Reinhold Messner is 80 – Confrontation as an elixir of life

Extroverted, self-confident, opinionated, sometimes blustering, often polarizing. That’s Reinhold Messner. “I’m a living provocation,” the mountaineering legend once told me in an interview. No wonder he named his latest book, which was published just in time for his 80th birthday today, “Headwind”.

“Overcoming resistance is written into our genes,” writes Messner. “In untouched nature, we have always had to ensure our survival. The instincts developed in the process force us to react to danger under all circumstances, even where people – with bad intentions – want to harm others. My experience tells me that man-made resistance can be more destructive than natural resistance.”

Celebration only with wife

According to Messner, civilization is “now at the mercy of conspiracy theories, hatred and professional disinformation. My problem is that I get lost in cyberspace.” At the same time, the jubilarian himself shares his private life with the public on social networks and in the traditional media. He regularly lets people know how happy he is with his third wife, 44-year-old Diane Messner. On the other hand, he recently made his inheritance dispute with his children public – which many found disconcerting. Messner said he wanted to spend his 80th birthday in a mountain hut, just with his Diane.

Disputes with father, mother mediated

Reinhold Messner learned to argue as a child. He grew up with eight siblings in the South Tyrolean Villnöss Valley near Brixen. His father was a village school teacher and brought up his children with a firm hand, but also passed on his love of the mountains to them. When Reinhold was five years old, his father took him up a three-thousander.

Later, Reinhold Messner rebelled against his authoritarian father. There were frequent arguments, which his mother then settled. Messner studied surveying and, like his father, worked temporarily as a teacher. But then he devoted himself fully to his passion, mountaineering.

Tragedy on Nanga Parbat

In the 1960s, Messner was one of the best rock climbers in the Alps, which ultimately opened the door to the highest mountains in the world for him. His very first attempt as part of a German expedition in 1970 to the 8,125-meter-high Nanga Parbat in Pakistan ended in tragedy after triumph. Together with his younger brother Günther, Reinhold Messner climbed the 4,500-meter-high Rupal Face, one of the highest rock and ice walls in the world, for the first time. Günther Messner died on the descent down the other side of the mountain. The exact circumstances of the drama caused a bitter dispute between Messner and other members of the Nanga Parbat expedition for decades. Reinhold Messner survived with severe frostbite and seven toes had to be amputated.

Everest without bottled oxygen and solo

However, this did not stop him from continuing to go on expeditions. By 1986, Messner had also summited the other 13 eight-thousanders – all without breathing mask, mostly on new routes, in a purist style, in a small team or even solo. He was the first person to stand on the 14 highest mountains in the world. Messner wrote mountaineering history, the list of his milestones is long. The most headlines worldwide he made in 1978 succeeding in the first ascent of Mount Everest without bottled oxygen, which Messner achieved together with Austrian Peter Habeler. “Basically, I just wanted to set an example back then, to make an attempt. I didn’t know how far I would get,” Messner later admitted. “We looked at each other every time we took a break: Are we still in our right minds? Is it still responsible or not?”

In the summer of the same year, he achieved the first solo ascent of an eight-thousander from base camp to the summit on Nanga Parbat. In the summer of 1980, Messner followed this up with a solo ascent of Everest: In the middle of the monsoon, the South Tyrolean climbed over the Tibetan north side to the summit at 8,849 meters, again without bottled oxygen, on a partially new route. For him, it was the “icing on the cake of my career”, as he once told me. To this day, it remains the only real solo ascent of the highest mountain on earth. In 1984, Messner – with Hans Kammerlander – achieved the first eight-thousander double traverse on Gasherbrum I and II in alpine style.

Constantly reinventing himself

Once he had completed his collection of eight-thousanders, the “border crosser”, as Messner likes to call himself, set off on new adventures. He searched for the legendary Yeti in the Himalayas (1988), crossed the Antarctic (1989/1990 with the German Arved Fuchs), Greenland (1993 with his younger brother Hubert) and the Gobi Desert (2004 alone).

Even after the end of his life of extreme adventure, Messner constantly reinvented himself and yet somehow remained the same. Outspoken, controversial, in the public eye – whether as a politician for the Green Party in the European Parliament, as the founder of his six mountain museums in South Tyrol, as a speaker, author or documentary filmmaker. He knew and knows how to market himself. And, incidentally, he is also a gifted storyteller. His adventures have lost none of their value and fascination, even though they took place decades ago. Messner wrote mountaineering history in his heyday. Nobody can take that away from him. That’s why I often ask myself why he isn’t a little more relaxed.

“Headwind makes wings grow”

However, it is unlikely that Reinhold Messner will suddenly become calm and overly harmonious at the age of 80. After all, life would probably be boring for him without any disputes. He has “endured a lot of headwinds, often failed – again and again – but refused to be put off,” writes Messner in his new book. “Critics came and went, others followed me around for the rest of my life, and some still don’t want to admit that it’s also to their credit that I survived. Headwind make wings grow.” Controversy as an elixir of life. Congratulations, Reinhold Messner!