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2000
Reinhold
Messner (Italy)
One of
the most famous and influential climbers in the world today, Reinhold Messner has been
climbing since he was five years old. He grew up in Villnöss in the St.  Magdalena valley
of South Tyrol, which he has described as a childhood paradise. Reinhold and his younger
brother Günther would share a helmet on their increasingly adventurous rock climbing
forays.
By the age of twenty, he had climbed most of the hardest
routes in the Dolomites and the Western Alps and had begun to formulate his philosophy of
clean climbing. Despite Günther's death on their first visit to the Himalaya, Reinhold
saw no cause to compromise his dedication to lightweight alpine-style mountaineering. In
succession, he made a swift two-man ascent of a 28000 footer (Hidden Peak with Peter
Habeler), an oxygen-free ascent of Everest, then solo ascents of both Nanga Parbat and
Everest. He was the first man to climb all fourteen 8000-metre peaks, but considers the
first traverse of two of these in a single expedition - Gasherbrums I and II, with Hans
Kammerlander in 1984 - as his supreme Himalayan achievement. In recent years, Reinhold
Messner has become absorbed with lightweight polar expeditions.
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