Everest solo in the monsoon

Reinhold Messner · 1980 CE · Earth

Everest solo in the monsoon — Reinhold Messner · 1980 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Climb Everest alone from Tibet, in the monsoon, without bottled oxygen, fixed ropes or prepared camps, and with no companion above advanced base.

Historical context

In September 1979 the Chinese government announced that foreign expeditions could enter its high mountains from 1980, and Everest was among the eight peaks it opened that year. Messner had climbed Everest without bottled oxygen with Peter Habeler in 1978, and Nanga Parbat alone the same year; nobody had yet made the whole climb of Everest alone; in 1978 Franz Oppurg had gone to the summit alone from the last camp of the Austrian expedition, with oxygen. He came to the Tibetan side in the monsoon of 1980 with a permit from the Chinese Mountaineering Association, a liaison officer, an interpreter and one companion, Nena Holguin, and meant to go from a tent at 6,500 metres to the summit with no partner, no fixed ropes, no prepared camps and no bottled oxygen.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Lhasa

    1980 CE

    After a stop in Lhasa, Messner and the Canadian photographer Nena Holguin set out for Everest in the summer of 1980 with the liaison officer Cheng and the interpreter Tsao. By Montagna TV's account they had flown from Munich to Beijing on 17 June; from Lhasa they go on by road to the Rongbuk valley and the north side of the mountain.

  2. Rongbuk base camp

    14 July 1980

    The party camps in the Rongbuk valley, near the ruins of the Rongbuk monastery. Two Tibetan drivers take the loads up the East Rongbuk glacier with their yaks, and on 14 July, by Elizabeth Hawley's records, advanced base is pitched at the foot of the North Col, at about 6,500 metres.

  3. The crevasse in the dark

    18 August 1980

    Before dawn on 18 August Messner leaves advanced base alone and unroped. On the way up to the North Col, in the dark, a snow bridge gives way under him and he falls about eight metres into a crevasse, landing on snow.

  4. The first bivouac on the north ridge

    18 August 1980

    By three in the afternoon of 18 August, Beijing time, Messner has climbed from the North Col up the north ridge, the British route of the 1920s, and pitches his small tent at about 7,800 metres, some 1,300 metres above advanced base.

  5. Across the north face

    19 August 1980

    On 19 August, rather than follow the north-east ridge, Messner cuts across the north face below it, about two kilometres of avalanche-prone slopes, to the Great Couloir, the Norton Couloir, and bivouacs at about 8,200 metres.

  6. Alone on the summit

    20 August 1980

    On 20 August 1980, the third day out of advanced base, Messner climbs the Norton Couloir and reaches the summit of Everest alone and without bottled oxygen, in the afternoon; at about three o'clock Beijing time, one o'clock in Nepal, by the times he gave Elizabeth Hawley.

Outcome

Messner reached the summit alone and without bottled oxygen on 20 August 1980, in the afternoon of the third day out of advanced base at about 6,500 metres, by a new line across the north face and up the Norton Couloir. He was back at advanced base the next day. The American Alpine Journal called it the first time anyone had made the entire ascent of Everest alone.

Reinhold Messner

The South Tyrolean who climbed Everest without oxygen with Peter Habeler in 1978, when some climbers thought the attempt risked brain damage, 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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