recently published by the famous record archive, Messner never reached the summit of Annapurna in 1985 and, therefore, the following year, in 1986, he did not become the first to climb the 14 eight-thousanders without using cylinders.. Nor were those who followed him, the Swiss Erhard Loretan (1995) and the Spaniards Juanito Oiarzabal (1999) and Alberto Iñurrategi (2002), if not the fifth on the list so far, the American Ed Viesturs, who achieved it in 2005. History, rewritten. Mountaineering, in the air. What happened?

Advancement, technology. Until not long ago, to certify a promotion it was enough to visit Elizabeth Hawley, legendary journalist, creator of The Himalayan Database, and show her proof of the feat.. It was rigorous, requiring photographs or videos, testimonies from other climbers, answers to very specific questions, but it lacked support. His work was artisanal, solitary. That is why with the passage of time, and especially with the appearance of the Internet, it began to lose prominence to the benefit of the 8000ers website, its creator, Eberhard Jurgalski, and his team of researchers.. When Hawley passed away in 2018, in fact, it was already 8000ers who confirmed the summits, the achievements, the records. And 8000ers wanted to take rigor in the mountains to another level.

The peaks are not the peaks

In 2019, with high-resolution satellite images and the help of the German Aerospace Center, Jurgalski and his assistants demonstrated that in eight-thousanders such as Manaslu, Annapurna or Dhaulagiri, the majority of climbers never reached the true summit: they only stayed close.. According to their work, only three men, Viesturs, the Finnish Veikka Gustafsson and the Nepalese Nirmal Purja, completed the 14 eight-thousanders, the first two without artificial oxygen.. According to their work, Oiarzabal and Iñurrategi stayed on a secondary summit of Manaslu, they did not step on the summit. And according to his work, Messner, the legendary Messner, was five meters short of actually summiting Annapurna.. For all these reasons, last year 8000ers rewrote their list and asked the Guinness Book of Records to do the same..

Until this week, this investigation had raised a certain stir, but the majority of those affected refused to give it importance.. After all, there have always been debates of this nature in high places.. But after the Guiness Book's decision on Messner, a reference among references, Himalayanism raised its voice.

“The goal is not the top, it is the path. My mountaineering does not know about records!” Messner exclaimed upon learning of the withdrawal of his record with an attached photo on his social networks in which he is seen climbing a huge ice wall on his expedition to Annapurna in 1985.. “Last statement on records in mountaineering! There are none! There will never be any in mountaineering! I appreciate all mountaineers, every mountaineer who has carried out their experiences on the great walls of this world,” ended and many of his professional colleagues accompanied him in his speech. Even Viesturs himself, now elevated, rejected the change: “Messner was the first, that recognition must be maintained. “He led the way and other climbers, like me, followed in his footsteps.”

The debate for mountaineering is now complex. He can walk away from 8000ers and the Guinness Book of Records, but that would leave him without notaries to certify future exploits or he can, as Jurgalski's own researchers propose, reach an agreement. To return the best in history to their place, we would have to forget the idea of the existence of a single summit, an exact point where the mountain ends, and accept that there is an approximate summit area. Delimiting this, especially in complex mountains such as Manaslu or Annapurna, will be complicated, but it will be more difficult to accept that Reinhold Messner, considered by many experts – by almost everyone – as the best mountaineer in history, does not really know all the roofs of the mountain. world.