Reinhold Messner on extreme mountaineering: "Egoistic" and "hardly justifiable"

Icon: enlarge

Reinhold Messner (archive): "One little thing is enough and it's over"

Photo: Roland Weihrauch / dpa

In retrospect, Reinhold Messner believes that many of his expeditions can hardly be justified.

About himself and his brother Günther he told the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung": "We had such a young Siegfried feeling - the others might be killed, but nothing happened to us."

However, that changed with Günther's death.

Messner's brother died 50 years ago while on tour together on Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas.

"When my brother died, I realized that a little something was enough and it was over."

Messner said he had been with many climbers - "and many of them perished on the mountain".

That also led to the realization "that we cannot answer for it".

Nobody would hear a ban from him.

"But we should all know that it is not only selfish, but also hard to justify to parents, brothers, sisters and friends."

The 75-year-old South Tyrolean Messner is one of the most successful mountaineers in the world.

He was the first to climb all 14 eight-thousanders without artificial oxygen.

Icon: The mirror

jpz / dpa