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I was born in 1956, right in the middle of mountaineering’s magical decade. A period of over ten years in which, one after the other all the 8,000-meter peaks (26,249 ft) on the Earth were being conquered.
Mountaineering had already come about over two centuries before in France, with the conquest of Mont Blanc, the great snowy alpine mountain. After that first great epic achievement and during all of the 19th century, the efforts of mountain enthusiasts had centered on the rest of the Alp’s peaks. One after the other they were all conquered, from the easiest to the most difficult, and after a brief lapse in which the ascents shifted to the volcanoes of South America, the Himalayas appeared on the horizon of the most daring mountaineers.
I of course, didn’t know any of this. However, what is true is that in my hometown Vitoria, and in all of Álava in general, a certain fondness for being in the mountains had always existed. Although here, it must be said, the mountains are green hills full of perretxikos (a type of mushroom found in Basque Country), sheep, and oak trees.
In the Himalayas, during the first fifty years of the 20th century, numerous European expeditions and a few American ones had strived to reach the peak of one of the fourteen highest mountains on the planet. Many men died in the attempt. And not one of the expeditions achieved their goal. However, in that magical decade of the 50s everything would change radically.
In 1950, six years before I was born, a French expedition, lead by Maurice Herzog, topped Annapurna, possibly the most dangerous of all the 8,000-meter peaks. At that time it was the first mountain over 8,000m to be conquered by man. The conquest of those 8,078 m (26,502 ft) of the enormous Nepali summit would come to mark a before and after for mountain climbing.
Yet since at the time I wasn’t even born, I was naturally oblivious to all this. Or could it have been that destiny was already looking for me among the stars and that my fate was already determined?
In 1953, exactly fifty years ago, the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa Tensing Norgay conquered Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth, a feat that immediately led to the conquest the rest of the 8,000-meter peaks. The “Killer Mountain” Nanga Parbat followed, peaked during a solo expedition by the Austrian climber Hermann Buhl, without a doubt mountain climbing’s greatest feat.
I was born into a family with no mountaineering background; although I think that in those days, no one around here had mountaineers in the family. However, my father loved to put on his boots and head out to the mountain for perretxikos, and I imagine that when I was born he immediately thought of me as a future companion on his gastronomical outings.
As I’ve already said, I was born in 1956, a special year in the mountains because that summer two Italians, Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli, would top the most difficult mountain of all: the mythic K2. They opened the doors to what still was the most difficult. If K2 had been conquered, one after the other the remaining mountains would be climbed. In fact, during the following eight years, all the remaining 8,000-meter peaks were ascended, some on the first attempt. The last of them, Shisha Pangma, was achieved by a Chinese expedition in 1964.
Back then, at the age of eight, I was a strong kid who would rather accompany my father through a muddy grove of beechwood than stay in a schoolyard to play with friends. Although, of course, I still hadn’t really discovered the mountains. I was always a restless kid with a need to burn calories. Since I knew absolutely nothing about what I’ve mentioned before –neither the history of the great mountains nor of their being conquered– it was in the gym where I began to let out my energy. Over the years I became a pretty good gymnast. At fourteen I had strong arms and also enjoyed practicing my balance in precarious positions. Somehow I found a rival on the vault and the rings to exercise with, and it seemed to me that this somehow compensated for my lack of interest in books.
My older brother used to go climbing in the cliffs in Eguino once in a while, and one day, I can’t even remember why, I decided to go with him. On that hot day, figuring I would pass some time, my life changed forever. I couldn’t believe the incredible acrobatics –which is what it seemed like to me– being performed by a group of my brother’s friends, and suddenly I discovered a world of limitless adventure and risk. The mountains surrounding my city had always been a familiar sight; suddenly they were magically transformed into dreams. The Aitzgorri, Anboto, Gorbea came to life and suddenly became an obsession during the entire week. From Monday to Friday I counted the days until I could grab my boots and water bottle, meet up with some friends and set off to conquer the mountains.
At that time, I also met some of the mountain climbers who were the reference points of Basque mountaineering and I strove to climb as they did, to learn how to perform their steps and of course, to get them to notice me; something which surely they never did.
The person who did notice me –well, really we noticed each other– was Atxo Apellaniz who, although a year or two older than me, shared my extreme enthusiasm for the mountains and above all for climbing. We began climbing together, at all hours, everyday that we could, and in just a couple of years we acquired a good technique to add to our youthful strength. In a few seasons we shot ahead and shocked the group’s oldest members.
Soon the mountains of “Euskadi”1 seemed small to us and we began climbing in the Pyrenees; while still adolescents we climbed difficult rocky routes such as the needles of Ansabère and the spur of Gallinero in Ordesa. Almost without realizing it, we were becoming the most popular pair of mountain climbers of early Basque mountaineering. We were among the youngest to climb the west face of Naranjo de Bulnes, which we considered to be a great feat and consequently began looking higher. On the maps that we bought the only thing we saw were mountains, gray mountain ranges that separated entire countries and continents. The Pyrenees between Spain and France; the Alps between France, Switzerland and above all Italy; the Andes mainly between Chile and Argentina; and the Himalayas, the most inaccessible of all ranges, which cut the great continent of Asia in two.
In the mid-1970s the big news suddenly arrived. A Basque expedition that would attempt to climb Everest was being organized. I didn’t wait one second to find it on the map. Mount Everest, between Nepal and China, 8,848m (29,280 ft) high: the highest mountain in the world. At the age of nineteen, I couldn’t dream of thinking of participating in the selected group, but nevertheless, I couldn’t stop dreaming…
Naturally, I didn’t form part of the group.
The Basque expedition did a tremendous job, but they didn’t reach the summit. Without a doubt, from the same moment in which they began to head back, its members began preparing the next attempt, which as everyone knows, would be successful, with Martín Zabaleta’s ascent to the peak, repeating Hillary’s route through the southeast arête. Between these two expeditions, I continued practicing each time more ambitiously. I didn’t make it in time for the second expedition to Everest either; and on that second expedition I was especially regretful because at that time I was already aspiring to the great summits of the Himalayas.
In fact, my baptism of fire with the Asian giants came about two years later with my attempt at conquering Kangchuntse, a 7,000m (22,965 ft) mountain very close to Malaku. For two weeks we fought tremendous glaciers, the cold and the altitude; although we didn’t reach the longed for summit, I enjoyed all of the difficulties and knew that I wanted to climb mountains, the higher the better.
The following winter we reached the summit of Aconcagua, the highest in America and all the Southern Hemisphere. It was the fifth winter ascent of the Centinela de Piedra (“The Stone Guard”). Somehow we had entered into the statistics of merit-earning ascents. A year later it was McKinley’s turn, which although almost 1000m (3,280 ft) lower than its neighbor to the south, is terribly cold and definitely more demanding, covered as it is by the largest glaciers on Earth. We were finally prepared to make the great leap forward: an expedition that was being prepared in Álava was at last going to put me before one of the great mountains.
THE GREAT HEIGHTS
It was 1985. I had turned 29, the perfect age for confronting great challenges; an age in which maximum strength and a refined technique combine along with a more than sufficient psychological equilibrium: the perfect cocktail. In addition, the chosen mountain wasn’t even close to being the most difficult although it was terribly high. None other than Cho Oyu, with its 8201m (26,906 ft) the sixth highest peak on Earth.
The expedition couldn’t have started worse. The chosen route, starting at Namche Bazar and crossing the Nangpa La mountain pass (all territory belonging to the Kingdom of Nepal) later entered into Tibet –for years occupied by China– and ended by going up the mountain following the line that divides the two countries. Our permit, issued by the Nepali government, wasn’t valid for Tibet, and the most surprising part was that a group of Chinese mountain climbers were on the mountain and did not want to share the route with anybody. We went a few days without being able to continue, each of us trying to control our nerves in our own way.
But everything would change once the Chinese reached the summit. They quickly dropped out of sight and the “Turkish Goddess” was left entirely at our disposition. Eight of the members of our expedition, among them myself, reached the summit. It was my first 8,000-meter peak; and it confirmed that I was able to endure the lack of oxygen, the biggest obstacle of the greatest heights.
This success only served to increase my enthusiasm and my longing for new challenges. At the time, each expedition required a lot of money from each member. It required taking many days off from work; numberless meetings to find a sponsor, support, knocking on doors, many of which would shut without even a minimum of understanding, sometimes it was different. On other occasions, a company would get involved and provide money in exchange for pictures with the businesses logo. The unexpected help would encourage us to think about another expedition.
That’s just how the one in 1987’s came about. This time it was Pakistan’s Hidden Peak, another of the fourteen highest mountains in the world.
There are only fourteen mountains on Earth with an elevation greater than 8,000 meters (26,249 ft). Nine of them are found in the Himalayas, between Nepal to the south and Chinese-occupied Tibet to the north.
Mount Everest, Lhotse, Makalu and Cho Oyu form part of the line that divides Nepal and Tibet. Kangchenjunga is situated between Nepal to the west and India to the east. Annapurna, Dhaulagiri and Manaslu are entirely in Nepali territory, and the Shisha Pangma, the only 8,000-meter mountain entirely in China.
Karakoram, another gigantic range a little more to the west between Pakistan and China, contains the other five. They are K2, Broad Peak, Hidden Peak, Gasherbrum II and Nanga Parbat.
Our expedition to Hidden Peak didn’t begin any better than the previous one; all kinds of things happened beginning with being witnesses to a bombing from neighboring Indian Kashmir, and to the fall and, of course, death of four mountaineers close to the route that we had chosen. It was too much for the group and we decided that we would retreat. But Atxo and I, feeling strong and acclimated, couldn’t bring ourselves to abandon the endeavor. The effort involved in putting together an expedition was too much to just calmly leave empty handed. As it turned out, an expedition had just reached the summit of the neighboring G-II, and the route seemed prepared. We didn’t think twice. In a quick ascent, without a permit, in a manner similar to alpine climbing, the two of us rushed toward the Gasherbum II peak, thus climbing our second 8,000m mountain. It was incredible, but we were beginning to belong to the best.
The history of the 8,000-meter peaks weren’t all fights for the summits. In fact, a generation of great mountaineers, especially right after the seventies, were more intent on how they would do it rather than reaching the summit itself. The Boningtons, Haston, Scott and above all, the Tyrolese Reinhold Messner, transformed elite mountain climbing into something that was much more than a sport. The route itself and the means by which it was done became more important. The peak almost became the least important factor. That’s how really difficult routes opened up, like the Rupal wall in Naga Parbat or the southwest face of Everest. Or the most difficult of all, the ascent of Everest without oxygen in 1978, achieved by Peter Habeler and Messner, and to top it off, Messner’s solo repetition, without oxygen and in the middle of monsoon, to the highest summit on Earth.
The fact is that the fever to do something difficult hit me. I was feeling stronger than ever and daring to do anything; for several years not only did I choose immense mountains, I also faced the most challenging routes with a group of innovative fellow mountaineers. Those were surely my best climbs, and the years during which I lived what had already become my passion and way of life to the limit.
During a couple of seasons I ascended the northern sides of the terrible Kangchenjunga twice. I was able to make it to just 100m (328 ft) from the summit through the formidable West Basin of Makalu, one of the most challenging and acrobatic routes of the Himalayas. I climbed to 8,300m (27,230 ft) on the southwestern face of Everest, almost to the end of the severe British route. But on none of the four occasions did I manage to reach the summit…
I realized two things. Or better yet, three. I wanted to spend my life climbing mountains. To do that, I needed money; and each time it was more difficult getting it, because there were more and more mountaineers. And for the promoters and institutions, the summit is what counts. In other words, if I wanted to live climbing mountains, I’d have to do peaks, the more sensational, the better.
In 1992, I climbed the beautiful Kinshofer route to Nanga Parbat; the third and last route I made with Atxo. That’s when I broke the chain of great expeditions without reaching summits, and began immediately to think of Everest. But on this occasion there would be no strange routes or added difficulties. I needed a big success, at least to the eyes of the public. And the way to achieve it was with the “Roof of the World”. And if I had to use oxygen to do it, I would.
The approach, therefore, was rather simple: it was either the summit or the summit. There would be no compromise. The expedition from Álava proposed a small modification to the original English route. Not much more difficult, but in exchange it was quite solitary. The ascent followed its course with the normalcy one would expect from a select group of expert climbers through a difficult but technically accessible route. However, in the greatest mountains one can never exactly be calm; and much less when, with or without the peak, you turn your feet around and begin the descent. That’s when all the physical and psychological exhaustion comes over you, those numerous accumulated hours of fatigue, and on mountains like Everest the lack of oxygen really begins to take its toll.
As I came down, worn out but content from reaching the summit, Antonio Miranda, who was descending with Atxo after having reached the South peak, slipped and fell, sliding down the enormous West Comba down more than a 2000m (6,560 ft) difference in altitude. The death of Antonio branded that mountain for me; and I knew that I would have to return to Everest for two reasons: to repeat it without oxygen and to compensate for an experience that was excessively cruel.
In spite of everything, Mount Everest became the expected impetus for me. A year later, together with the Iñurrategi brothers, I faced K2. After the tallest of the 8,000-meter peaks, I went head on with the most difficult. If everything on Everest had gone wrong, the expedition to the Pakistani giant was going to be just the opposite. In a little over a month, on an ascent whose upper half was similar to alpine climbing, we were going to reach the splendid peak of Karakoram, and in addition we would do it completing the route devised, but not reached by Tomo Cesen, by which we would become the first men to reach K2 by this route… “The Basque Route”.
At that time, in the winter of 1992, at the age of thirty-eight and with five 8,000-meter peaks in my backpack, I began to think about the possibility of all fourteen. In theory there were several obstacles. The first, the economic one, was not going to be an insurmountable problem given the latest successful outcomes. More objectively, I still had nine peaks to go and couldn’t aspire to all fourteen at the rate of one peak per year. I would have to pick up the pace. The third, which only I and a few friends of mine knew about, was that in order to climb all the great peaks, I would have to go back to Kangchenjunga, which didn’t amuse me at all. I don’t believe in witches or horoscopes or evils of any kind, but at that time I had the sensation that Kangchenjunga was waiting for me…
At any rate, thinking too much about that great snowy mountain wasn’t worth it. In 1995 I’d have to resolve the question of time. If in one year I could get a jump on my career, I would get to the fourteen 8,000-meter peaks; if that weren’t the case, I would forget it. 1995 became a key year; and the challenge was in keeping with what I hoped for that season.
I planned to attempt going up against three 8,000-meter mountains in one year. Very few people had done this, and if I accomplished it, I would seriously plan to conquer the rest. The 8,000m peaks of Nepal are climbed in spring or fall. May and October are usually the months that provide the most ideal conditions climatologically, when 99% of ascents take place. However, in Pakistan, summer is the season with the most possibilities. With this in mind, the strategy I chose was to try and link together three consecutive 8,000-meter peaks, in spring, summer and winter.
In the spring of 1995 I returned to Makalu, on the one hand to reminisce my initial stages on the neighboring Kangchuntse, and on the other, my experience in the West Basin. This time I would take Makalu La’s normal route, the one followed by the French in the first ascent. It was a tough mountain that caused us to back step on two occasions, and only after the third attempt did we manage to set foot on the 8,485m (27,837 ft) summit, the fifth tallest on Earth.
In the summer, I took advantage of the excellent state of acclimatization that I’d acquired in Nepal to make a quick climb up Broad Peak, the K2-eclipsed neighbor. In less than a month the expedition was completed, and I had now finished half of the fourteen 8,000-meter peaks. I was in Vitoria to celebrate the holidays, much sooner than I had expected, and just two weeks later I got back on a plane and landed once again in Katmandu, which by that time had become my second home.
The objective was none other than the neighboring giant of Mount Everest, Lhoste, which with its 8,519 meters (27,949 ft) is the fourth largest mountain on Earth. The members of the expedition were Juan Vallejo, who from that year on would become my main team partner, and once again “the Iñurras” (short for Iñurrategi).
Félix and Alberto went up a few days before us, becoming the first mountaineers from Spain to climb Lhotse. Juan and I would follow them in a couple of days utilizing their tent and information, and therefore brushing off the rumors of a supposed rivalry between “the Iñurras” and I that had begun to circulate.
Such a rivalry never existed. A mutual admiration and friendship had grown between Felix, Alberto and I. Each one of us did our own thing when climbing 8,000-meter peaks, but there was never even a thought as to us being rivals. The rival was always the mountain. "KANGCH" AWAITED ME
The best and most definitive test of that would come the following year. I had already thrown myself at all of them, and “Kangch” (Kangchenjunga) crossed right through the middle. The sooner I got it out of the way, the better.
I found myself once again confronting the terrible north face, confronting old ghosts and the sensation that for better or worse, it would be the last time. And it nearly got to the point of being “for the worst”. I will never forget the most difficult moments of my life on the mountain. I reached the summit exhausted. An enormous depression came over me and I found myself to be almost without strength before one of the most delicate descents of the Himalayas. After scaling down the crested peak, I got stuck on the first long rappel and could neither advance nor retreat. I think it was there where I used up the last of my energy and a large part of my morale. To top it off, the weather had gone from an acceptable morning to an afternoon snowstorm through which I could just barely see a few meters ahead. Wind, ice, an endless abyss of vertigo and an unequipped route. Alberto Iñurrategi went guessing his way down. I did what I could in the middle and Felix secured the back. The suffering was reaching unbearable levels and I had a feeling as never before that life was slipping away from me. The dammed “Kangch” was going to get its way. At some point, tired of the futile suffering, I told Felix to leave me there. I surrendered, although this most certainly meant death. And Felix Iñurrategi didn’t want to let me die…
“The three of us are all going down…!”
From then on, everything would have to be easier. I had climbed the Big Five; the road was prepared.
The fourteen 8,000-meter peaks can be divided into two groups: the ones belonging to the “big” five with heights of almost 8,500m (27,887 ft) or more, and the “small” ones from the 8,201m (26,906 ft) Cho Oyu to the Shisha Pangma. If you consider that on the last day of the summit it is possible to cover approximately 600 to 900 meters (1,968 to 2952 ft) this means that with the biggest 8,000-meter peaks the last base is at an altitude of 8,000m, meanwhile with the small ones its not much higher than 7,000. In terms of weakness, oxygen, risk and summit probabilities this is quite a difference.
It wasn’t an easy road. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t exempt of dangers either. In fact, on my first attempt at climbing Shisha, “Zulu” (José Luis Zuloaga) lost his life. He had been another one of my greatest partners. The one who always chose the most original routes, who always dreamed of the most esthetic routes, and he would have to remain there…
Dhaulagiri, Shisha Pangma, Manaslu and Hidden Peak were peaked one after the other, and I had to face the ultimate challenge: Annapurna.
With its 8,078m (26,502 ft), Annapurna was the first 8,000-meter peak to be conquered and fifty years later, the one with the lowest number of ascents. It wasn’t an excessively technical mountain, but it was terribly exposed to avalanches, crevices and storms.
Out of sheer luck, the 50th anniversary of the French expedition practically coincided with my ascent, and I had the honor of meeting Maurice Herzog: the only surviving member of the mythic French expedition and the first man to set foot on an 8,000-meter peak. He was the hero of all those who aspire to the great mountains and a model for millions of young Europeans throughout the 20th century.
Annapurna became the end of my race. In the spring of 1999, I managed to summit once again with Juan Vallejo and Ferran Latorre, and I believed that I had achieved my lifelong objective. I could now stop climbing. I had become the sixth man to reach all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks, and I had entered into the history of alpinism. I could have begun living off my reputation, conferences or commercializing the mountains; but a few friends of mine and I knew that the race was not over.
LIFE GOES ON
Istill had to go back to Everest and reach its 8,848m (29,028 ft) without the use of bottled oxygen. I would have gone the rest of my life wondering how the peak would have gone without those bottles of gas.
I made my attempt in the spring of 2000 with the Al filo de lo imposible (the Spanish public television program “On the Edge of the Impossible”) expedition, but didn’t manage to reach the Second Step. I had to return again the following year. In May of 2001, suffering yet again the extreme harshness of climbing up to such extreme heights, breathing the thinning air, I was at last able to get pass the mythical Second Step, and following the trail of Juan Vallejo, I reached the summit of the Earth without oxygen.
Juanito Oiarzabal |
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