By Dan Balkin
The Air India pilot’s voice awoke him from the restless, twilight sleep passengers experience during flights spanning continents. The announcement said they were now cruising at 29,000 feet. He immediately thought, “29,000 feet – the height of the mountain I will soon be climbing.” Today, although still very perilous to ascend and descend, Mt. Everest is an adventurer’s tourist trap. This, however, was 1978, a time when the world’s highest peak was solely the domain of elite and serious climbers. Who was this man? His name is Peter Habeler. He is now 82 years old, still fit and handsome, and lives in Mayrhofen, Austria. Mayrhofen is a skiing destination and one of the villages that punctuates the scenic Zillertal Valley. At the end of the valley is “Hintertux,” a renowned glacier. Hintertux is open for skiing about 360 days a year. Ironically, it only closes a handful of days in the dead of winter when glacial wind gusts shut down the high-altitude lifts! Peter Habeler started climbing mountains at six years old. Even his strict grammar schoolteachers, knowing that the towering mountain peaks in their native valley were his playground, would smile and indulge him if he fell asleep at his desk.
team, Peter Habeler (right) and Reinhold
Messner inspired and challenged
each other to achieve peak performance.
They went to Nepal to attempt
what had never been done in the history
of the world: Climb Mt. Everest
without the use of oxygen tanks and
descend safely back to base camp.
They are picture here at the Everest
Base Camp. The two persevered,
and they summited. At the peak, they
naturally felt euphoria and a sense of
accomplishment. The mountain men
returned safely and made their way
into history: First climbers to scale
Mt. Everest without oxygen. Why? As
Peter would say: “Because it’s there.”
As a young man, Peter Habeler earned the title “State-Examined” ski instructor in Austria. It is the most prestigious ski instructor certification in the world. There are many daunting skiing tests one must pass to be invited to take the certification program. If one makes the cut, it involves living for three months at the “Bundes-Sport-Heim” (National Sports Home). The on slope and classroom instruction is peerless and even includes staying overnight in a high altitude, hand dug snow cave (a possible survival skill in the vast mountains). Brrr! Skiing, however, was Peter’s side gig – climbing the world’s biggest mountains was his passion.
If one was in the Alps in the late 20th Century, it was not unusual to see ads featuring another famous climber named Reinhold Messner (Mountaineers are celebrities in the Alps). Messner is from Northern Italy, which was part of Austria until after WWI, hence his Germanic name. Like two great athletes on the same team, they inspired and challenged each other to achieve peak performance. On that Air India flight, they were on their way to Nepal to attempt what had never been done in the history of the world: Climb Mt. Everest without the use of oxygen tanks and descend safely back to base camp. In the 1920s, famous British mountaineers George Mallory and Sandy Irvine were drawn to Mt. Everest. They also ascended without the use of oxygen and were last seen trudging toward the peak before a mist enveloped them. No one knows if they summited (it would have been the first summit of Everest), but they both perished mysteriously on the mountain as they never came down. Before this fateful event, a reporter asked Mallory why he wanted to climb Everest. In perhaps the three most beautiful words ever uttered, he said “Because it’s there.”
Some MDs who were experts in how a human brain and body function at ultra-high altitudes thought that Habeler and Messner were on a suicide mission by attempting to scale and descend from the summit of Mt. Everest without supplemental oxygen. They knew the risks and accepted the challenge. After days of climbing ever upward through a series of high-altitude camps, near the summit of Mt. Everest, Peter Habeler began to experience severe difficulty breathing and a numbness in his hands. He said his entire body felt like a single lung desperately gasping for wisps of air. But he and Reinhold Messner persevered, and they summited. At the peak, they naturally felt euphoria and a sense of accomplishment. Mt. Everest, however, is not Disneyland. It is arguably more dangerous to descend than ascend, especially when your brain and body are starved of oxygen at 29,000 feet. They did not linger long on the summit; survival demanded descending quickly into a more oxygen rich environment. The mountain men returned safely and made their way into history: First climbers to scale Mt. Everest without oxygen. Why? “Because it’s there.”
Footnote: This author and HoliMont instructor worked under Peter Habeler as a ski instructor in Austria.