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Mountain gives up its tragic secret
Discovery of remains dashes claims brother was left to die 35 years ago
Barbara McMahon
Friday August 19, 2005
Guardian
They found his remains in the snow halfway up Nanga Parbat, the ninth tallest mountain in the world. The clothes were still on him, including a wind jacket and shoes that identified the victim, apparently beyond doubt. Günther Messner, went missing 35 years ago, and since then his brother, the mountaineer Reinhold Messner, has lived with accusations that he abandoned him to die.
Now the discovery of the remains appears to have solved one of the great mountaineering mysteries, providing support for Reinhold's longstanding account of what happened to his 23-year-old younger sibling.
The position of the remains tallies with Messner's claim that he did not leave Günther on the slope, but that he was killed when he was swept away by an avalanche.
According to news reports in Italy and Austria yesterday, the remains were spotted by climbers some weeks ago but left in place until 60-year-old Messner could fly out from his castle home in Italy and see them for himself.
He reached the remote site in western Pakistan on Wednesday and identified articles of clothing belonging to his brother. Having been buried in snow and ice for 35 years, any human parts will have to be positively identified using DNA tests, but members of the Messner family are sure the find has put the matter to rest.
Hubert Messner, another brother, who works as a paediatrician in Bolzano, Italy, said: "This is a huge relief for us. The family hasn't been able to talk directly to Reinhold because he is out there in Pakistan and it has not been possible to talk on the satellite phone."
The Messner family said they hoped it would be possible to return Günther's remains to his home town of Funes, in Italy, to be buried.
Reinhold's career - he was the first man to climb Everest solo in 1980 without the aid of oxygen and the first man to climb the world's 14 tallest peaks without oxygen - has always been overshadowed by claims that he sacrificed the life of his brother for his own glory.
The Messner brothers set out in 1970 to conquer Nanga Parbat, a forbidding peak 27,000 ft (8,125 metres) above sea level in the Karakoram chain at the western end of the Himalayas. It is also known as the Mountain of Destiny because of the dozens of climbers who have died while attempting to scale it; both brothers nevertheless reached the summit. Both were on the brink of exhaustion, had run out of food and water, and Günther was hallucinating from altitude sickness.
It was at this point the controversy began. Reinhold, who lost seven toes and several fingertips to frostbite during the climb, said the two were retreating down the western Diamar face of the mountain when his brother disappeared. He said he had gone on ahead and Günther, weak and lagging behind, had almost certainly been swept away by a huge wall of snow.
Two other climbers - Max von Kienlin and Hans Saler - who took part in the ascent but did not reach the summit claimed otherwise. They published books in Germany claiming that Messner had sent his brother down the mountain's highly dangerous Rupal flank, even though the brothers had nearly died on their way up it.
Messner, they said, callously left his ailing brother to make his own way down while he chose to descend the different, unknown route on the western Diamar face because he would be the first climber to achieve such a descent. "In effect," they wrote, "Messner sacrificed his brother to his own ambition."
The allegations have dogged Messner ever since, although he launched legal action against the two climbers and their publishers and has always strongly denied any wrongdoing. He said the fact that he had an affair and later married Von Kienlin's wife, Ursula, in 1971, and that he had become famous and wealthy, had deepened both men's resentment of him. The marriage did not last and the two climbers have in turn claimed they were not motivated by jealously or resentment but only wanted to reveal what they saw as the truth.
Messner returned to Nanga Parbat a year after his brother's death to search for the body but found no trace. He returned again in 2000 to make a documentary about the trip and also wrote a book in which he described the anguish he has felt ever since. The position where the remains have been found, at 4,400 metres on the western Diamar face and not the Rupal face, is likely to finally remove any suspicions about Messner's behaviour that day.
Reached in Chile where he is attempting to climb Cerro Torre, the mountaineer Simone Moro, a friend of Messner's, said he was delighted at the news. "Finally, we have got the proof that Messner was right," he told the newspaper L'Adige. "Ninety per cent of the climbing community has always believed Reinhold but this discovery will lay to rest all the claims and allegations that have been around for years."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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*** Today's mighty oak was once just some nut who held his ground! With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
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