ML141210
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Subject: (Interview). Subtitle: Reinhold Messner. Timecode In: 00:00:08. Timecode out: 00:45:39. Notes: Mountaineering. Equipment Notes: Stereo=1; Dual-Channel Mono. NPR/NGS RADIO EXPEDITIONS Show: Geographic Century Log of DAT #: Reinhold Messner Interview Date: 6/23/99 PB :07 You know, I think I wanted to start off by talking to you about technique, because it seems, I read your book, and it seems like so much of what you accomplished in mountain climbing had to do with the style in which you accomplished it. And somewhere I read, you used the phrase ¿climbing by fair means.¿ I wonder if you could tell us. What do you mean by that? RM :35 Climbing by fair means in my view is going up the mountains with the own power, with the own will power especially, and with quite no technical equipment. Clear, we need shoes, we need a rock sock, we need sometimes a rope, but I¿m not using bolts, for example, in rock climbing. I¿m not using oxygen bottles for high altitude climbing, and this sentence, ¿by fair means,¿ was invented just more than hundred years ago by the British climbers, especially by Mammary, Albert Frederick Mammary, who tried to do the most difficult climbs in the Alps with no guides, with no technical equipment, and on the end he tried to climb an 8000 meter peak in the Himalayas, Nangapabot, but there he failed and he died in this expedition in 1895. Afterwards, in the climbing history, we see that the evolution, especially an evolution on hardware, on equipment, but less an evolution in the mind of the people. And only in the last 20 years a young generation of climbers, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, tried to go back to this old-fashioned approach to the mountains, this ¿by fair means,¿ and I think this is the only way out of that line in climbing that, because if you use anything, what you have today for climbing mountains, helicopters, for example, or cable cars or bolts, you can do everything. It¿s easy to go on Everest by a special helicopter. Men were able to reach the moon, so it¿s easy to reach any summit on this world, but if we leave about most of the technical equipment, especially hardware, climbing is still difficult, sometimes impossible. PB 2:40 Well, I mean, you¿re one of the key people in bringing this, I didn¿t realize it was an old style that you¿re bringing back. And I guess some people look at your 1975 climb of Gashebrem 1 as, as a quantum leap, a quantum leap in climbing- fast, little equipment, no oxygen. I wonder when you went on that ascent, I mean, did you feel like you were breaking new ground at that point in a style of climbing? RM 3:22 Yes, I knew when I started it would be successful. We would do a new step in mountaineering. Because this style was not possible before, nobody tried in this style a high peak before, Peter Haveler and myself went to Gashebrem 1, called also Hidden Peak in ¿75. The mountain was climbed only once by Americans in ¿58. They used a lot of equipment, also oxygen bottles. And it was considered a difficult mountain. Peter and I went on a much more difficult way, on a much more difficult route, and we didn¿t bring any high altitude camps, no fixed ropes, no oxygen bottles, and especially, no local help, no local porters. We approached the mountain with a little bit of fear because we did not know if we would be able to do it or not. But trying, and having a little bit of luck, good weather, we went up in three days only after no preparation. Back in two days and so we opened a new door to the Himalayan climbings. Especially because this style was much more cheap, cheaper, than the Himalayan style, the heavy style on the 8000 meter peaks, and especially, it told us in a new dimension of adventuring. Of being afraid, of feeling the loneliness high up there. Probably you know that today on Everest there are sometimes 4, 5... (Notes truncated)
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- 25 Aug 2009 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 25 Aug 2009 - Ben Brotman
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- 25 Aug 2009 - Ben Brotman