It had been 15 years since the Japanese Kazuya Hiraide sighted Shispare (7,611 m), a peak in the Pakistani Karakoram to which he vowed to dedicate his life as a mountaineer.
His obsession ended up driving him to his climax, which he reached on his fourth attempt.
There, at the top, he knelt in the snow, removed one of his mittens and reached into an inside pocket of his down jacket.
He pulled out a photograph of his mountaineering friend Kei Taniguchi, who had died two years earlier (in 2015) in a mountain accident.
With the help of one of her ice axes, he dug a generous hole in the snow and buried the image there.
He had come to think that he had finally found an impossible mountain to climb.
Had he been alive, Taniguchi would have been by her side that day.
But she only kept the memory of her and the photograph of her.
“That day I was able to bury the pain that paralyzed me.
I understood that she had not left, that she was traveling with me, in my heart, ”she explains, pointing to the left side of her chest.
Later, Kazuya Hiraide spent more than a year without climbing, wondering what he had learned from his extensive relationship with Shispare, the mountain that had been "the measuring stick" of his shortcomings "as a climber and as a human being" for fifteen decades.
Unable to come up with an answer, he decided to go looking for her on another mountain.
the mountain that had been "the measuring stick" of his shortcomings "as a climber and as a human being" for fifteen years.
Unable to come up with an answer, he decided to go looking for her on another mountain.
the mountain that had been "the measuring stick" of his shortcomings "as a climber and as a human being" for fifteen years.
Unable to come up with an answer, he decided to go looking for her on another mountain.
Hiraide, 43, is one of the most celebrated mountaineers of the 21st century, also a perfect stranger outside of the marketing that turns Europeans, North Americans and Canadians into figures.
On tour in Spain (Bilbao, MendiFilmFestival) and by the hand of his Gipuzkoan sponsor (Ternua), the presence of Hiraide is a rare luxury that is worth savoring, which is why the interview starts with breakfast and ends with dinner .
It takes time to understand the life of such an exceptional mountaineer that, he warns, he looks askance at retreat “but not before facing a couple of challenges, on the west face of K2, for example.
I have changed, my life has, having a family with two children of seven and four years old alters everything… but I still maintain the passion, ”he says in an apologetic tone.
Hardly anyone could have climbed most of the mountains that Hiraide has climbed in the Himalayas: they had to be found, first.
You had to want them, too.
Until he was 20 years old, Hiraide was an athlete, a long-distance runner.
But something was not going well: “Leaving point A to reach point B seemed very restrictive to me, so I began to dream of a discipline that would allow me to create my own itineraries, go where I wanted and do it competing only with myself.
That's how I turned to mountaineering ”, he explains with his first coffee and after having run 15 kilometers.
He still runs daily.
Suddenly, she takes off one shoe, the sock, and shows a right foot that is missing four toes amputated in 2005, after climbing the northwest ridge of the Shivling with her friend Kei of hers.
Her naturalness is disconcerting.
but then he takes off the slipper on his left foot and there are the stumps of three other toes, severed barely a year ago.
So, he assures him, “I thought my career was over.
I spent three days in a hospital in Pakistan without even turning on the phone, assuming my sadness, ready to leave everything.
My wife convinced me to continue…”, he smiles with a gesture of relief.
"To be a mountaineer you need to be strong, have experience and a lot of mental strength... but it took me years to understand that in order to climb hard, I had to first be a stronger person, a better person," she chains with a humble gesture.
Assuming my sadness, willing to leave everything.
My wife convinced me to continue…”, he smiles with a gesture of relief.
"To be a mountaineer you need to be strong, have experience and a lot of mental strength... but it took me years to understand that in order to climb hard, I had to first be a stronger person, a better person," she chains with a humble gesture.
Assuming my sadness, willing to leave everything.
My wife convinced me to continue…”, he smiles with a gesture of relief.
"To be a mountaineer you need to be strong, have experience and a lot of mental strength... but it took me years to understand that in order to climb hard, I had to first be a stronger person, a better person," she chains with a humble gesture.
Hiraide decided to create his itinerary almost literally: he photocopied all the Karakoram maps he could find, pieced them together into a large mural, and began reading the works of the Japanese Alpine Club to learn which peaks had been conquered and which were a question mark.
He colored the ones that had been climbed green, marking his ascent routes in red.
With the huge map of him unfolded, several blank areas, unexplored areas, stood out in an obvious way.
There he went, clothed in the unconsciousness of youth and not accepting defeat as defeat.
In total, since 2001, he has accumulated 18 expeditions and the opening of 12 new routes, including his three Golden Piolets: 2008, south-west face of Kamet, 7,756 m, together with Kei Taniguchi, the first woman awarded the prize;
2017,
northeast face of Shispare (7,611 m);
2019: South face of Rakaposhi (7,788 m).
For years, Hiraide traveled through the valleys of the Karakoram with his huge map in hand, looking for "hidden treasures".
He needed to explore as well as climb, to draw his path, to feel the freedom to move without restriction.
He was young and became convinced that "there was no mountain he could not climb if he was willing to lose his life trying."
But without knowing why, he became obsessed with the Shispare, the leitmotiv of much of his career, the place to return to when he lost "the direction" of his life.
Almost all the expeditions he has made have been paid for with his savings, first working for a sports equipment distributor, and since 2012 as a high-altitude cameraman.
In 2010, life caught up with a horrible episode that, once again, turned him away from mountaineering.
He was climbing Ama Dablam to open a new line, together with the German David Goettler, when the dangers of avalanches and the instability of the terrain forced him to withdraw.
They soon found themselves stuck in an exit alley and called in the helicopter, used to dealing with all kinds of rescues on neighboring Everest.
The pilot placed a skid in the snow and took Goettler away.
He returned and traced the maneuver, but the propeller touched the hillside and the plane fell in black smoke, bouncing off the wall.
Pilot and co-pilot died.
Hiraide stopped climbing.
A year later, he was able to speak to the families of the disappeared: they begged him to continue climbing, to enjoy the gift of staying alive.
He decided to return to a remote mountain,
At the beginning of his career, climbing partners were mere accessories: he was content with knowing how to belay him while climbing.
But then he met Kei and was amazed not only by his technical ability but by his ability to make Hiraide's dreams his own.
“It is extraordinary to find a will like yours, an identical level of commitment.
The strength of the rope multiplies, ”he explains excitedly.
Before each expedition, he alone faced the same question: "Am I committed enough to assume that I can lose my life?"
Now, his experience allows him to differentiate a severe, technically demanding ascent from a dangerous one: “If it's hard, I'll go with courage;
if it is dangerous, I will turn around to save my life and that of my partner, ”he sums up,
not without noting that this type of decision-making is extremely delicate, the result of enormous experience.
When he lost Kei, he understood that a loss of that caliber could kill him.
Quite simply, “I wasn't able to find enough strength to go on with my life.
He lived in a stupor, not wanting to do anything.
I decided to return to the Shispare, ”she reveals.
“But although I finally made it to the top, I learned no lesson from the experience.
I returned to a lethargic state.
Another year passed blankly, until I decided to go to the Rakaposhi... and what I found at its peak was a much humbler version of myself.
I began to understand that my approach to mountaineering had been wrong, egotistical, competitive, obsessive.
I see this way of being in my new partner, Kenro Nakajima.
I climb with him so that he doesn't kill himself, so that he learns from my mistakes."
Hiraide assures that conquests no longer matter to him, he no longer wants to paint a peak green on a map.
He has understood that what matters most to him are the questions that take him to the mountains and the answers that, sometimes, he finds in his bowels.
The Karakoram map, she recently discovered, was the physical representation of his vital map.
A space to be completed, a space of freedom where almost everything was yet to be created.
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