Alex Txikón: "The eight thousand are overrated"

Alex Txikón (38 years old) is a blender, a wizard of public relations and, in his words, “a great currela”.

Your job is to raise huge sums of money to pursue your winter dreams in the Himalayas.

And it is a job that he is very good at and to which he dedicates much of his time.

Climbing Everest without oxygen in the most difficult season is, in his case, almost an obsession.

Honestly, he contradicts those who point to him as a great mountaineer to clarify that he has managed to find a “niche” in the broad spectrum of mountaineering where he stands out and deserves the support of his sponsors.

Add 11 of the 14 eight thousand.

The winters are their refuge.

The Sherpas, your partners on Everest.

Here you clarify if you are your client or your leader.

Question.

Why is he a mountaineer?

• Spaniard Alex Txikon abandons his winter climb of Everest

• Alex Txikon: "There is no world up there"

Reply.

My parents took me to the mountains from a very, very young age.

In Lemoa (Bizkaia), my town, there was soccer, handball and the mountain club that still exists and that has 800 members for a municipality of 3,000 inhabitants.

I have a precious memory of walking through the mountains on weekends, of climbing the Gorbea.

When I was 10 years old, they took me to Lunada [Cantabrian Mountains, Burgos province] and I had such a bad time that I decided to leave the mountain aside.

At 14 I was playing soccer, but nature was still attractive to me and little by little I started going out again.

I think that today, more than the mountains, what I like is nature, even more than the great challenges.

If I had a different situation, I would dedicate myself to doing good to others, to contribute: every month, with different associations, I give talks to children, and recently also to the elderly.

I don't charge for it.

I am autonomous.

A little ant.

I sustain myself thanks to the lectures I give.

To go to Everest in winter I need about 250,000 euros.

Thirty-something percent of the budget comes from my pocket, from my work: talks, sponsorships.

I love dealing with sponsors, explaining my projects to them, convincing them ...

Q.

What do you live on?

R.

I live with one hand in front and one behind.

I have no home of my own, no car of my own.

As soon as I stop doing expeditions, I will go back to work on the construction site, where I come from.

I am lucky that I like that job.

I am a bricklayer, I operate machinery, and my rings do not fall off from working whatever.

Maybe I can also work for one of my sponsors… I live very, very up to date.

I have many contacts, but I have never taken advantage of them to get something out.

Q.

In the Basque Country especially, but also in the rest of Spain, the public considers you a great mountaineer.

It looks like this?

A.

No. Well, to begin with, I feel more loved outside than at home.

I go to Poland and they put the red carpet on me, really.

Here it is true that the rooms fill up when I give a talk, but I think it is more because of my proximity, because of my way of being, because I practice rural sports (lifting stone, cutting logs ...), because I always try to behave well.

Do you really think people like me?

P.

So it seems: the public respects him as a great mountaineer.

A.

I am not a great mountaineer.

I consider myself a good person, although I have often been wrong, but I try to learn from my mistakes.

Succeed in life, what is it?

I still have a genetic gift, I easily acclimatise to altitude, I can lift a 150-kilo stone and the next day chain a 7c + rock climbing route ... The word mountaineer is misleading.

I am the first generation to have said loud and clear that climbing the 14 eight thousand has no real significance today, beyond personal satisfaction.

I think I was the first in this country to say it.

Q.

And have you expressed it this way in an interview?

A.

Yes, but then they have never published it!

P.

Alberto Iñurrategi has been affirming the same for years: eight thousand are overrated.

R.

It's true, he even says it in his audiovisuals.

But you, journalists, have a mission that is often not fulfilled: with Nirmal Purja it has already become clear that wherever he goes there is a circus.

And we forget to talk about the young mountaineers of this country who do cutting-edge activities far from the eight thousand.

I think I could do more interesting things as a mountaineer, but I do a lot of work because I want to dedicate myself to the eight-thousand niche in winter, because I am very good at it and I am passionate about it.

I don't do it to be famous, but because I like it.

Then I climb very well on ice and have a great knowledge of the winters in the Himalayas, but I just consider myself a common mountaineer.

I cannot compare myself to Steve House or Marc Toralles because it would discredit the degree of commitment and ethics they show when they climb.

It would be easier for me to practice that type of mountaineering because you don't need the money it takes to go to an eight-thousand in winter.

Ours is much more suffered, because I work what is not written to achieve financing.

But I like it, that work fills me.

Q.

It has been three attempts to Everest in winter trying to climb it without using artificial oxygen.

Why such an effort?

R

.

Because I think we can do it and we have lacked luck.

This winter I change and I go to Manaslu.

But I am passionate about winter.

Climate change is making things more random.

There are bad weather explosions.

We have been at minus 50 on Everest with 70 kilometers per hour of wind.

Winter is more bitter but fuller.

The first year on Everest between 11 people we equipped from base camp to camp 2 with 100 ladders, 7,500 meters of rope to pass the Khumbu waterfall, an extremely dangerous ice chaos and much more unstable in winter.

I've been going to the Himalayas in winter since 2011. I love trying to be smarter than the mountain and even if I don't reach the summit, everything I do to try makes up for it.

Q.

What role do the Sherpas who accompany you on Everest really play?

A.

The first year (2017) was when I hired the most Sherpas: seven.

Last year we were three and the second (2018), six.

I pay them very little because they are all colleagues.

A Sherpa who works in the spring season makes about $ 10,000.

I pay them about 2,000 euros per expedition.

I go with Sherpas because I need a helping hand, but I forbid them to use oxygen below 8,000 meters.

In fact they only used oxygen when we were at 8,000 meters with 50 below zero.

But the one who works the most, even if it is wrong to say so, is me, simply because I am the one who has to pull the car.

For me they are expedition companions, not workers.

I love them a lot but I supervise what they do.

Q.

That is, they function as equals, that they do not open the footprint, fix the ropes, set up the tent in the high fields ...

R.

None of that.

They are my expedition companions and friends ... but not all Sherpas are my friends, you have to know how to differentiate them.

Some have worked on Everest without wanting to get paid, just to help.

Q.

And what do you spend 250,000 euros on?

R.

The promotion permit is 11,000 euros, 15,000 euros in positions, 30,000 in telecommunications ... the money goes very fast.

Food ... we need 30 liters of fuel a day ... and this means paying more postage.

Q.

Why isn't there talk of Ang Rita, the only mountaineer who has climbed Everest in winter and without oxygen?

A.

I started with the winter eight thousand by chance, just when I finished working for Edurne Pasaban.

He needed other stimuli.

And the truth is that it has become, in quotation marks, a bit fashionable.

In the Ang Rita expedition they left base camp in the autumn, but it did reach its summit in winter [on December 22, 1987], although it seems a bit taken by the hair ... but I respect that.

But for purists, true winter in the Himalayas requires arriving at base camp no earlier than December 22, when the calendar marks the onset of winter, and leaving before the end of that winter period.

Q.

What is your training?

Do you have a medical follow-up, a planning?

A.

No, I don't do that kind of thing.

I'm going to climb, I walk in the mountains.

It is not a training to use ... I worked for motivation.

All that food to the millimeter and others does not go with me.

I think my genetics are good and I'm not one-armed, I have my technique.

I put on a 30 kilo backpack and it's like I weigh 10!

Q.

What would you say to everyone who thinks that higher is more difficult?

R.

I would tell you that it is more difficult to climb on ice on the Gavarnie wall [French Pyrenees] than to climb an eight thousand.

Alpinistically, Pyrenean technical activities are much more difficult than climbing the Cho Oyu, the Shisha Pangma ... but people do not understand and believe the altitude is decisive, when the important thing is the technical difficulty.