UKC

Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner, 79, has been stripped of two Guinness World Records as new research suggests that he fell short of the true summit of Annapurna I in 1985. Messner, who is widely regarded as the greatest high-altitude mountaineer of all time, previously held the record for being the first person to summit all fourteen 8,000m peaks in 1986, and for being the first to do so without supplementary oxygen. 

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Not the Guinness Book of Records!!!!! How on Earth will Messner sleep at night!? 
 

Won’t somebody think of the children who got bought the Guinness book to records for Xmas and now it’s just a worthless piece of crap without dear Reinhold’s records!! 
 

Wonder how much altitude is being quibbled over here? Can’t be much or else he would of gone to the higher point!

The attention being paid to this non-story is an embarrassment.

Still got a lush barnet though.

Assuming he was short of the true summit, I think what probably matters here as far as records are concerned is whether Messner honestly believed he was on the summit or whether he knew he wasn't but was too knackered or thought it was too dangerous to go to it.

So we also have to assume that Joe Brown & George Band are not now credited with the first ascent of Kangchenjunga as they stopped a few feet short of the summit because of religious sensibilities. What utter tosh!

I read it in the 'papers' and it's apparently 5 vertical metres. Messner could see basecamp from Annapurna summit, and someone has spent years 'proving' that you can't see basecamp from the true summit by using satellite images. Absolute rubbish and this person is surely the biggest ever armchair critic. Takes nothing away from Messner despite what Guinness records thinks.

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I think it is the 65 horizontal metres which are more important.

I thought this was going to be some sort of juicy Compressor Route style controversy, not some banality about standing 60m off in the wrong direction on a big snowy dome. How dry.

I imagine he cares as much about this as 'what he has ever done on grit'.

This isn't the first 8000ers controversy, IIRC. The bloke isn't a mountaineer.

The difficulties seem to arise on peaks with plateau summits, in blizzard conditions, where it is pretty much impossible to determine the 'true summit'. You can with a satnav, but they didn't exist... And the hard part is already done. Stumbling around in a blizzard on a plateau just to claim the 5m difference seems stupid. But very important to the list-maker...

I thought everybody avoided the absolute to of Kangchenjunga - if that's still the case then by this criteria nobody has done the 14 8000m peaks.

It's all a load of b**locks isn't it.

Even if their assessment is correct, I don't think it's significant on a flat summit ridge several hundred metres long on which the snow depth can vary.

I wonder if the other listed records have had similar levels of scrutiny?

Has anyone just checked his Strava?

I just did. Goodness me. I hope I can do that when I'm in my late seventies.

"Stripped" in the title of this article suggests Messner's done something wrong, like cheated, taken PEDs. And what about Jurek, what's wrong with his set?

I was imaging a tricky ridge linking two tops. What is the top of Annapurna like?

Did you ever see the sixties TV series 'Branded'? In the opening credits Chuck Connor gets his cavalry sword broken. I imagine Messner will get an ice axe version for his walk of shame.

A long easy undulating ridge with minimal height difference between bumps.  

Anyway, in case I get audited I didn't step on the highest but of a cornice once, and I think I may have gone to wrong fencepost on a couple of Donalds

You ought to see me wandering around various flat tops in the Lakes trying to see if that really is the highest bit 🤣 or at least making sure I've blundered over all the possible contenders.

Geeky? Moi? 😁

I think my "fear" that a new version of the DoBIH will show that I missed it by 5m (I originally typed 5mm which may be more apposite) comes from the "trauma" of finding out that metrication had increased the number of Welsh 3000s from 14 to 15.

Regardless, I have no intention of ever revisiting Mungrisdale Common whatever they say about where the "summit" is.

HAAH! I'm sure when he went into the death zone on Everest without oxygen and solo, that the sole remaining thought in his oxygen starved brain was that Guinness Records Xmas Annual. Reading it in one of his Tyrolean castles and seeing his face in it next to a bloke from Grimsby who got the record for how many pressups he could do with 20 boiled eggs in his mouth made it all worthwhile. 

Clearly there is now a great urgency for the SMC to revise the Munro compleatist register and expunge all the charlatans who didn't stand on top of the Bolster Stone.

OP: I read something about this character and what came over was that he had no concept of where the threshold of meaningful pedantry was. Messner, Jurek et al summiting or not is probably worth a forgettable argument over a few beers but not much else. As a distinguished mountaineering friend once said to me after wandering around in a pea-souper on A' Bhuidheanach Bheag, fruitlessly trying to find the summit, "If you've climbed the mountain you've climbed the mountain."

Poor old Reinhold, he must be devastated that some of his achievements no longer reside in the same Guinness pantheon as other colossi of human achievement, like Most Eggs Crushed with the Head, Largest Collection of Sick Bags, Largest Smurf Meeting Ever, Highest Jump by a Guinea Pig and Hardest Kick In The Groin. A quick google will reveal other humbling examples of human endeavour recorded by Guinness.

It's not "absolute rubbish" though is it. It's an argument well supported with data. As to whether those 5 metres matter, that's a different question.

This nonesense is a sign of the times

It's Health and Safety gone mad!

Will someone please give that man a hobby?

Messner was first, Kukuczka second, Guiness book canceled itself.

Fortunately, Messner & Kukuczka do(did) not really care about Guiness record all that much.

BTW: it will be hilarious to see bouldering videos re-analyzed with new tech 30 years down the line to take away first ascents based on micrometer discrepancies to correct moves. 

He really does have doesn't he?

Also seriously, this isn't news.  Why on earth waste time on such a large article.  I guess it gets clicks which appeases the advertising gods.

I feel it necessary to clarify that my username is in no way derived from this measurement lest anyone think I’m a conspiratorial troll who has been lurking on UKC awaiting this moment.

You've played a cracking long game - why not take the credit?

Summary of all responses: people who actually climb don't give a toss 

Favourite Messner story:

Ed Webster: "People say I look like you but I'm more handsome."

Messner: "Great. You should come and visit my castle one day."

Isnt the problem he has one.

Who knows what he would chose as a replacement.

Felt is right.

So come on UKC-news, remove the clickbait 'Stripped' from this (non) news item; you can do better than this.

Does anyone care what Guiness thinks ?

When a climbing-related story is hitting the mainstream news, and often being butchered, I think it's useful for climbing-specific websites to cover it and do a better job. Though in this case, the coverage I heard on BBC radio did seem to be suitably sceptical about the significance of the pedantry.

I've never stood on top of the summit cairn on any of the (well over 200+) Munro's I've summited - just touched them with my hand (and some of them I couldn't reach the very top anyway).

Does this mean that I have never actually summited a single Munro ?

As for the cairn on "Mount" Snowdon !!!

I bet not one in fifty Munro-ers go to the actual top of the Inaccessible Pinnacle.  The SMC will need to revise their records...

I'm more worried about all those who top rope it, often employing a guide and probably on a tight rope, and seem to think they can claim the tick.

I think you’ll find he already has one!

No. The cairn is not part of the hill.

Next some LIDARmonkey in a basement will be discrediting the first ascent of Rum Doodle.

So? Was it Robinson or Burns?

Apparently they do, going by how riled up this has got people. 

But RM did his ascents well before all the satellite data etc. Where rock is not the highest point, does the amount of snow and ice on the summit vary with time? I believe it can get pretty thick at extreme altitudes and can be subject to significant variation. Can anyone say with certainty that the highest point now was the highest point then.

Couldn't RM just respond with, that might be the highest point now, but 45 years ago it was where I stood.

The SMC, in my experience, are happily unbothered by this kind of stuff. It's the databasey/Relative Hills crowd you need to worry about. They've been known to write disapproving letters.

BingSoc!  Or change the rules (see "Grahams"). 

UKC-News has amended news item to 'Loses'; much less click-baity

My mate recently claimed Aonoch Mor. Having used the cable car!! Being referred to the ethics committee as we speak.

I always thought there seemed something a bit fictional about it.

This has distinct similarities with the cricket squabble about how many runs and centuries Jack Hobbs scored. Dishearteningly (to my eyes at least), Wisden has currently opted to go with the revisionists who say 199 centuries rather than the traditional and long-accepted figure of 197. They've already changed their minds twice however and might well do so again. Lots of other sources, eg Playfair, have stuck with 197.

I'm sure they  do give a toss when it is one of the recent 'record breakers' falling short like this.  Its the nature of records that the 'rules' have to be adhered to.

Personally doesn't detract from RM's mountaineering achievements but I can see purely from the record book perspective its important. 

Good statement from Ed Viesturs on his IG.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cxq08oWtkLD/

That is outrageous (using the cable car that is, not the referral to the ethics committee).

Logically the highest point is the highest point, and if you haven't reached it you haven't reached the top.  However the summit of Annapurna is a long ridge with a number of potential summits. I've looked at Jurgalski's description of the summit ridge and I'm still unclear what he regards as the true summit, but his description seems to suggest point C2, given 8091m. However nearby C3 is given 8090.87m. Given that "C" signifies "cornice" is seems likely that any of the putative summits could vary in height from year to year. In that case, which is the highest point might also vary.

For modern ascents with the benefit of GPS it is reasonable to expect that climbers reach a specified point which is recognised as the summit. For historic ascents some judgement should be used. Messner reached what on the day he judged to be the highest point.  This is not a mountain where two distinct summits are separated by a long distance or technically difficult ground, and if Messner had judged a different point to be the top it would have been a simple matter to go there. I don't see how Jurgalski can be so confident that under the snow conditions on that day, nearly 40 years ago, the point Messner reached wasn't actually the highest. 

Messner should have been given the benefit of the doubt, and I strongly suspect that most mountaineers will continue to regard his ascent (and his record) as valid.  To his credit, Ed Viesturs has refused to recognise the new Guinness record now in his name.

What data? He wasn't carrying a GPS tracker, so the "data" seems to just be inferences from his own description of the summit? Have I misunderstood?

I think ever since they claimed 'Guinness is good for you' they've been on dodgy ground?

It's not the case on Ben Doran. It has a massive cairn near the summit but about 100 feet or so to the actual top which only has a small cairn. How many have got this wrong in misty weather, or worse in whiteout, as was the case with my first ascent of the peak, when I struggled to locate the true summit. There is also a Munro near Crainlarich which has twin tops with virtually the same height. (The name escapes me) but the SMC in their wisdom moved the true summit from one to the other.

Beinn a' Choin - I have some history with this one.  Maps were unsure of which end was highest until a close look at new 1:25k mapping in 1983 showed that a bump in between them  has an extra contour.  I brought this to the  attention of the SMC at the time that I bought a map showing Beinn Tealach was 915m and by coincidence shared a hut with the Keeper of the Tables that night.  Tealach was of interest and soon added to the list, but Hamish was not at all bothered about Beinn a' Choin.  A few years later someone else brought it up and that summit is now recognised. I think the constant moving of Beinn Tealach's neighbour's summit was too much of an irritation for it to start again.

Another hill were a big cairn attracts folk away from the summit and it makes very little difference in effort is Beinn Achaladair.  Go up there in Winter and see the difference in footprints between the cairn with the view and the wee cairn at the summit.  

Now if you want to meddle and be incredibly annoying about hill tops you need a differential gps and the willingness to dismantle cairns. There are teams out there doing this and if they do something like bung Glyder Fawr over 1000m it makes the news. I miss the days when there was uncertainty and the real prospect of Sgùrr a' Choire Bheithe or the Atholl Beinn Bhreac could move over some hypothetical line and cause a stushie.  (See Foinaven rushes etc).

I climbed this with one of the 1st metric 1:50k maps which were a direct conversion from ft with e.g. 871m contour lines. The top of Achaladair didn't bear much resemblance to the map!

Funnily enough precisely that happened to me on that peak (Beinn Dorain) one winter. It was snowing gently and bad viz, and I reached the cairn you mention, which I assumed/hoped was the top. Got back to my tent in Glen Orchy, read the SMC Munro book entry and realised from the description that it was the wrong top. Luckily I had a day in hand so I went back the following day and bagged it, then did it again a day later when my friends showed up.

The Guinness Book of Records used toe a handy Christmas present for adolescent family members. No more. 
And I’ll accept Meissner’s take on it too. 

You did heroic sleuthing with Chroin and Teallach, proper old-fashioned squinting at maps for spot heights and tiny ring contours.

And in doing so they blithely evict and quite possibly kill lots of insects and spiders that shelter in old summit cairns - then they wonder why there aren't many wee birds around on the high tops. That kind of stuff annoys me more than the actual height-pedantry itself.

Loads of people have made that mistake, me included. My example came in rather silly circumstances: a friend and I set off to do Dothaidh/Dorain on midsummer night 1985 for what were meant to be my 99th and 100th Munros. Got up there about 4am in early daylight but thick cloud. Duly arrived at Carn Sasunnaich, shook hands a la Shipton and Tilman, then headed down for breakfast. It was only the following May when I was back there for a Dorain/Dothaidh/Achaladair/Chreachain wander that I got to the Sasunnaich cairn again in clear weather and said Oh...

I've read an account of a Munro completion supposedly on Beinn Dorain in poor weather that looked suspiciously like they cracked open the whisky and champagne on the lower top and descended unawares. Another classic example is Gulvain: two tops on different OS maps with the lower one having the trig and coming first on the standard approach route. Again plenty of people have gone home thinking they'd been somewhere they hadn't.

(Good effort going up Dorain three days in a row, anyhow.)

Of course, locally for us, the summit of Kingseat is a few hundred metres west of the big cairn and trig point.

5mtrs lower.... 5!! 🤣

What a load of crap.

I see I got a lot of dislikes for this. What I meant was what there was in that 65m is what might be important. 65m of undulating plateau - who cares? 65m of corniced death ridge with a big drop and reascent - very significant. It seems that it is more like the former.

Indeed - and lots of people coming from the Dollar side stop at the big cairn and probably say they've been up King's Seat - personally I wouldn't quibble with them even though I dutifully do the extra few minutes each time.

(You'll do well to find a trig point on King's Seat, mind you!)

Once there were summit descriptions in Munro's Tables. Useful with 1" maps or the 1st series 1:50k.

The Database of British and Irish Hills (and presumably the Hill Bagging website equivalent) has summit notes which detail anything nearby that might cause doubt or confusion - not always 100% correct but it's always being updated and "improved" especially as the surveying quality improves.

I think that RM has a valid appeal on the grounds that while he might have failed to make the last 5m, the tip of his quiff (coif?) almost certainly did.

if we’re being that anal about applying present-day analysis and data to judgements made way before their existence (and on differences that might as well have been impossible to make in past circumstances), i take it a reevaluation of which ‘golden age’ ascent now goes to the guide instead is imminent?

Ah, maybe the hair is the key to this. A little research reveals that Jurgalski is himself a hirsute chap:
https://www.badische-zeitung.de/der-herr-der-daten--79642516.html
but not in the same league as Messner. Could hair-related jealousy be in play? Is the realisation that Jurgalski will never rival Messner's mighty mop the motivation for his attempt to undermine the great man's mountaineering CV?

Except RM never seems to have paid any attention to it, so cannot have 'lost' it.

"Guinness withdraws record" might be more accurate.

I never learned German but does 'badische-zeitung' have anything to do with badgers? Both men seem to have one on their head/face. Maybe badger-envy is a thing over there.

sadly not because that would be funny.

baden is the name of a region in germany, think the most south-western edge, and part of the german state baden-wuerttemberg. (to the west of bavaria)

badger, on the other hand, is dachs in german. (pronounced somewhat like ‘ducks’)

It would be funny if Jurgalski owned a Dachshund (which seem to have become popular again, in this part of Scotland at least).

Except when he says "I don’t think any of these climbers meant to be dishonest."

No one ever said they did, nor implied anything similar. The 8000ers research group has repeatedly made it clear that they do not think any of these 14x8k claimants have been dishonest. 

OK, everyone had a turn now?

As one of the 8000ers research group who have been working on this stuff for years, I feel the need to make a few points clear.

1. I personally do not consider Guinness to be any judge or record of excellence in alpinism or mountaineering history. This is Eberhard's thing, something we disagree on strongly, but most of the chronicling work is his work, so...

2. For some context on this people really should read: https://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/13201215692 and in there you will see that no climber's name is mentioned - which was a deliberate decision. Because this is not about any one climber. It's not about Messner. Of course he's a central figure, but the main aim was the mountains, not the people. Clearing up the geographical facts/issues and shining a light on current practices in the 8000m mountain business. As he's done for 50 years, Messner has made it about Messner.

3. Most people, including almost everyone in this thread it seems, have no idea how much evidence and data has been compiled over the years to form these 8000er dossiers and positions. It's not just a few satellite images or a glib opinion. Rodolphe Popier has looked at hundreds of images of Annapurna summit ridge, likewise dozens and dozens for Manaslu and Dhaulagiri. All the old books and their photos have been studied. Countless climbers asked and re-asked. You think we just make this shit up? Anyone who says you can't tell, or whatever, has not looked at so many photos, which are so consistent in what they show. Can a snow summit vary a few metres between seasons or over decades? Sure, maybe. But the evidence of dozens and dozens of photos show that they don't really. The exception, sometimes, might be Dhaulagiri, where there's a really noticeable difference pre-monsoon v post-monsoon. But as anyone with minimal effort can see, the summits of Manaslu and Dhaulagiri are actually rock, with just a bit of snow on top, so the potential difference will only ever be tiny, and if snow piles up on a ridge point, it also piles up on the actual summit too. So such a statistically unlikely and minor possibility is not enough to negate all the other evidence.

4. "You haven't been there so how would you know?" This is one of the most common criticisms. If having been there was a good qualification for knowing the highest point, then how did hundreds and hundreds of people not realise they were - undeniably, proven - not on the summit of Manaslu during all those years?

5. "Who cares?" In good ol' UKC style, a lot of people have come on here to voluntarily make the point that they don't care and can't understand why anyone else would. So why are you here? 

6. Lots of people care. Viesturs himself went back to Shishapangma to get the true summit, just a few metres higher than his previous central peak. Loretan did likewise, despite having climbed a great new line on the south face in 1990. Nives Meroi and Romano Benet were informed by Hawley that they had stopped short at the pole on Dhaulagiri so they went back. Andrew Lock went back to Broad Peak. And last year 60 former/mistaken 'summiters' went back to Manaslu to go to the true summit, including Ralf Dujmovits. All these people, actual 8000m climbers, not 'armchair critics' care, a lot, but clearly they're all wrong because a bunch of anonymous randoms on UKClimbing and the rest of the web say so. OK then... 

I'm suppose I care (a bit) because of what it says about what people think mountaineering is. If people really think it's about records and that (maybe) mistaking one bit of snow for another is the main issue, then OK, but that is very different reasons I.get enjoyment from it  (and yes I do.tickists).

I also.think it unfairly undermines people's achievements. It's just cheap to say someone like Messner who.had the vision to.climb way ahead of.others didn't really achieve success because of a possibly higher.cornice somewhere

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That seems a critical point - and is almost certainly a source of a lot of the disquiet which this article is attracting.

The very direct association with 'Guinness World Records' gives this matter a joke-shop air.

I think the majority of fair minded mountaineers totally accept that all Messner's ascents were valid with the topographical information available at the time. A massive over-reaction by the Guinness  World Records committee. As for the 'cartographer' trying to elevate his status amongst his peers. I'd hate to be stuck in a lift with him. Perhaps Reinhold is not considered 'woke' enough? Just asking for a friend.

Does that mean I should remove the cairn in order to claim the summit?

The only redeeming feature of this pathetic sht show, is that the victim of this corrosive BS is someone famous and respected who doesn't need to prove himself to anyone.

But what if this happened to an upcoming mountaineer who relies on sponsorship and support for their livelihood. Suppose a snow ridge summit was a different shape at one point and a cartographer uses data from after some storm when the summit may have altered. If they were accused of being some metres in the wrong place it harm their career.

I know that nowadays there is GPS and whatnot, but it could still happen that armchair critics trash someone else, not as secure as Messner, in their quest for self promotion (self promotion by knocking others)

Gosh, how silly is this.  The retrospective application of arbitrary rules to a endeavour that has no rules.  If your child hiked up Yr Wydffa but found that the cairn was thronged with people preventing her/him from touching top of the trig, would you tell them that they hadn't reached summit of the mountain?
  

I thought that one of the key criticisms of wokisum was it's reliance on subjective feelings over objective fact.

Insisting that Messner climbed all these mountains because he "felt" he had, or his "lived experience" was that of "sincerely believing" he had climbed them sounds fairly woke to me.

Neil Armstrong never reached the moon! He never took his moon boots off and touched the surface with his bare feet! 

And Scott never reached the South Pole!  Photos clearly show him standing 9 inches away from the actual pole!

Ha ha

That's an interesting take.....

To me, just to me, mind, IMO (warning, comma overload) the saddest "records" are the youngest to climb Peak X e.g. Everest or the Matterhorn or other. Then we have the sad (to me) sight of a six year old or whatever being dragged up to the top by an IMO ambitious parent. Usually sponsored with fanfare. Which "record" is then soon broken

PS I am not against children being taken up mountains. But when there's a huge media splash and fundraising for the climb I then wonder what their motivations are

Yes - it's a pathetic and supercilious take. I was disgusted to read that comment.

True, but the summit is underneath the cairn - therefore no-one can actually stand on the summit.

It's mild and polite compared to so many of the opinions of his contemporaries and those who dealt with him. This is 'History of Mountaineering 101' stuff. It's a man who has courted with and raged against the media for decades, who publicly fell out with most partners, often for the great crime of publishing photos or making comments that showed or implied he was not in front at all times. He did this to Habeler in the 70s and Arved Fuchs after the Antarctic crossing. This is all on the public record.

So nobody has ever climbed a hill with a cairn on top?

Maybe he has. But his record was perhaps the most significant (at least at the time) and probably the most famous, which is why this has been reported in the mainstream media as well as the climbing press.  8000ers.com has chosen to revise and publish a list of record-holders which does name names, when they could have left it to people to draw their own conclusions.  Guinness have looked to that list to verify their own records.  Intentionally or not, you have made it about the people as well as the mountains.

That can only be a good thing. Some current practices seem highly dubious and based more on commercial considerations than anything else. 

Now we have accurate positions for the highest points and the capability to accurately pinpoint a climber's location it seems entirely reasonable to expect that future ascents should be required to reach a specified point.  What seems less reasonable is to apply those criteria to historic ascents where the climbers had to judge for themselves whether they had reached the highest point, especially where the summit is a near-horizontal undulating ridge.  The test should be whether the point they achieved differs materially from what is now regarded as the highest point. "Materially" would take into account not only horizontal and vertical distance but also the technical difficulty of the intervening ground. Of course that introduces an element of subjectivity, compared with the absolutism of 8000ers.com's approach, but it also reflects the reality of mountaineering.

Perhaps in these cases we should distinguish between "mountaineering ascents" and "topographical ascents".  In mountaineering terms I think few would say that Messner had not reached the top of Annapurna. If he did not stand on what has now been identified as the very highest point, from the description given it does not sound to me as if the discrepancy was sufficiently material to invalidate the ascent. 

It is this failure to apply judgement to historic ascents made under very different conditions to today, and instead to rely on purely topographical calculations which I think is causing disquiet.  

Of course if some 8000m climbers decide to repeat their climbs to remove any doubt, that is up to them.  Not everyone is able to do so.

So if the Annapurna summit is a series of corniced 'mini' summits along a ridge with little real height between them - were the French the first? As "The summit was a corniced crest of ice..." from Annapurna by M. Herzog. It would appear they exited the couloir onto the ridge and stopped.  Herzog and Lachenal took several photos before they descended; were they ever published?

Our knowledge of what the summit ridges of various mountains has improved significantly with GPS, personal trackers and multiple ascents photographs and descriptions. However, when Messner and Kammerlander climbed the NW face, theirs was only the 5th route up the mountain and they didn't know the summit ridge topography. It's well possible that they thought they were on the summit as 5m in 65m difference is not a great rise especially when you're trying to determine if the bump you're on is the summit or not - there's been lots of talk about which bump is the real top of many Scottish hills earlier above!  Don't know what the weather was like.

Hopefully Red Bull and Guiness will correct the myth about Nims Purja's 6 month 'romp' around the 8000ers, particularly when many people were aware that the 'summit' he claimed on Manaslu was only the end of the fixed ropes.

I'm not sure many folk are saying that the now-accepted summit is incorrect. More making the fair point that if Messner had known, he would have gone to it. But he didn't know. It wasn't that he couldn't, that the ground was too difficult etc. I thought history was about recognising mountaineering achievements? You're technically correct, and that's fine, but the point bears little relevance to mountaineering from the point of view of challenge or uncertainty.

Frankly I'm amazed some care enough to do the mountain again just because of a 5m miss. Why not do a different hill?  

It certainly puts "There are other Annapurnas" in a new light . . .

If the summit is rock and not subject to meaningful erosion then you’d be right.  If the summit is snow then it will vary from season to season and on a snow dome or plateau or even ridge the highest point will move about.

Although probably not enough make a difference, even to the pendants.

Curiously, until it melted, Norway's highest summit was once uncertain because it depended on whether you counted.tbe ice thickness on one peak. However this has now.melted due to climate change.

this is exceptionally well put. it’s one thing to leverage technology so that better information is available to all, going forward.

to issue a list of people, named explicitly as on the site, or implied as in the linked article, who you don’t believe did it right (for an arbitrary value of ‘right,’ as the article correctly points out), is another, it is making it about the people, and is about retroactively rewriting mountaineering history. you can’t put these words out in the world and claim that any consequences arising from them are not on you.

there seems to be a less-than-healthy mixture of valuable goals (highlighting the effect of commercial mountaineering practise, providing better data) and personal axes to grind in this project.

8000ers research group:

The summit is the summit. Either you reach the summit and stand on it or you don't. Back around Monsieur Messner

Also the 8000ers research group:

Here's a bloke standing on the summit of Annapurna (Shows photo of bloke pretty damn conclusively NOT standing on the summit of Annapurna)

https://aac-publications.s3.amazonaws.com/articles/aaj-13201215692-16063114...

And why does the 8000RG sounds like a lobby org out of tuffton st?

Perhaps that's a cornice on the actual high snow surface, which might possibly explain why he is not on the summit? Only he knows!

Had a look on bing maps but kept getting distracted by being bombarded with ads for oats milk for some reason, so had to give up on that.

Luckily my good friend has access to a highly advanced super computer able to use 5th generation AI technology to analyse images, normally used for top clearance critical military tasks, deep space exploration, and downloading porn, and sent me the results of the painstaking analyses which i have been given rare permission to share publicly, linked below

https://i.imgur.com/FlcLfof.jpeg

Decades of photographs show that this is not the case.

Thanks for providing an example of the problems of the information ecosphere I mentioned the other thread on here:

Which leads me to the other, main difficulty which is pertinent to publishing two lists or a legacy list. The current state of information. Everywhere. But mostly online. It's almost impossible to have balanced arguments, heated or not, and there is little room for nuance. Most people on most sites are commenting out of complete ignorance about mountaineering, high altitude, chronicling sport etc. Which can be OK, completely non-expert out of field opinions can be insightful and valuable to those of us in it up to our necks. But mostly it's just rubbish. So they won't be reading or appreciating any 'legacy' lists.

This distortion of facts, 'truth' and information in general is a subject of importance to me, as might have been discerned from anyone who took notice of any of my posts over the years. It's the Information Ecosystem. It's the importance of epistemological security, that is, how we know the things we know, how we agree on facts, or not and how we maintain peace, security and progress in the face of bad-faith actors spreading disinformation, or our own tolerance for misinformation in the name of convenience, commerce or emotional vulnerability.

So should we have held the facts and published nothing? Actually the truth of some of it would have come out anyway, in some form, as shown by dribs and drabs of disquiet about Manaslu from such as Russell Brice some years ago. That would have just been more of an unresolved mess. Should we just have sat by and watched a mess of misinformation, historical inaccuracy and, occasionally, lies unfold while all along we had the information and data to resolve the basic question?

We, or I, in the case of the AAJ article, put the issue out there without names. The New York Times recognised the 'significance' of it and that is when Messner and others got named and involved.

Did I know that would happen? No. Did I think it could? Sure. But it would be impossible, not to mention undesirable, for me or anyone else to control, or try to control, the entire body of information and the narrative. I put the most correct information I could out there in the best way I could while being aware, but uncertain, about what might happen. I take responsibility for my actions but can't possibly be responsible for how Messner or others react, or what others do, with either the information I published, or what others make and publish from that. 

It's disingenuous to write e.g.

"but some of the ascents in question also involve some of the biggest names and ascents in the history of Himalayan climbing. "

and then pretend you aren't naming or criticising people, or not know there will be a reaction.

Would agree with you on that point - there are plenty of data around that show cornices and other wind derived features move very very slowly i.e. the cornices on the Abalakov Route on Pobeda. However while the location varies slowly the relative altitude does vary. depending on the amount of snow and the season.

As the AAJ article concluded " When looking at past ascents, however, the research group feels it is both fair and practical to give leeway for understandable confusion or errors, and therefore summit claims should be respected for climbers who historically finished in the following zones:

Annapurna: C1 in the east to the Ridge Junction (RJ) in the west.....

Clearly by this definition Messner achieved the summit. If not, then the fact that the understanding of the summit at the time he made the ascent was on the ridge, whose topography wasn't well known (7th ascent, weather unknown).

At that point in time Messner wasn't in the 'race for the 8000' as so probably considered his high point the summit.

Further in the AAJ article "The community can declare that, from 2021 onward, if climbers want to be included on official summit lists and in definitive histories, we only count ascents verified to have been on the summit, not on any lower points." I guess 2021 is chosen as an arbitrary point in time to set a baseline; whether people from early years who nearly made it want to go back and do the summit properly is up to them, though they might get questioned about their 'ascent' later on.

Bit like a gun manufacturer saying they have no responsibility for what people do with those weapons.

On one level I'm a bit surprised that nobody in America has sued a gun manufacturer, similarly to actions against cigarette manufacturers saying that they knew that cigarettes were harmful but still produced them.

With apologies for any thread re-directional hijack.

I don't think anyone could reasonably object to the determination of the facts or their publication.  It also follows that new information may give rise to questions.  What is at issue is the application of this new information to historic ascents. A purist approach which insists an ascent is only complete if it touches the recognised highest point has obvious attractions (until future surveys reassess where the highest point is) but seems nit-picking when applied to historic ascents made with different knowledge of the topography and which would ordinarily be understood by most people to have reached the top. 

The AAJ article is quoted as saying  "When looking at past ascents, however, the research group feels it is both fair and practical to give leeway for understandable confusion or errors, and therefore summit claims should be respected for climbers who historically finished in the following zones". However 8000ers.com's revised lists don't appear to reflect this.  Guinness are only following 8000ers.com's lead.

The reaction to this news suggests that the wider mountaineering community is not yet persuaded that the purist, absolutist approach is correct, at least when applied to historic ascents.  It seems to me that more discussion is required.  This is not just a matter for 8000m climbers but the whole community, if these records are to be accepted.  

I didn't name people. I criticised practices, not people. 

And for all I knew, nobody would care, they'd say it didn't matter. If you reckon you can accurately judge the impact of a publication you should go into the publishing business. 

Yes he was.

As I've said elsewhere, we floated this idea of Tolerance Zones and it was generally not popular. It also had to be peak-specific, which would make it hard to understand and administer. And in reality, it was really only appropriate for Annapurna, Cho Oyu and maybe Dhaulagiri. Manaslu is really a different kettle of fish (and note that hundreds of people summited the true summit in the last couple of weeks no problem). Shishapangma and Broad Peak were cleared up years earlier and never should have been an issue.

Look, this is simply not the case. On all these peaks, many climbers went to the true summits from as far back as the 1950s, right through to the last decade. This has been reiterated over and over for Manaslu in particular. There has been greater variation on Annapurna, I will grant that, but will also note that from the evidence available, pretty much no 'famous' 8000m climber stopped as far from Annapurna's true summit as M & K did in 1985.

The article is a few years old now and work has been ongoing. As I've said, we tried the TZ concept and it didn't catch on.

Maybe. Maybe not. The wider mountaineering community is pretty wide nowadays. People who make angry online comments are usually in disagreement, but that doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of people out there silently agreeing. Again, Manaslu is an example of how things have changed, despite what so many in the 'wider mountaineering community' wailed when it all became clear. Time will tell.

So how many others in the first ten on the list would have all justified ascents if say the tolerance zone or bad weather was factored in? That's my real concern here: that honest mistakes that were hard to correct at the time are bundled in with very likely non ascents. I can believe such circumstances might have impacted a few, but its really hard to believe it for all ten. I also think tolerance zones might suddenly be regarded more sympathetically in such work following the current publicity backlash (even though most of what is being said seems unfair).

I can't say off the top of my head and without delving into the lists. I know Loretan's stopping at the pole on Dhaulagiri is out of any TZ, unfortunately. Wielicki on Annapurna was just out of the proposed TZ. There is some very heated debate about Kukuczka on Manaslu, with photos being a bit inconclusive. Popier definitely thinks he was short of the true summit, but if he was, then he was well within the TZ that had been proposed for Manaslu. Oiarzabal was also within such a Manaslu TZ, and on the true summits of all others, it seems. Of course, if it could be proven Jerzy was on the true summit of Manaslu, then he becomes indisputably the first to climb all 8000ers.

I guess I need to reiterate that the research group has always maintained that we believe they were all honest mistakes. We don't think anyone was deliberately lying about any summit, at least not amongst the well-known 14x8K claimants. Maybe some stopped due to weather, some due to extreme fatigue, or fear, and many because they just hadn't gone up there with a clear enough idea of where the true summit actually was and they thought the bump they were on seemed like it. Of those who climbed new routes, such as Kukuczka, they seemed to still make a point of going to the true summit, or trying to. They didn't just reach the summit ridge, or an existing route, and call it good. Although Messner has implied this in a couple of comments for Annapurna, that is, that the exact top on the summit ridge didn't matter - it was all the 'summit'. But then at other times he's said other things.

Sorry. I was referring to all ascents of those times, not just those first ten climbers on the 14 list.

Nevertheless there was considerable doubt where the true summit was, as Popier's description of the  Annurpurna summit ridge shows.  I am unclear exactly where M & K stopped - all I have seen is that it was 65m distant and 5m lower than what is now recognised as the true summit. The question in my mind is whether it was reasonable for them to decide that they were on the highest point.  Popier's description of the summit acknowledges that perspectives make it difficult to distinguish the various lumps and bumps along the ridge.

What was the context?  Popier's document suggests using it going forward, while accepting previous historic ascents. I can see the objections to this, and for modern climbers with GPS there can be little excuse for misidentifying the true summit.  However for historic ascents it seems reasonable to give them the benefit of the doubt where there were reasonable grounds for uncertainty over where the true summit was.. This seems to have been the approach of the AAJ article and Popier's document - when and why did 8000ers.com decide to take a different approach?

I've met two Booker Prize winners, one Oscar winner, two Nobel Laureates, and the Queen, but the only time I was ever struck dumb was in the presence of Reinhold Messner. I was wandering around the Messner Mountain Museum near Bozen, and there he was having a cup of tea and a chat with some friends. I stood frozen to the spot - properly gripped - and when my wife suggested that I go and say hello I nearly fainted. She then told me to put my sunglasses on because I had tears in my eyes and was making a fool of myself.

I don't imagine that my response would be any different now that Guinness World Records have **** the bed. Apart from anything else I don't tend to trust the opinions of any organisation founded by Norris McWhirter. 

I think we all know who was the first, and only an idiot would dispute who is the greatest. 

Also, he really does have great hair!

I wrote the AAJ article. I am in the 8000ers group. Popier wrote the Annapurna dossier. He is in the 8000er group. The 8000ers group is based on Jurgalski's website of data, as he did most of the base research for all this.

I can't repeat it any more. We published the idea of Tolerance Zones - after MUCH discussion over years - in order to 'respect' those historical ascents only to find that on balance it was not well accepted, and it was open to misinterpretation and possibly abuse. 

This information has now been out there for years. People need to look at themselves and ask why is it that NOW they have so much to say. 

What seems to have triggered people now is the participation and judgement by Guinness. The concept of RM 'losing' his records, which he has vociferously said again and again that he doesn't care about. The idea that Guinness would have any say over the history of alpinism - and I've already said in multiple places that I agree with that objection, that it was solely driven by Eberhard Jurgalski.

And the idea that our history and our heroes might not be what we thought. All sorts of people are having trouble with that these days, but that's not on me.

I have now traversed out of my Tolerance Zone for all this and won't be replying anymore anytime soon.

Thanks for the interest everyone.

I once climbed with a chap who told me - I don't think he wasn't lying - that he did all the hard climbing on the Magic Line (K2) without oxygen, but turned round on the summit ridge so as to get his partner - who was having a hard time with altitude sickness - back to camp safely. He did.

Same fella did the 2nd ascent of a route on Nanga Parbat that Mark Twight had proclaimed as being 'like having sex with Death', and proclaimed it 'not that bad'.

John Redhead said something along the lines of 'if you're climbing to get to the top, then you should question your reasons for going climbing'.

I have seen a couple of 8,000 metre peaks, and that was experience enough for me.

you just know this guy goes to public swimming pools and swims diagonally.

Is it just climbers or do other sports beat themselves up over stuff like this?

There must be occasions where a marathon course was a metre or so short. Does anyone care?

Or what about if they reconstructed Bannister's mile record and decided he timing or distance were slightly short.

Just a couple of examples 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/16/camille-herron-100-mile-...

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/30/great-scottish-outcry-...

Think people should read the whole story before they comment as most of the questions are answered in the text.

Messner is a legend whatever, I doubt youl find many that give a hoot about this, just look at the other records, would he really knowingly have stopped 85mtrs short of the summit??? Doubtfull…

Whenever I mentioned 'Branded' I get blank looks, thanks for confirming it was all real---

It is Bonatti and he didn’t summit any 8000m peaks.

He does. 

Plenty of people miss 'the true Wainwright' even when they hit the true summit, perhaps Mr W just added Binsey and Mungrisdale Common for his own amusement having spectacularly failing to get to the true summit of Helm Crag; have you checked out Karen and Dan Parker's book, it has some errors in it-outrageous  

With a slightly more serious mindset, yep decades of scouring photos might help someone decide RM couldn't possibly have seen Basecamp-but the impish responses make me wonder if that judgement is being made then surely the only valid 'proof' of that would be a photo from the true summit (wherever that may be) on the same day, taken by a person of exactly the same height as RM wearing exactly the same clothing so the view point was exactly the same-lest it all be about someone guessing at a likelihood from the comfort of their home/office.

A former colleague who photographed many expeditions made comments such as 'total BS the lens, film, light, temp would all alter the 'image' subtlety-I can't see RM losing too much sleep over it, any mention of his name must nett him some dosh somehow   

I think that came out when I was most of the way through so I've never had a proper look at it. Whilst I understand the commercial reasoning behind it, I actually think it's a horrendous concept, basically facilitating box ticking with virtually no effort, channelling erosion through popularity onto fewer paths, etc.

As for Wainwright summits not always being at the highest point, if the DoBIH mentions other bits that are slightly higher or lower, or Wainwright's or Birkett's summit is 80m S, etc, then I'll have been there.

Today's wandering about was Loweswater End - Carling Knott, "ground 20m SW is just higher", exactly which bump on the ground was that then - never mind I've stood on them all 😁 - fairly sure I've become increasingly obsessive about this ☹️, what if a future survey/revision shows that the ground 3cm away is higher 🤦

Actually that was only one of the 4 summits today that had observations requiring more than one location to be visited.

OK but hopefully you'll continue to contribute now and again to other threads. When you give your opinion it's always interesting and well informed.

Can you accurately tell which is highest from a handheld camera ?

Interesting this thread came up. I thought of it last night when reading Winthrop-Young writing in the 1950s about the alpine club of the 1880s:

Yes and no. It depends.

Interesting, thanks. This issue comes up nowadays when people claim the first ascent of a peak in Nepal, that has recently been 'opened' by being put on a permitted list - but in fact it was climbed years ago, either illegally or not. They say if the ascent was not 'official' it doesn't count.

Regardless of red-tape or officialdom of the day, nothing can change the fact of you standing on a summit that no one has before, whether a bureaucrat issues you a certificate afterwards or not. 

Whether you actually got to the summit of the thing you were trying to get to the summit of, and are claiming you got to the summit of, is another story.