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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 ways, explored the Earth, well, in capital letters. El Everest, el Annapurna, el Gasherbrum I... to the roofs of the planet there are roads that he created, but there are also roads in Antarctica or in Gobi. In recent times, already retired – today he is 79 years old – he starred in a thousand controversies, some even against his former teammates, but there had never been doubts about his figure. Until this week. Messner is no longer Messner. Or so the Guinness Book now says.

According to 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. Neither 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, through the air. What happened?

The advance, the technology. Until not long ago, to certify a promotion it was enough to visit Elizabeth Hawley, mythical journalist, creator of The Himalayan Database, and show her evidence of the deed. It was rigorous, it demanded 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 web 8000ers, 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 tops

In 2019, with high-resolution satellite imagery and the help of the German Aerospace Center, Jurgalski and his assistants showed that in eight-thousanders like Manaslu, Annapurna or Dhaulagiri most climbers never reached the true summit: they just stayed close. According to his 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 tread the summit. And according to his work, Messner, the legendary Messner, was five meters away from actually crowning Annapurna. For all this, last year 8000ers rewrote its list and called on the Guinness Book of Records to do the same.

Until this week, that investigation had raised some stir, but most of those affected refused to give it importance. After all, there were always debates of this kind at the heights. But after the decision of the Guinness Book about Messner, a reference among the references, Himalayanism raised its voice.

"The goal is not the top, it's the path. My mountaineering knows no records!", exclaimed Messner upon learning of the retirement of his record with a photo attached 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, "he concluded and many of his 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 deeds or he can, as Jurgalski's own researchers propose, reach an agreement. To return the best in history to their site, 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, more 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 all- as the best mountaineer in history, does not really know all the roofs in the world.

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  • Articles Javier Sánchez