Everest without oxygen

Reinhold Messner · 1978 CE · Earth

Everest without oxygen — Reinhold Messner · 1978 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Reach the summit of Everest by the South Col breathing nothing but the air at 8,849 metres, which physiologists held to be impossible.

Historical context

Every one of the sixty-odd people who had climbed Everest by 1978 had done it breathing bottled oxygen, and respected physiologists had calculated that a human being on the summit without it would lose consciousness or suffer irreparable brain damage. Messner and Habeler had climbed Gasherbrum I in 1975 in three days without oxygen or fixed camps and thought the calculation was wrong. They joined Wolfgang Nairz's Austrian expedition on condition that they be allowed to try, and the whole camp treated it as an experiment that might well end at the South Col.

The voyage, step by step

  1. The Austrian expedition

    March 1978

    In March 1978 Wolfgang Nairz's Austrian Everest expedition leaves Kathmandu; among its members are Messner and Habeler, who have permission to try the summit without oxygen if the rest of the team goes first with it.

  2. Base camp and the icefall

    April 1978

    From base camp at 5,350 metres the expedition fixes the icefall and the Cwm through April, and Messner and Habeler make a first try at the summit on 21 April.

  3. Up the Cwm again

    6 May 1978

    On 6 May the pair leave Camp II in the Western Cwm at 6,400 metres for the second attempt, climbing the Lhotse face to Camp III and reaching the South Col the next afternoon.

  4. The night on the South Col

    7 May 1978

    On 7 May Messner and Habeler sleep on the South Col at 7,900 metres without oxygen, melting snow for hours and breathing, Messner writes, as though there were a stone on each lung.

  5. The South Summit

    8 May 1978

    Above 8,500 metres the two men crawl on their hands and knees, resting every few steps; they reach the South Summit at 8,750 metres towards noon with the final ridge and the Hillary Step in cloud ahead of them.

  6. Everest breathing only air

    8 May 1978

    At about 13:15 on 8 May 1978 Messner and Habeler reach the summit of Everest, 8,849 metres, without oxygen, just under eight hours from the South Col; they fall into the snow and lie there, Messner filming and weeping.

Outcome

Messner and Habeler on the summit at about 13:15 on 8 May 1978, without oxygen, after just under eight hours from the South Col; Habeler back at the col in an hour.

Reinhold Messner

The South Tyrolean who climbed Everest without oxygen with Peter Habeler in 1978, when doctors said it would leave them brain-damaged, and came back alone two years later to climb it solo from Tibet in the monsoon.

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Sources

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