If you follow climbing, you’re aware of the tragedy of Alex Lowe. The 40-year-old Montana climber was a star of his generation, alternately referred to as a mutant and “the secret weapon” by his climbing partners and those up on his rĂ©sumĂ©. And then, just like that, in October 1999, he died in an avalanche on the south face of 26,335-foot Shishapangma, along with cameraman David Bridges. Lowe’s death shook the climbing world and made national news. He left behind a wife, Jennifer, and three young boys—Max, 10, Sam, 7, and Isaac, 3—in Bozeman.

Alpinism is brutally efficient at converting sturdy, tight-knit families into grieving widows and traumatized children, but what happened next raised the story to the level of myth. Within a year, Conrad Anker—Lowe’s feral and boisterous climbing partner, who narrowly survived the deadly avalanche—moved in with Jennifer. They married, and Anker helped raise the three boys as if they were his own. It appeared to be the stuff of tabloids: Did Alex and Conrad have some kind of death pact? Were Conrad and Jennifer lovers before the accident? Could Conrad even be domesticated? Somehow, though, it all worked.

That story has been told countless times, in magazines, movies, and books—including Jennifer Lowe-Anker’s 2009 memoir —and now comes the documentary , directed by Alex and Jennifer’s eldest son, Max. It and begins streaming on Disney+ on February 4. In the film, Max, now 33, trains his camera on the Lowe-Ankers, and we watch as the key transformational event in the family’s history gets processed in a way that suggests it had been left largely unresolved for the past two decades. “I definitely feel conflicted bringing everything back up to the surface for all of you guys,” Max tells his brother Sam early in the film. There’s enough baggage here to bow a yak, and watching them unpack it makes for raw viewing.

The film is beautifully put together, leaning on a vast trove of discovered footage, home movies, and expedition video shot in the heyday of professional adventuring, when really fit (mostly) guys were able to make a living solely by getting atop the world’s hardest climbs. In the vintage footage, athletes wear fleece vests and Capilene headbands. Anker isn’t yet the wizened dean of the North Face but instead plays second fiddle to Lowe.

In the early years after the tragedy, Anker acknowledges, he was racked with survivor’s guilt and needed an outlet for his pain. “It was love,” he says. Alex would haunt both Conrad and Jennifer. “I had dreams that Alex came back and was like, ‘What the hell, Conrad’s just here?’ ” she says. But if Anker had any doubts about his decision to become a family man, he doesn’t show it.

Anker, now 59, never did scale back his climbing ambitions: he has since become a living legend in the mountains, in no small part simply by surviving when so many great alpinists failed to return. The film doesn’t mention his many close calls over the years, and it downplays how he has continued to push the envelope, most notably by leading not one but two grueling expeditions up the Shark’s Fin of Meru, in northern India, in 2008 and 2011. In 2016, Anker suffered a heart attack at 20,000 feet on Nepal’s Lunag Ri. (David Lama, the brilliant young Austrian alpinist who was Anker’s partner, mentee, and rescuer on that ascent, died in the mountains three years later, along with two other talented North Face climbers: Jess Roskelley and Hansjörg Auer.)

More complicated is Anker’s relationship with Max, who at the time of Alex’s death was the only son old enough to have formed a lasting bond with him. In the months before his death, Alex took Max up the Grand Teton for the first time and asked him whether he thought it was the right call to attempt the ski descent of Shishapangma, the expedition that ultimately took his life. “I told him that I understood that he had to,” Max recalls.

One of the film’s revelations is that Max wasn’t always so keen to think of Anker as his dad; he was the only member of the family who didn’t change his last name to Lowe-Anker. To the outside world, Anker’s devotion to the family appeared to be an act of love rooted in a mix of benevolence, grief, and guilt. But to a young Max missing his father, Anker rotating into the family home wasn’t necessarily cause for celebration. Part of Max’s journey in the film is coming to terms with the gift that Anker would become in his life.

At one point, Max says to his mom, “In the wake of something so crushing, I can’t imagine coming out of it so quickly in the way that you did.” In truth, young children have little sense of how daunting it can be to raise three boys as a single mother. Some of the film’s most tender moments come when Jennifer lets Max in on the stuff mothers tend to keep from their children. “I’m not going to let the painful end 
 be the end of me opening my heart,” she tells him.

It’s in that same spirit that the film answers a puzzling question I’ve always had about the Lowe-Anker saga: Why would Jennifer throw in her lot for a second time with the alpha-male type that had let her down so decisively before? The answer arrives when the family is forced to directly confront Alex’s ghost. In 2016, the bodies of Lowe and Bridges finally emerged from the glacier they’d been trapped in. As they lay Lowe to rest, it becomes clear that Jennifer is the force keeping the family together, with a rare amalgam of purpose and intuition. When the men don’t know what to do, they look to her to guide them. And in that way, Jennifer has brought not just three boys to adulthood but four.

The post ‘Torn’ Is a Wrenching Look at the Long Shadow of Alex Lowe appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Mathews Vxr 31.5 Bow ($1,199)

The Vxr offers exceptional stability, with an extra-long riser and top-to-bottom balance. It’s dead quiet, damp on release, and lets you easily ratchet the draw weight between 50 and 75 pounds without sacrificing efficiency.

Klymit Traverse Double Hammock ($90)

Catch a quick ­post-hunt nap with the Traverse Double. It’s made of a single piece of 75-denier polyester that resists stretching, and it sets up easily with the included straps and carabiners.

5.11 AMP10 Pack ($140)

At 20 liters, the AMP10 is pleasingly slim and just big enough to carry an extra layer, your field-dressing kit, lunch, and water. The company’s external mounting system leaves plenty of room for items like a GPS.

Benchmade Saddle Mountain Knife ($250)

This full-tang knife has a durable ­4.2-inch CPM-S90V steel blade that’s best for skinning, but the point is nimble enough to make fine cuts, too.

Sitka Mountain Optics Harness ($149)

When you need to drop your pack for that final stalk, this light harness holds your binos, rangefinder, Windicator, and a snack.

Sitka Kelvin Lite Down Jacket ($349)

With blended ­900-fill goose down and PrimaLoft Gold insulation sealed into a superquiet shell, the Kelvin Lite is a versatile piece. It performed on crisp camp nights and during long hours glassing ridgelines.

Streamlight Enduro Pro USB Headlamp ($65)

When you need the right amount of light, the 200-lumen, ­water-resistant Enduro Pro provides, with USB recharging and three power settings in both spot and flood modes.

M2S All Terrain Ultra HT Electric Fat Bike ($3,299)

The aluminum Ultra HT’s Bafang motor packs enough torque (max 1,500 watts) to stop and start on climbs, even while the optional cargo rack ($79) is fully loaded. The 26-by-4.5-inch tires gobble up difficult terrain.

Kuiu Pro Merino 200 Zip-T Hoodie ($129)

Kuiu’s merino-polyester hoodie works solo for September elk chases or layered up for winter waterfowl hunts. It dries fast and cuts down on odor in the field.

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The coronavirus disease—officially known as COVID-19—is hitting Europe and the Middle East and has made landfall in the U.S. with more than 100 cases. Like a lot of you, we’ve followed the outbreak with a mix of dread and fascination, and with frequent refreshes to the published by Johns Hopkins. The good news is that activities in the mountains—where people can remain at a safe distance from each other—will probably continue to be safe. But everything from yoga to the Olympics could get dicey.

Coronaviruses mightÌęlive for up to nine days on countertops.

Nobody knows yet just how long the COVID-19 virus can remain viable on surfaces, but other coronaviruses—a category of virus that can cause illnesses ranging from common colds to deadly diseases like SARS and MERS—can stick around for . That means you’ll want to be careful about what you touch (looking at you, iPhone and airplane tray table). One of the most common forms of transmission is to get virus particles on your hands and then rub your eyes, mouth, or nose. Fortunately, SARS and MERS can both be (62 percent alcohol or more) or hydrogen peroxide, so possibly the new coronavirus can, too. In hospitals, technicians also use more powerful to disinfectÌęsensitive areas, although it’sÌę and best used by gloved professionals.Ìę

The most effective protocol is to for 20 seconds or so. The foaming and rubbing action is important as itÌęworks viral particles out of the folds of your skin. Then apply an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. It takes alcohol 15 to 20 seconds to break down the lipid envelope that surrounds the virusÌęproteins. Luckily, enveloped viruses are the easiest to destroy with alcohol. And while some have pointed out that ethanol may be more destructive to viruses than rubbing alcohol, it’s also more dehydrating to your skin, so use hand sanitizer.

It’s much deadlier than the flu and has the potential to kill millions of people.

Everyone from to the has made the point that the flu is currently a greater threat to public health than COVID-19. But the phrasing here is key. In a typical flu season,Ìę from the flu. And COVID-19 is just getting started; by the time of this article’s publication, it had already killed worldwide. But COVID-19 has the world on edge because of what it could do. Experts think it has the potential to infect an enormous percent of the global population—some say as many of —and cause enormous social and economic disruption.Ìę

What makes COVID-19 so scary? Well, it’s highly transmissible: one infected person is likely to give the virus to . There are a few reasons for this. One, because COVID-19 is new, no one in the world has any immunity. Two, most—roughly —of the cases are mild or even asymptomatic, which means that those people with few symptoms can walk around infecting others rather than spending a couple of weeks laid up in bed. Three, the incubation period is relatively long: people can harbor the virus for two weeks or so before getting sick.Ìę

So how deadly is it to individuals?Ìę“Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s director,Ìę. That’s still much higher than the flu (0.1 percent) but lower than .Ìę

Lastly, and frighteningly, it appears that you can get reinfected. Unlike the flu, whose victims build up immunity to a specific strain after their illness, of people recovering from COVID-19 and then getting it again.

Fun things might be canceled.

For now, things like Mount Everest season, the Summer Olympics, and your favorite yoga class are still a go. But Olympic organizers are understandably worried. Dick Pound, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee last week that the IOC could afford to wait until May to make a decision about whether to moveÌęforward with the Games. TheÌęquestion they’re asking themselves: “Is this under sufficient control that we can be confident about going to Tokyo or not?” And if the virus is not under control, according to Pound, “you’re probably looking at a cancellation.”Ìę

Meanwhile, Everest expedition leader Adrian Ballinger, a fixture on the mountain for the past decade, tells us he’s altered his team’s plans to fly into Kathmandu and avoid major Chinese cities. The season kicks off around April 8, when groups begin flying into Nepal’s capital city. “Of course it’s still an unknown,” saidÌęBallinger, “but the Chinese have hit all deadlines so far, and we have sent full payment for our permits.” Nepal has, to date, of coronavirus;Ìęhowever, if the disease were to spread there, it couldÌęquickly overwhelm the small nation’s health care resources.Ìę

But when it comes to public crowds and normal human interaction, things may get sketchyÌęwhen the disease starts to spread in the U.S. If the fallout in places likeÌę, Spain, and Austria are any indicator, professional sports events could beÌę, large gatherings and festivals could be canceled, and .

Yes, you should stock up, but maybe not on what you’re thinking about.

In Hong Kong, coronavirus fears sparked a run on toilet paper, causing supermarket fights and even an . In all seriousness, experts say the are prudent amounts of any prescription medication you might need, as well as a small supply of dry goods like rice, beans, oats, and canned food that won’t go bad and that you’ll eat regardless. This is less about fears that supplies will run outÌęand more about (or worse, if you yourself are sick).

Surgical masks probably don’t help.

While most of East AsiaÌęis outfitted in doctor’s masks these days, that’s more aÌę than a medical necessity—mask-wearing “fosters a sense of a fate shared, mutual obligation, and civic duty,” anthropologist Christos Lynteris wrote recently . The World Health Organization says unless you’re a doctor—or you’re sick yourself. The best defense is washing your hands. If you do have to go into a high-risk situation (say, visiting a hospital during an outbreak), the mask to get is not the paper kindÌębut an , which can filter out at least 95 percent of tiny particles. Even then you need to be sure the mask fits snugly against clean-shaven skin—sorry, —and that no air seeps in around the edges.

Get ready for “social distancing.”

Places from to to are already implementing what public health experts call “social distancing,” which basically means discouraging people from hanging out in groups. This can be anything from canceling school to forbidding social gatherings (the Chinese megacity of Guangzhou has ). Should coronavirus hit the U.S. hard, employers will likely call for work-from-home arrangements. But—fair warning—that means actually doing your job. Young bank trainees in Hong Kong were recentlyÌę in the local press for getting caught hiking when they were supposed to be working from home.

You can spread the virus without showing symptoms.

This is part of what makes coronavirus so scary to infectious-disease experts. While SARS could only be transmitted viaÌęthe obviously sick (i.e., those who wereÌęhacking and feverish), coronavirus carriers can fly under the radar with few or no symptoms. A 20-year-old woman from Wuhan Ìębut never had symptomsÌęherself. And another woman infected a coworker at a meeting despite feeling nothing but a bit of fatigue. , people are the most contagious when they are the sickest. However, the agency reportedÌęthat “some spread might be possible before people show symptoms.”Ìę

The difficulty of asymptomatic transmission means both that there are carriers out there spreading the virus around unknowingly and that people who get sick will have no idea where they contracted COVID-19. It’s a recipe for rapid transmission.

The worst part of the pandemic—if it becomes one—will probably occur November through next March.

Coronaviruses which is why flu season is in the winter. If the new coronavirus follows the patterns of past pandemics, it will spread during the spring in the Northern Hemisphere, die down over the summer, and then come roaring back as the weather cools in the fall. If the fatality rate is actually above 3 percent, the new coronavirus would , which followed a similar pattern. The pandemic actually emerged in late 1917 at a military hospital in France, spread through the winter and spring of 1918, but didn’t really take off until the virus mutated into a more virulent strain that emerged in August of that year and was far deadlier in its than in the first.

Some people are highly infectious “super-spreaders.”Ìę

A businessman attended a sales conference in Singapore, stopped off at a French ski resort to see some friends, then headed back to the UK. Little did he know he was spreading coronavirus the whole way. By the time he realized he was infected, he’d tagged 11 other Britons. Oh, and he still didn’t feel sick himself. No one is exactly sure , but it’s probably a , from the host’s immune system to their behavior (if they’reÌęa hand washer) to where they happen to travel. Whatever it is, they’re dangerous. During the SARS epidemic in Singapore, justÌę managed to be responsible for 144 out of 204 cases.

Don’t panic. It’s not time to go to your .

In fact, hoarding could make things even more dangerous. If masks and other protective gear are snapped up by the “,” there’ll be : medical professionals.

The post 10 Things to Know About the Coronavirus Outbreak appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Kuiu Kutana Soft Shell Jacket ($259)

The Ìęhas panels of durable Japanese nylon that are stretch-woven, without the need for spandex. And Kuiu’s trim, sleek cut makes its apparel fit athletic builds true to size.

Patagonia Western Snap LS Shirt ($79)

Ìęis equally suited to the rough and the refined. The breathable hemp-polyester blend makes it perfect for layering under a jacket and still fits in at the dinner table.

Maven C.3 Binoculars ($400)

Wyoming-based Maven expanded its line with the relatively affordable , a sharp, well-built set of binoculars. The 10x magnification version lets in plenty of light for first-shooting hours.

Salomon Quest 4D 3 GTX Boots ($230)

Ìęis a workhorse: stable and waterproof-breathable, with a stiff chassis and aggressive tread for hard and high treks in search of game or just a view.

James Brand Hell Gap Knife ($335)

This upscale knifemaker is known for its sleek everyday-carry designs. The 7.8-inch Ìęis its first fixed-blade model, with extra-hard s35vn steel that holds an edge beautifully.

This item is currently sold out.

Mystery Ranch Mule 23 Pack ($375)

Here’s a novel concept: mount a daypack to a full-size meat-hauling frame. Ìędid just that, and the result (if a bit heavy at 4.4 pounds) gives you the flexibility to lash an elk’s hindquarter between the external carbon fiber and the pack body and cinch it all tight with compression straps.

This product has been discontinued by the manufacturer.Ìę

Yeti Boomer 8 Dog Bowl ($50)

On the road in pheasant country, your dog needs a $50 steel bowl like you need a $50 coffee mug. Ìęlooks great in the dirt or banging around in the back of the truck.

Mathews VertixÌęBow ($1,099)

features 85 percent letoff—meaning it’s really easy to hold and aim once it’s drawn—and it’s capable of shooting arrows at a blistering 343 feet per second.

L.L.Bean Hunter’s Tote ($45)

We’ve stashed everything from dove decoys to groceries in this . Keep several on hand for times when your organization breaks down and you need a good place to store supplies.

First Lite Sawbuck Brush Pants ($160)

Conventional wisdom says that brush pants are for bird hunting (since birds don’t care how you look), while discreet pants are for big game, which can hear the rustle of Cordura. The Ìęupends that by putting chaps-like panels on stretchy nylon, and the results are tough yet quiet.

The post The Hunting Gear We Loved This Fall appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

“I don’t remember the impact,” says Emily Harrington, at 33 one of the world’s strongest rock climbers. “I remember reaching up to a handhold and in that split second before I was solid, my foot slipped. I remember falling. The next thing I remember was Alex being there.”

Alex is Alex Honnold, the only climber in the world with an Oscar to his name for his efforts climbing the 5.13 Freerider route up El Capitan without a rope. That’s what made him the perfect belay partner for Harrington’s one-day free attempt on the 5.13 Golden Gate route up Yosemite’s most famous landmark. “Golden Gate is much more difficult than Freerider,” says Honnold. So difficult that only three people have ever free climbed it in a day: Tommy Caldwell, Brad Gobright, and Honnold himself. Conveniently, Golden Gate and Freerider share the same route up the first 2,000 feet before Golden Gate diverges for the last and most difficult 1,200 feet. “Alex obviously knows it better than anyone,” says Harrington.Ìę

Having Honnold on board as a belay partner was only one part of a strategy that would need to work perfectly in order for Harrington to become the first woman and fourth person to free climb Golden Gate in a day. She’d been working through the moves of the route for years. In 2015, she freeclimbed it in six days. And on November 7 of this year, she came heartbreakingly close, climbing all but the last 30 feet of the final 5.13 pitch before exhaustion overtook her. “It’s not about the hard pitches,” she explains. “It’s about the accumulation of fatigue. Even the 5.10 pitches are really physical, so it becomes this huge endurance challenge that a lot of climbers don’t quite grasp.”

On November 24, with a snowstorm fast approaching that would signal the end of the Yosemite big-wall season, Harrington wanted to make one last attempt. Well before dawn and with the mercury reading 27 degrees—cold for the slipper-like climbing shoes and long-sleeve T-shirt she was wearing in anticipation of extreme physical exertion and warmer temps throughout the day—Harrington stepped onto the wall.

To stack the deck in her favor, she and Honnold planned to use a technique called simul-climbing, a time-saving high-risk endeavor in which the leader and follower both advance at the same time. The leader places gear sparingly, “running it out,” as they say, while the follower cleans the gear. By leaving huge gaps between placements and climbing simultaneously, a team can cover four pitches with the amount of gear and time that it typically takes to finish one. The tradeoff is, of course, safety. If the follower slips, he pulls the leader off with him. If the leader falls, she takes an enormous fall that must be caught by a belayer who is focused on climbing.

“You have to conserve your gear,” says Harrington. “Instead of climbing the Freeblast in 12 pitches, we planned to climb it in four pitches.” The Freeblast, for people who remember the movie Free Solo, is the lower, less-than vertical-section of Freerider/Golden Gate where the climbing isn’t technically as difficult as the upper sections, but it’s slabby, slippery, and what Harrington generally characterizes as “insecure.”Ìę

“It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s easy for your fingers and feet to be numb and to slip unexpectedly,” says Honnold. When he made his abortive attempt on Freerider early in Free Solo, it was the Freeblast section that turned him around rather than the most difficult sections up high. Harrington is a 5.14 climber. When she slipped, she was making the last move of a 5.10c pitch while navigating a pair of twin cracks. Just a few feet above her was a fixed bolt she could have clipped for ultimate safety.Ìę

About 150 feet below, Honnold was belaying Harrington when he heard her scream. “I was sitting on the ground tying my shoes, getting ready to start simul-climbing,” says Honnold. “Tons of slack just pools on the ground, which is consistent with huge falls.” The phenomenon occurs when the leader is falling but still above her last piece of gear. “The rope is falling at the same speed as the climber,” says Honnold. “It’s just physics.”Ìę

Honnold was belaying with a gri-gri, a mechanical device that’s a little bit like the cams in a car seat belt. Its mechanism allows the rope to slide smoothly through it at low speeds but locks down tight if you try to pull the rope through it with any kind of jarring motion. But the energy of the fall never actually reached the gri-gri. In most circumstances, a belayer’s hand is never supposed to leave the rope. But at the highest echelons of simul-climbing, that’s just not an option. The follower has to climb and remove gear from the wall while also belaying the leader. That’s why there’s a simple rule of simul-climbing: don’t fall.Ìę

“The leader is choosing a strategy with the intention that they’re not going to fall on easy terrain,” says Honnold. “You can see in the video
”Ìę

Jon Glassberg of , was filming and photographing the ascent. (Glassberg shared the video with me but asked that we not publish it, fearing that it mightÌęlook like Honnold had given an inattentive belay.) Ìę

In it, Honnold’s girlfriend Sanni McCandless shouts encouragement upward, “Nice, Em!”Ìę

A second later Harrington’s haunting scream arcs out of the darkness. Honnold looks up from tying his shoes, grabs the rope that’s pooling around him with his bare hands, and stops the fall with a stunned look on his face. The catch was unorthodox, but so was the fall.Ìę
Harrington’s headlamp was knocked off by the impact, so Glassberg, McCandless, and Honnold couldn’t see what had happened to her. Honnold lowered her onto a pedestal-like ledge. McCandless put on her harness and took over the belay from Honnold, who soloed up to find Harrington conscious but injured.Ìę

“She had an enormous goose egg on the front of her forehead,” says Honnold.

Glassberg radioed to Yosemite Search and Rescue (YOSAR) and to Harrington’s boyfriend, the Himalayan guide Adrian Ballinger, that she’d fallen and was hurt. Ballinger had planned to hike to the top of El Capitan, rappel in, and take over belay duty from Honnold for the last 1,200 feet of the climb.

“I remember talking to him. I remember him holding my back up and keeping my head still,” says Harrington.

“She kept saying, ‘If I was you, I’d be dead. If I was you, I’d be dead,’” recalls Honnold. “I was like, Oh man.” It was a reference to the fact that Honnold’s friends worried publicly about him climbing this same route with no rope at all.

“We just waited for Adrian and YOSAR to get there,” recalls Harrington. “The YOSAR guys said you were so lucky to be so close to the ground.”

First Ballinger arrived and then YOSAR. She and Honnold were both shivering. They quickly got her into a litter and lowered her back to the ground where she was loaded into an ambulance.Ìę

At the hospital, her injuries proved to be gruesome but largely superficial. Most shockingly, Harrington had somehow managed to get her neck caught in the rope during the fall and was left with a long bruise that made it look like she’d been strangled. Ultimately she was able to walk out of the hospital a day later. She and Ballinger were planning to Airbnb their Squaw Valley condo starting this week and head out for a ski-mountaineering trip to Ecuador. Now, Harrington at least, is struggling with the prospect of some forced R&R.Ìę

And inevitably, within the climbing community, there will be some level of debate about whether Honnold’s belay was up to snuff for one of the world’s best climbers. If Harrington had fallen a minute later, while Honnold was on the wall with her, the fact that his hands weren’t on the rope would have been a given.

Honnold, who is famously dry when it comes to assessing risk, doesn’t view it as a cautionary tale: “In a lot of ways, this shows that the techniques actually work,” says Honnold. “She took one of the worst possible falls on the whole route and still wound up basically fine.”

Ballinger, who shepherds clients to the summit of Everest most years with a perfect safety record, has a similar take. “For Emily to climb Golden Gate in 24 hours, she has to cut out part of the safety system on the easy sections. Otherwise she’d never have time to climb the hard pitches up high.”Ìę

Ultimately, though, Harrington herself sees the accident as a validation, if a painful one: “The system worked. The rope caught me. My gear held,” she says. “I’ll try again in spring.”

The post Inside Emily Harrington’s Scary Fall on El Capitan appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

PoleClinometer Sticker Kit ($15)

Backcountry caution dictates knowing a slope’s pitch before committing to climbing up it and then riding down. And while it may look gimmicky, the PoleClinometer provides this information as simply and quickly as possible: with a sticker you attach to your ski pole indicating various angles. Dangle the pole vertically, compare the slope’s pitch with the chart on the sticker, and make better-informed decisions off-piste.

Mammut Alugator Pro Lite Shovel ($80)

Those who obsess over shovel performance will love the Alugator Pro’s long, telescoping shaft and hardened and sharpened aluminum blade, which has cutouts that both reduce weight and allow it to function as an improvised rescue sled.

Mammut Fast Lock 280 Probe ($70)

This probe features a big orange handle that’s easy to grip and pull for busting out its nine-foot length. The aluminum construction doesn’t add much heft to your pack.

Black Diamond JetForce Tour 26 Pack ($1,200)

As backcountry gear matures, bugs and kinks are worked out, and the latest generations look better to boot. The Tour 26 is a fine example. It’s sleek, compact, and reliable, and it makes use of Alpride’s avalanche-airbag tech, which operates via a fan and supercapacitor. The system recharges by micro USB (or, in a pinch, two AA batteries) and features a mesh helmet holder, accessory pockets, and a standard under-leg strap, so you don’t slip out of the pack in a slide.

Backcountry Access Tracker S Beacon ($335)

The Tracker S follows a beacon-design trend toward simplicity, which makes it more usable in an actual avalanche, when fancy features are likely to be forgotten or just get in the way. Yet it still has all the functionality of the more blinged-out models, with three antennas, a 164-foot range, and directional arrows that point toward buried partners to hasten searches.

The post The Best Snow Safety Gear of 2020 appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Mathews Vertix Bow ($1,099)

Our favorite option for delivering arrows in tight groups with relaxed precision, the sub-five-pound Vertix is damp and quiet. The bow has an 85 percent let-off and launches arrows at a blistering 343 feet per second.

Sitka Kelvin Down WS Hoodie ($389)

Mornings spent glassing for big bulls can put a chill in your bones. The Kelvin—with goose down and PrimaLoft insulation, and Gore-Tex Windstopper for a durable outer cocoon—staves it off.

Leatherman Free P2 Multitool ($120)

It’s not what you’d use to field-dress an elk, but the Free’s nearly three-inch blade will do in a pinch. And the Leatherman butterflies open for the most intuitive one-handed tool deployment we’ve seen.

Nemo Recurve Tent ($459)

When shopping for a hunting tent, look for something light enough to carry and big enough to keep all your stuff dry. That’s the Recurve, which weighs 1.4 pounds and has 21.4 square feet of interior space.

Maven C.3 Binoculars ($400 and up)

The C.3 let us quickly find and sort distant stumps from shooter bucks. It adds an amazingly sharp, reasonably priced option to Maven’s direct-to-consumer line.

Smartwool PhD Hunt Socks ($27)

Chances are you’ll be marinating in the same footwear for days on end. Here, 66 percent merino and 32 percent nylon come together in a sock with long-lasting loft and moisture wicking.

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Kuiu Venture 2300 Pack ($219)

The Venture is a lean all-day pack for when you aren’t spending the night out—intentionally. At just over 3.5 pounds, it’s light enough that you’ll never wish you’d just worn a lumbar pack.

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Filson C.C.F. Utility Pants ($95)

Filson wasn’t the first to make reinforced-knee canvas pants, but the triple-seam C.C.F. Utility has a lifetime warranty. Think of that next time you’re crawling on the ground in pursuit of your quarry.

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Under Armour Speed Freek Bozeman 2.0 Boots ($149)

Staking out the inter­section of svelte running shoe and burly hiking boot, the waterproof Speed Freek delivers grip and sneakerlike comfort at a good price.

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Gear that’s got your back, should things go sideways

BCA Float 32 Avalanche Airbag 2.0 Pack ($550)

The Float 2.0 sticks with traditional scuba-like compressed-air technology—though the cartridge is now 30 percent smaller—to lift a skier to the surface in a slide. Plenty of pockets and a helmet holder make this a workhorse of an avy pack.

BCA BC Link 2.0 Radio ($180)

The BC Link 2.0 takes a consumer-band FRS radio (no FCC license required), wraps it in sturdy weather sealing, and adds a lapel microphone with all the controls on it for an easy out-of-the-box solution for backcountry skiers who want solid group communication beyond cell range.

Pieps iProbe Two Probe ($155)

When every second counts, you don’t want to be probing blindly. The ten-foot-long iProbe Two has a built-in receiver that beeps when it detects the signal from a burial victim’s avalanche beacon, so you can find your target on the first try.

Mammut Barryvox S Beacon ($500)

For people who spend a lot of time in ava­lanche country, the Barryvox S offers the longest range of detection: 70 yards. The simplified interface uses large pictographic instructions to keep you focused.

Black Diamond Guide BT Beacon ($449)

Tiny but mighty, this beacon combines three-antenna functionality with a 65-yard range in a 7.9-ounce package. A sliding toggle—easy to operate with mittens—switches modes, while Bluetooth capability allows you to update firmware each year.

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Garmin InReach Mini Satellite Communicator ($350)

The 3.5-ounce, weather-sealed Mini is svelte and pairs with your phone or other Garmin devices so you can send and receive messages and geo-tagged emergency signals via the Iridium satellite network.

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Revo Traverse Sunglasses ($269)

Old-school glacier glasses had their moment, but what if you want peripheral protection without compromising your field of view? The Traverse pairs complete coverage with Revo’s full-spectrum polycarbonate lenses for all-around sunny-day performance.

The post The Best Snow Safety Gear of 2019 appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

As the East gets pummeled by winter storm (cough!) Grayson, a so-called bomb cyclone, and the President issues, it’s worth noting that ski areas in the central and southern Rockies are having the driest year in recent memory.

“The official numbers show ten to 20 percent of average snowpack,” says Joel Gratz, founding meteorologist at Boulder, Colorado-based OpenSnow, which offers forecasts for skiers. “There’s no way to sugar coat it. There’s just not a lot of snow on the ground.”

Just how dry has this winter been? According to Gratz, done by the USDA have only been in place since the nineteen-seventies. But current conditions from roughly the I-70 corridor—which runs east to west from the main Colorado ski resorts throughÌęthe Front Range—and south match or exceed the lowest snowpack Snotel levels ever recorded. “It could be the low end since the fifties or sixties,” Gratz speculates.

Brian Lazar, the deputy director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, based in Carbondale, notes that the snowpack in southwestern Colorado is especially grim. “Statewide snowpack in Colorado is just over 50 percent of where we should be at this time of year,” says Lazar. “December was one of the driest snowfall monthsÌęon record. But the southern mountains are doing even worse than that. It gets progressively worse as you move south.”

There are some bright spots, though. Arapahoe Basin and Breckenridge, closer to the Continental Divide along I-70, have nearly 90 percent of their usual snowpack. Farther north, from northern Washington across northern Idaho and into western Montana, snowfall is above average. And British Columbia is its usual snowy self.

Even in the southern Rockies, it’s been dry but not so warm that ski areas can’t make snow. That’s where ski resorts like Vail, Aspen, Taos, Telluride, Purgatory, and Ski Santa Fe are seeing bets pay off on investmentsÌęin new snowmaking.

The drought has caused many mountains to take extraordinary measures. Some have kept lift tickets at early season discount prices to keep people coming. Snow conditions in Aspen were so dire that the resortÌę to feed employees who weren’t getting enough work to pay their bills. Meanwhile, the Mountain Collective Pass, good for independent resorts from Revelstoke, B.C., down to some of the hardest hit areas in the south, like Taos,Ìęis now back on sale at it’s preseason price of $519.

Lazar and Gratz are both hopeful that the ridge of high pressure parked over the central Rockies could break down soon. “The dry spell that we’re in right now should break,” says Lazar. “We should pick up four-to-eight inches over the weekend.” Gratz sees a stormier pattern setting up by the end of January. But if you want snorkel-worthy powder now, you’ll need to head to the Pacific Northwest, the Alps, or maybe even the mid-Atlantic.

“My dad was going to come out in early January,” says Gratz, “But the skiing was so good in central Pennsylvania that he decided to stay. You don’t hear that too often.”

The post This Is Literally the West’s Worst Winter in 60 Years appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Tenzing NorgayÌęwasn’t buying it. Neither were the five other Sherpas who’d summited Mount Everest since 1953, when Tenzing and Edmund Hillary first knocked the bastard off. The Euros had been too fast—too fast to have climbed the mountain with bottled oxygen,Ìęlet alone without it. But such was the claim that Italian Reinhold Messner, then 33, and Austrian Peter Habeler, 35, were making about their Everest summit on May 8, 1978. They said they’d reached the top of the 29,035-foot peak from Camp IV—whichÌęsits at 25,938 feet on the South Col, the saddle between Everest and neighboring Lhotse—in just under eight hours. They’d spent 15 minutes on top, then returned individually, Hab­eler in an hour and Messner in an hour and 45 minutes.

If true, they’d not only defied the doubters, but they’d also turned in the equivalent of a four-minute mile. Climbers using oxygen tanks typically required—and still require—12 to 14 hours round-trip from Camp IV. Ìę(At that altitude, in the so-called Death Zone above 26,000 feet, supplemental oxygen clears the mind, warms the body, and fuels the legs.) But Messner and Habeler had done it in less than ten.

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When the pair arrived back at Camp IV, British cameraman Eric Jones, who was there waiting for them, radioed Base Camp to reach Leo Dickinson, the director of , a documentary about the expedition that would be released the next year. “There’s something wrong here,” Jones said. “They’re back too soon.” In a June 17 Reuters story, Tenzing and others told a reporter that they had serious doubts about the accomplishment.

You can’t blame them for being skeptical. When I presented several modern climbers with the numbers—withholding the names of the legendary men who’d claimed them—they were dubious, too. “I’d call those times incredibly unlikely,” e-mailed guide Adrian Ballinger, who summited Everest without oxygen via the North Col in 2017. In fact, if a climber has ever made the trip without oxy­gen as fast as Messner and Habeler, I could find no record of it.

The men expected people to question their ascent. At the summit, Messner tied one of his depleted camera batteries and Habeler a snippet of rope to an old survey tripod so that nobody could dispute that they’d been there. But proving a negative—that they hadn’t used oxygen—was trickier. “Some experts,” Habeler wrote in his 1978 book, , claimed that they “had allowed a sniff of it, at least at intervals.” Messner lashed out at Tenzing and other doubters when he got back home to Funùs, Italy. “It’s sheer envy on their part,” he told Reuters. “They can’t understand that someone has done what they haven’t.”

One person who immediately grasped the climb’s significance was John Roskelley, who’d been planning to make the third ascent of K2 that summer with an American team. Roskelley, now 68 and living in Spokane, Washington, says that the no-O Everest summit “was the reason I was determined to climb K2 without bottled oxygen. Their ascent proved altitude could be overcome physically by athletes who could adapt to the lack of O2 through a program of acclimatization.”

What many people didn’t know at the time was that, despite their historic accomplishment, Messner and Habeler’s relationship was on its way to unraveling, and the first ascent of Everest by “fair means” would be the wedge that severed their partnership. Maurice Isserman, a historian at Hamilton College and author of , points out that this team was always a little tenuous. “You think of Hillary and Tenzing, Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld,” he says. “You think of this quintessential act of beingÌętied to another human being. Messner and Habeler had a rope, but they were roped for only a short amount of time. They really made two solo ascents without oxygen.”

Nonetheless, for a brief moment in the spring of 1978, the pair stood together, alone on the pinnacle of human performance.

ByÌęthe late seventies, climbers had started judging their accomplishments less by the peaks they climbed than by the routes and the style they used to climb them. In 1963, Hornbein and Unsoeld completed a firstÌęascent of Everest’s West Ridge. Though they used oxygen, their fast and light approach represented a serious upgrade in difficulty and exposure. In the decade that followed, the sport rapidly evolved as modern climbers chipped away at the size and plodding strategy of the massive expeditions thatÌędefined mountaineering during the first half of the century. But oxygen was still considered vital, especially on Everest.

“In ’75 or ’76, if you would ask anyone who had been involved in Himalayan climbing what would be the next big thing,” Habeler told me in June, “every second person would tell you: It’s Everest not using oxygen.”

Habeler and Messner were the perfect people to try it. Each of the “terrible twins,” as they were known in Europe, started his ­career in the Alps. Messner, with his headband, beard, and untamed brown hair, looked like a feral Björn Borg. Habeler, usu­ally clean-cut, had high cheekbones, gleaming white teeth, and leading-man looks. Messner was recently divorced; Habeler climbed with a photo of his wife and young son.

Habeler grew up in Mayrhofen, Austria, while Messner lived just 50 miles south in FunĂšs, Italy. Both did their apprentice-ships with weaker partners (sometimes family members—Messner had eight siblings) and made their names as soloists. ItÌęseems inevitable that they would partner up, if only because there was nobody else in their league.

Habeler, who turned 75 in July, is an introvert compared with Messner, who is famous for his brash and outsize personality. “His birth sign is Virgo, he likes to shine. I’m a Cancerian who crawls back into his shell,” Habeler wrote in Lonely Victory. “ We are not friends in the usual sense of the word,” he continued. “We are not ‘buddies’ who stick together through thick and thin. We rarely speak to each other about our private life.”

Starting in 1965 with the Tofana di Rozes,Ìęin the Dolomites near Cortina, Italy, the men,Ìęthen 22 and 20, forged a climbing bond that would last 13 years. They were primarily rock climbers, fitness nuts with steel nerves. But in early 1969, both Messner and Habeler joined an expedition to the Andes and made the first ascent of the east face of Yerupaja, a 21,768-foot Peruvian peak with a hatchet blade for a summit. It was their introduction to high altitude.

Messner immediately wanted more, and in 1970 he signed on with a German expedition to the Rupal face of Pakistan’s 26,660-foot Nanga Parbat. Habeler couldn’t join him, so Messner’s younger brother GĂŒnther went instead. GĂŒnther’s death on the mountain that year, as the brothers were descending from the summit, became the defining moment of Messner’s life and career. ExhaustedÌęand with few options, the two descended the wrong side of the mountain, where GĂŒnther vanished, likely swept away by an avalanche. (His body was not discovered until 2005.) Even today, Messner calls that climb his most significant, because of its extreme difficulty. But the tragedy, and accusations that he had endangered his brother, dogged him for decades.

Messner survived after limping to a village on the far side, but he’d lost seven toes on his first 8,000-meter peak. In 1974, Messner and Habeler made it up the north face of Switzerland’s Eiger in just ten hours, roughly half the time as the previous record. The following year, they became the first to summit an 8,000-meter peak—Pakistan’s 26,509-foot Gasherbrum—without using supplemental oxygen, porters, or the traditional siege-style tactic of establishing and stocking a seriesÌęof camps.

This new technique was brought from the Alps and thus called alpine style—a name that has since become the aspirational ethic in the climbing world. To climb mountains isÌęone thing, but to call yourself an alpinist isÌęto claim a higher standard. Messner didn’t invent the phrase, but he codified it in the 1971 Mountain magazine manifesto “.”

“Put on your boots and get going,” he urged. “If you’ve got a companion, take a rope with you and a couple of pitons for your belays, but nothing else.”

After the 1975 Gasherbrum climb, on a flight home, Messner and Habeler toasted their success with gin and tonics. In his book, Habeler recounted a particular exchange, which to him sounded as if they were speaking in unison. “To Mount Everest,” Habeler said. “Without oxygen.”

“Without oxygen,” Messner replied.

Over the years, much has been made of the idea that climbing Everest this way was considered physiologically unthinkable. As Messner in 2006, “It was like going to the moon without oxygen—how is it possible? 
 And in Germany, at least ïŹve doctors on television appeared before, going and telling everyone they can prove it is not possible.”

That’s probably a stretch: the most vocal sources for the idea that nobody could survive a clean ascent of Everest were the climbers themselves. Few doctors or scientists had given a professional opinion about a feat that wasn’t on anybody’s schedule anyway. And the altitude research available in 1978 seems to contradict the notion of impossibility.

Over the winter of 1960–61, Edmund Hillary led a team of scientists to Nepal on a multipronged expedition to study human physiology at altitude. Ten scientists spent more than six weeks measuring their bodily functions inside a tube-like plywood lab at 19,000 feet. The team discovered that the barometric pressure in the Himalayas is higher than you’d expect, meaning that Everest, at 29,035 feet, has an effective altitude closer to 27,500.

In 1920, four years before George MalloryÌęand Sandy Irvine famously disappeared on Everest, Scottish chemist and climberÌęAlexander Kellas had made a prediction about the mountain’s effect on human physiology. Using rudimentary data for the body’s res­piratory exchange, he was able to calculate, as he wrote in a paper that would goÌęunpublished until 2001, that “at 29,000 feet, on moderately easy ground, a man in good training might expect to be able to climb from 300 to 350 feet per hour” without supplemental oxygen. That figure turned out to be reasonable, as did his assertion that “the ascent using oxygen should be comparatively easy. Perchance in the distant future, young men 
 may test their courage on the world’s loftiest summit.”

Arguably, the most convincing data point was the fact that British lieutenant colonel E. F. Norton had made it to within 1,000 feet of Everest’s summit without oxygen in 1924, on the difficult Grand Couloir up the North Face, before turning back because of looming darkness. Messner and Habeler had also climbed high on numerous mountains and knew how their bodies reacted. By 1978, Messner had already summited two other 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen—Nanga Parbat and Manaslu—before he and Habeler made it up Gasherbrum.

The previous spring, Leo Dickinson and Messner had been in Kathmandu, where they hired a single-engine propeller plane to fly around the top of Mount Everest at 30,000 feet. Dickinson and the pilot used oxygen, but Messner sat in the back with no mask. “His lips went cyan,” Dickinson recalls, “and his eyes got narrow. The funny thing was, you couldn’t stop him from talking.”

In the footage, Messner sits there chatting away. “Flying about 30,000 feet without ox­y­gen, that is not a proof that we can go with our forces above the top of Everest without oxygen,” he says in Dickinson’s documen­tary. “It was only proof that we can stay there not dying.”

When Habeler and Messner arrived onÌęthe mountain in 1978, it had been summitedÌę59 times, which seemed like a lot in that era. (In 2017 alone, more than 600 people reached the top.) In some ways, Everest was wildly different from the mountain we think of today, a no-man’s land without cell coverage. But the Big E was already being shaped by brands, egos, and the mass media. Everest’s stunt era was under way after a Japanese man, Yuichiro Miura, semi-succeeded in skiing the mountain’s icy Lhotse Face in 1970 by using a small parachute to slow himself before he crashed. (He survived and now holds the rec­ord for the oldest man to summit Everest, which he set in 2013 at age 80.)

Then as now, Everest was viewed as a crowded peak. But crowded in those days meant that the government of Nepal, which allowed only one expedition in Base CampÌęat a time, had the place booked for years in advance. So Messner and Habeler joined a 1978 expedition, led by Innsbruck-based guide and entrepreneur Wolfgang Nairz, that was attempting to put the first Austrians on the summit. An accomplished hang glider, Nairz also hoped to soar off the South Col. He brought two gliders to Base Camp, planning to have Sherpas haul them up, though they quickly realized it wouldn’t be possible.

The expedition’s main event was always going to be Messner and Habeler, though. The two had arranged for additional funding from the German magazine Geo and brought in Dickinson and cameraman Eric Jones. The climb was a big deal in the mountaineering community and in Austria, but it was hardly a worldwide media event. Because of Messner and Habeler’s relative anonymity in Britain, Dickinson struggled to get his UK producers to sign on. In the U.S., they were virtually unknown.

The duo arrived in Nepal in March, and when they reached Base Camp the first order of business was finding a route through the Khumbu Icefall. They had agreed to forgo alpine methods in this extremely dangerous part of the mountain, opting instead to piggyback on the Austrians’ traditional approach. Messner and Habeler personally led the way into the icefall, with Sherpas carrying aluminum ladders to create bridges over the chasms.

The weather, which had been snowy and stormy, finally broke on April 20. Messner and Habeler knew they would have the first summit bid if they wanted it. While the rest of the Austrian expedition waited, they left Base Camp for a push they’d planned to make the next day. They reached Camp III on the 23rd, famished. Habeler consumed a tin of sardines and immediately began to feel sick.

“Cold sweat broke out, and spittle collected under my tongue,” Habeler recalls. “I retched my guts out, and my throat burned like fire.” He was racked by diarrhea and vomiting for most of the night. “It’s no good, Reinhold,” Habeler told his partner. “I just can’t go on. You should turn back, too. The weather is getting bad; there’s going to be a storm. It’s too dangerous.”

By morning, Habeler had recovered enough to retreat, but it took him days to regain his strength. (Habeler still has a hard time eating canned sardines. Dickinson hates them, too: “I mean, why the fuck people eat sardines on Everest, I do not know,” he says. “What’s wrong with vegetable soup?”) With his partner ailing, Messner took two Sherpas, Mingma and Ang Dorje, and continued into the storm for a solo attempt to the top. But at the South Col, where the three planned to erect Camp IV, they were caught in a powerful blizzard, with 80-mile-per-hour winds that ripped through the tent as they huddled inside. Messner published the radio communications that followed in his 1979 book on the climb, .

“This tent nearly takes off when the wind blows,” he said. “It must have a speed between 150 and 250 kilometers. And it’s minus 50 degrees. The tent flaps so noisily that we have difficulty understanding each other.”ÌęMingma was struggling, too. “What must I do if one of the Sherpas turns funny?” Messner asked Nairz. “Can you ask Bulle at Base Camp what I should do if one of them goes berserk?”

“Bulle says on no account give any drugs,” came the reply. “Better to shout at him, or if necessary dot him one, so that the shock quiets him down.”

Eventually, on the afternoon of the second day, the weather broke. Mingma sprang from his cocoon to race back down to Camp II. Messner and Ang Dorji followed. At Base Camp, Habeler was still recovering, and he had serious doubts about their chances. His partner, after all, had failed in his solo bid and barely survived the storm.

Messner, meanwhile, had all but given up on Habeler. In an interview for Everest Unmasked, Dickinson asked: Did he still think he had a chance of success?

“Yes, but I have to find a new partner,” Messner said, looking into the camera and sounding exasperated. He hinted that Hab­eler had been waffling even before eating the bad sardines. “Maybe Peter is coming up again. He is the strongest climber I know,” Messner continued. “But he’s always changing. He’s going 100 meters and saying clouds are coming, let’s go back.”

“It made the film very good,” Dickinson recalls of the conflict. “Reinhold had the ability of getting the best out of people but also shaming them. I think he could have been a cult leader if he wanted to be. I don’t know what his religion is. I expect he’s an atheist.

Well, apart from believing in himself.”

“I was, simply spoken, scared,” Habeler says now. “I was psyched out. So only when Messner kicked me in the ass and said, ‘Come on, Peter, we have done this and done that. Let’s do it.’ Then I became my old strength.”

As MessnerÌęand Habeler regrouped, Nairz, along with two Austrians and his head Sherpa, Ang Phu, used the bulk of the team’s remaining resources—12 Sherpas and 16 oxygen cylinders—to make their ownÌębid on May 3, eventually putting four men on the summit. Messner and Habeler were in Camp II when they got word of the team’s success. After Nairz and climber Robert Schauer descended, Schauer told Hab­eler that he’d tried taking off his mask a few times and that climbing without it was unthinkable. This was enough to reignite Hab­eler’s self-doubt. He told the camera team that he was almost ready to use oxygen “to just goÌęup and have a nice time. Just go up and take some pictures.”

The Austrians thought Habeler was being weak and told him so, adding that if he wanted to use their oxygen, he’d need to get in line behind the other climbers who still wanted to summit. Habeler’s resentment over this helped him recommit. “I was governed only by a blind anger which drove me on,” he later recalled.

Dickinson remembers that Messner came up with the perfect motivation. “He told Habeler, ‘If I can do it, you can do it’ ”—a clichĂ©, but in this case a useful one. Habeler believed he was the fitter man. “I’m in better physical shape than Reinhold,” he’d written in a letter from Base Camp to his father-in-law. But he lacked Messner’s all-consuming willpower.

“The best way of describing Peter Habeler is that he’s normal,” Dickinson says. “Messner is the most driven human being I’ve ever seen on the planet.”

“I was determined to forswear the summit if I couldn’t reach it unaided by breathing equipment,” Messner wrote in Expedition to the Ultimate, laying out the ambition in sweeping prose. “Only then will I know what a man feels like being there, what new dimensions it opens up for him, and whether he can thereby learn anything new in terms of his relationship with the Cosmos.”

Dickinson had given Messner film for his eight-millimeter movie camera. The two climbers were also accompanied by cameraman Eric Jones. They had convinced three Sherpas to help them carry gear and two emergency oxygen cylinders to Camp IV, at the South Col, before dropping their loads and turning back.

The climbers made their way to Camp III on May 6. Habeler remembers that they used sedatives to get some rest there, Hab­eler taking Valium and Messner Mogadon. On May 7, they climbed to Camp IV, with Jones lagging under the weight of his own movie camera. They dozed in their tent, and Messner used a small audio recorder to capture idle speculation about the coming attempt.

“The whole thing would be simple if we were using oxygen,” Habeler said.

“But we do agree to go on unless things get too bad,” Messner replied.

“Well, I’ll tell you this much: I’m turning back before I start going out of my mind!”

What’s notable elsewhere in the transcript is the giddy anticipation of two climbers about to make mountaineering history. The ego, the posturing, and the second-­guessing had all been stripped away by the sheer magnitude of what they were planning to attempt. “We haven’t done a lot together, but the things we have done have all been ‘big deals,’ ” Messner said.

“We’ve done some very fine things together,” Habeler replied. “Very fine.”

At 3 a.m., they unzipped their bags and began to melt water. Messner shoved the stumps of his feet into boots. At 5:30 they set off, leaving Jones still asleep in the tent. They carried little besides their ice axes, extra layers, a rope, and recording equipment—no more than eight pounds each. They left the emergency oxygen with Jones. Habeler was doubtful that they would make it. “I was lethargic, my feet were like lead, and I had no drive at all,” he later said.

The first hint of daylight revealed overcast skies and sleet. Messner was horrified. It looks as if we are beaten, he remembered thinking. But they carried on, barely speaking in order to conserve energy.

“We were then as close to each other as two people can be,” Habeler wrote of this stretch. Each man described a kind of spiritual bond in which they could read each other’s mind as plainly as if they were having a conversation. They reached the Austrians’ last camp, at 27,900 feet, at 9:30 A.M. They were still climbing through a whiteout, halting every 10 or 20 steps to double over and gasp for breath.

At this point, Messner stopped and spent half an hour making tea, which seems outrageous in the context of their blazing-fast overall time. As Messner remembers it, he and Habeler used the break to discuss the foul weather and their slim chances. Habeler believes that the conversation happened almost telepathically, with no actual words.

Whatever transpired, they climbed on, with Habeler taking the lead. Around noon, they burst through the clouds at the South Summit, 330 feet shy of the top. Everest “looked like an elevated island surrounded by a sea of clouds,” Habeler told expedition leader Nairz in an interview soon after the climb. “It was an incredibly moving moment. Tibet fully covered in dense fog. Makalu’s, Lhotse’s, and Kanchenjunga’s tips just barely visible.”

At the South Summit, they roped up with a 15-meter cord, knotting it around their stomachs. Messner led the Hillary Step so that he could film Habeler coming up. Hab­eler says he had an out-of-body experience at this point, believing he was alone with a doppelgĂ€nger of himself. Finally,Ìęonly 100 feet beyond the Step, with Messner roped ahead of him, he crawled on his elbows to the summit and stood. It was 1:15 P.M. Messner and Habeler had averaged nearly 400 feet per hour.

“I went up towards him and all I remember is I started crying. Like a little child,” Habeler said in Everest Unmasked. But the most quoted summit reflection comes from his partner’s book. “In my state of spiritual abstraction,” Messner wrote, “I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.”

That line was written back inÌęItaly. What Messner actually recorded was only, “Now we are on the summit of Everest.” The exhausted climbers lay side by side at the top of the world, straining for breath. After 15 minutes, Habeler started worrying about numbness in his hand and general sluggishness. He told Messner he was going to start down. That was the last time they saw eachÌęother before reuniting at Camp IV.

When Habeler reached the South Summit,Ìęthe point where he could start descending rapidly toward the col, he sat and slid, which allowed him to move quickly and with little effort. It was an incredibly dangerous place to glissade. If he’d picked up speed, he could not have controlled his plunge. As he was nearing the col, a slab of snow broke loose beneath him and began to run. “I was covering my mouth and waiting for the snow to stop,” Habeler said inÌęEverest Unmasked. He didn’t move for five minutes. From the camp, Eric Jones saw Habeler get swept away and thought he was finished. But a few minutes later, Habeler limped into camp, bleeding from his forehead, and declared that he and Messner had succeeded. It was 2:30 P.M.

Messner followed Habeler’s glissade track down on foot, marveling at the risks his friend had taken during the descent. When the two reconvened at Camp IV, they used the radio to share their success. The team in Base Camp promptly ­began to drink in a long series of toasts.

But Messner had made one key mistake in the ascent. He’d taken off his goggles too many times, to film Habeler. In doing so, he’d allowed the sun and wind to fry his corneas. As the night progressed, they became inflamed. When his vision faded and the pain became unbearable, Messner was convinced that something had gone wrong in his brain from lack of oxygen. “Some parts of it must have malfunctioned, causing me being blind forever,” Messner later told Nairz. “In that case, I would have never left the mountain and most certainly killed myself right there.” He credits Habeler with caring for him and his “two gaping sockets as if I were a small child.”

“I felt more bound to him than ever before,” Habeler wrote. After staying up all night brewing tea, Habeler led Jones and Messner out of camp, across the col, and to the fixed ropes that descend the Lhotse Face. Jones was hobbled by frostbite, and Messner more or less sleepwalked—he was exhausted and nearly blind—while guided by the ropes.

They reached Camp III quickly and then slept until the sun hit their tents around 9 A.M. At the same time, Austrians Oswald Oelz, who the men called Bulle, and Reinhard Karl reached Camp III on their way up, during an oxygen-aided summit bid. When the pair arrived at Camp IV, they found the two emergency oxygen cylinders, still full.

InÌębase camp, journalists and TV news crews from Germany and England had arrived following the news of the first summit team’s May 3 success. In Europe, the press trumpeted Messner and Habeler’s achievement. But in the U.S., the event received only a smattering of coverage. That’s because the two climbers were still obscure in America, and also because the U.S. media didn’t understand the extreme difference between climbing with and without oxygen. For most newspaper writers, the mountain had been climbed in 1953 by Edmund Hillary, full stop. But when Everest Unmasked aired on Britain’s ITV Network in 1979, Dickinson recalls, the documentary was seen by roughly a third of the country’s households—aboutÌę16 million people.

By then, talk of whether Messner and Ha­b­eler used oxygen had already quieted down. The fact that the pair’s emergency containers were found full helped bolster their claim. So did the vocal defense of their teammates. Lying about bringing extra oxy­gen would have required the complicity of all the other expedition members, a tall order given the sport’s competitive nature. Most important, Messner was just getting started in 1978.

His subsequent oxygen-free climbs would leave little doubt that he was a mountaineer unlike any who’d gone before him.

Those expeditions did not include Hab­eler. Almost immediately, the pair fell into a bitter feud, the source of their strife being the publication of Lonely Victory. Messner was supposedly furious that Habeler, long the handsome, good-natured sidekick, had not only written a book but had beaten him to press in 1978. “The pie could only be sliced so many ways,” says Dickinson. “And even though Habeler wanted maybe less than half, Messner wanted more.”

Messner told me that he was never angry that Habeler had published, only that he’d used a ghostwriter, Eberhard Fuchs, who, in his words, “did not understand anything about climbing and wrote a lot of bullshit which came often back to me.” Presumably addressing Habeler’s book during the 1979 release of Expedition to the Ultimate, Messner in­cluded an unconventional epigraph: “An account of an expedition is not a novel. Therefore an authentic account can never be given, let alone written down by someone who was not present.”

In a 1982 șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű story about the feud, David Roberts pointed to a key passage in Lonely Victory. Habeler noted that a photo of him reaching the summit of Gasherbrum first, which Messner had snapped from below, was published widely with the caption “Reinhold Messner conquered the Hidden Peak.” Habeler (or Fuchs) wrote of the caption, “Friends and acquaintances often ask me: ‘Why do you put up with this? All your common ventures simply become a one-man show for Messner!’ ”

The result of the discord was the sudden and complete end of one of the great climbing partnerships. For two decades, they barely spoke to each other. Messner went on to climb Everest again without oxygen in 1980, this time solo and unaided via a difficult new route on the mountain’s north side. Then he steadily ticked off all ten remaining 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen—another first. Habeler returned home to Mayrhofen to start the Peter Habeler Ski and Mountaineering School, where he still teaches. Among the young climbers he’s mentored is fellow Austrian David Lama, one of today’s most talented alpinists—the pair summited the Eiger’s north face last April. And while Habeler never tried to exceed his summits with Messner, he did climb other 8,000-meter peaks, including Cho Oyu, Nanga Parbat, and Kanchen­junga, without oxygen.

The two have since settled their differences. And while they may no longer climb together, they have at least mended their friendship. When I raised the feud with each of them in June, they both scoffed. “We have to make clear that the disturbances between Messner and myself—it was a little tiny bullshit thing,” says Habeler.

“In the beginning I was unhappy,” Messner emphasized. “Now we have a perfect relationship.”

Currently, Messner views Everest as a tourist mountain and has committed himself, through the construction of mountaineering museums and the production of films, to preserving some shred of the alpine tradition he helped to define. “What’s happening on Everest today on the two normal routes is tourism,” says Messner. “An alpinist is doing exactly the opposite thing. He’s going where there is no infrastructure.”

Habeler is similarly down on Everest’s present state. “Right now it’s more important to send out your daily message—to Facebook or whatever—so people know where you are, what you eat, how many times you go shit.”

Messner is hopeful that “the next generation at least has a chance to know what is traditional alpinism.” Feats like Spanish ultrarunner Kilian Jornet’s recent speedÌęascents of Everest’s north side—he climbed the mountain from Base Camp in 26 hours without oxygen, and did it again a week later from advanced base camp in 17—don’t excite him much. “I would have ten times more respect if he could do a new line on Everest in two months,” says Messner of Jornet. “And Hans Kammerlander was quicker [on the north side] in the nineties and not having oxygen—so what’s new?”

And even though he views his tragic 1970 ascent of Nanga Parbat’s Rupal Face as his greatest climb, the first unaided ascent of the world’s tallest mountain still holds a special place in his mind. “In my memories, Everest plus Peter forever,” Messner said in 1978. “And nothing is going to change that.”

Now when the two men see each other, Habeler told me in June, “We have a bottle of wine and we talk about the old days. And I think this is good.”

Grayson Schaffer () is an șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Editor At Large. He has written several articles about Everest, including “Black Year” (August 2014) and “Take A Number” (October 2012). Ìęis anÌęșÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűÌęcontributing artist.

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