Along with Reinhold Messner, Austrian climber Peter Habeler was the first man to summit Everest without oxygen a feat few thought possible. Ahead of his appearance at the Dundee Mountain Film Festival on Saturday, Jack McKeown catches up with the great mountaineer who is still climbing as he approaches his 70th birthday.
Although Peter Habeler turns 70 next year, he’s still climbing mountains that talented climbers a third of his age wouldn’t dare attempt.
”I had a ski and mountaineering school for many years but I sold that and I spend my days climbing now,” he says. “I am a bit slower than I once was but I’m the same weight as I was when I was 21 about 61 or 62kgs. I do not have a belly and I’m not in any pain, so I can still climb quite well.”
When The Courier catches him, he’s just returned from a weekend climbing in the Dolomites.”There was snow and it was cold but the sun did not stop shining and it was fantastic.”
Peter’s love of climbing began when he was a child growing up in the Austrian ski resort town of Mayrhofen. ”I was unfortunate in that I grew up without a father, but as far as climbing went that was not a big problem because these great mountain guys looked after me.”
Peter began climbing with Reinhold Messner in 1969, after meeting him by chance when they were both climbing in the Dolomites. Just shy of 10 years later in May, 1978 he and Reinhold Messner did what no one thought could be done. They climbed to the peak of Mount Everest without any bottled oxygen.
”Officially it was the biggest thing we did,” he says. ”It was good to be on that mountain with Reinhold and finish a talk that had been going on for years. Can it be done? Is it possible to be alive on top of Everest not using oxygen?
”We were the first to do it, but others had been very high without oxygen. Hillary and Tensing Norgay, Mallory and Irvine. They did not reach the top without oxgyen but they were very high. We were just in the right place on the right day.”
In summiting Everest ”alpine style” without oxygen, carrying your own food, shelter and equipment Messner and Habeler began a revolution in climbing.
”It was not that technically difficult. The only tricky thing was the Hillary Step, which was not in good shape, but that was only 20 metres. So the technical difficulty was zero, less than zero. But the major problem was psychological. It was: can we climb to 8,500 metres, 8,600 metres, 8,700 metres, and finally, 8,800 metres without oxygen. Is that possible?
”As it turns out, it was not that bad. Of course, you get tired, but you get tired on other peaks as well.”
On the ascent, the pair sometimes communicated by drawing in the snow. It’s been reported that Messner drew an ‘up’ arrow, and Peter a ‘down’ arrow, signifying that the one wanted to continue to the top, the other to turn back.
”It’s been interpreted that I wanted to go down but that’s not true at all,” Peter says. ”I would always draw deep lines in the snow so that we could find our way back. It was very misty that day and it would have been easy to turn the wrong way and get in trouble. I was in front on the way down so I had to find the way.”
The two men did not spend long on the top of the world. ”I was there for 15 minutes and Reinhold for about 20 or 22 minutes. I wanted to start down and he wanted to talk into his tape machine.” Peter set a further record by making the descent to the South Col in only an hour.
Reinhold Messner would go on to ascend all 14 ”eight-thousanders” (peaks of over 8,000 metres/26,000 feet) without oxygen, and is today regarded as perhaps the greatest climber in history. After their historic ascent of Everest, however, Peter was content to live a more low-key existence.
“Reinhold did choose another way because he went for all the eight-thousanders. But I was happy to have my feet back on the ground and go home to my family. I had a newborn son who was just a few months old then and this was the most important thing. Reinhold was single, active and very strong, and he went on to climb with other partners, and I’m very happy for him and what he has achieved.”
Peter did summit four other eight-thousanders Cho Oyu, Nanga Parbat, Kangchenjunga and Hidden Peak and in 2000 he returned to Everest. ”That was a very sad trip,” he says. ”I was climbing with a beautiful American lady called Chris Boskoff. I had taken it too lightly and I became unwell and had to go back down before I reached the top. I had a high altitude pulmonary edema.
“A few years later Chris and her climbing partner Charlie Fowler were killed by an avalanche in China. It is the greatest sadness in my life, because she was so young and so beautiful.”
Peter still lives in the town he grew up in. For many years he ran a successful ski and mountaineering school, but he has since sold it and is now retired. He has two sons, aged 30 and 34. ”Neither of my sons are really into climbing but I’m happy about that. To be in the top 20 or 30 in the world is so hard. To be at that level these days, you have to go so far, do so much and take so many risks.”
Peter still keeps in touch with his old climbing buddy Messner. ”We meet up for a glass of wine or a beer now and then. But we don’t talk about our memories, or the old days. We talk about what happened on the mountain today or this week. We talk about the future.”
He also remains passionate about mountaineering, particularly about the plight of porters in Nepal the men who carry huge loads across the Himalayas for tourists and earn a pittance for it.
”My friend and your countryman Doug Scott is at the forefront of a campaign to improve their conditions. They carry weights of up to 120kg on their backs, sleep in places that are totally unsuitable, and don’t have any equipment for the mountains. Sometimes they only weigh 40kg, so they will be carrying three times their own weight all day long.”Peter Habeler is at the Dundee Mountain Film Festival tomorrow (Saturday, November 26) at 9.10pm. See dundeemountainfilm.org.uk for more details.