The Guinness Book of Records takes away the crown of King of the 8000ers from Reinhold Messner : from 2024 the mountaineer will no longer be the first to have climbed all fourteen 8000ers without bottled oxygen (and even climbed some peaks more than once).
The exclusion was affected by the modification of some guidelines, namely that the top of a mountain must be reached and documented in a verifiable way: according to a topographic comparison with images taken by drones carried out by the German mountaineering chronicler Eberhard Jugalski, Messner would not have been standing on the summit of Annapurna in 1985 . Thus, Messner would only climb thirteen of the fourteen eight-thousanders .
Yesterday, Messner's "bark" arrived via social media: the mountaineer had posted a photo with the caption "The goal is not the summit but the road. My mountaineering knows no records."
"Nonsense", the reply from the 79-year-old entrusted to Ansa arrived today. «First of all – he specifies – I have never claimed any record, so they can't deny me anything. Furthermore, mountains change . Almost 40 years have passed, if anyone has climbed Annapurna it was certainly me and Hans."
The controversy had already started in 2022, after Eberhard Jurgalski had brought to light doubts - after research with photos and drones - specifying that only three of the 44 mountaineers present in the official lists had actually climbed all 14 eight-thousanders.
The problem especially affected four mountains: Annapurna, Broad Peak, Manaslu, Dhaulagiri . In fact, these do not have a defined peak, but a ridge of snow and ice, and therefore finding the specific peak could be complicated on these peaks.
Messner himself, already last year, had explained that when it comes to ice and snow the peaks are constantly changing.
(Unioneonline/vl)