On Top Of The World.

Reinhold Messner, an Italian, has had more highs than any other mountain climber, having reached the top first of all the world's 8000 metre-plus peaks in the Himalayas and the Karakoram. He accomplished it between 1970 and 1986, without tank oxygen. And quickly, lightweight alpine style without high altitude camps. However, Messner had made his 1970 debut in the Himalaya with a German expedition led by Karl Herligkoffer, on Nanga Parbat in the Karakoram Range, Pakistan. Reinhold and his brother Gunther reached the summit, after climbing the Rupal Face, but Gunther died on the Diamir Face descent. Reinhold returned to Nanga Parbat the following year trying to find Gunther's body, but was unsuccessful in that and his summit bid. As if to get even, Messner made a solo ascent of Nanga Parbat seven years later. Growing in confidence, Messner with Sher Khan and Nazir Sabir climbed Gasherbrum II and Broad Peak in 1982, one after the other. Reinhold had also summited Kangchenjunga earlier that pinnacle year. With his friend Peter Habeler, Messner climbed Mt. Everest alpine style in 1978 without using bottled oxygen, though linking up with an Austrian team at one camp. Messner went one better two years later on his solo ascent of Everest in the monsoon season, another 'first'. K2 is the world's second highest mountain, but the hardest to climb. It soars 28,251 feet in solitary splendour in the Karakoram, Pakistan and China. Messner was part of a six-man expedition to K2. The other climbers failed, but he reached the summit of the savage mountain with Michael Dacher. Messner trained like an athlete before his climbs and got acclimatized to the thin air at altitude gradually so that he couldbreathe in the Death Zone at 25,000 feet and higher, nearing the top of the world. (Reinhold Messner b.1944) . - 8-11 August,2019.,