Reinhold Messner part 1: There can never be a greatest climber

Messner gives his take on why there can never be the "best climber of all time."

[@zymnasium]

He knows he is elite, and he is certainly modest. Anyone who achieves such levels of success at their chosen profession and then doesn't use said success to underscore an inflated ego is modest. That's what modesty is. In my opinion, Messner is the greatest. Everyone has their favorite athletes. The criteria those favorites are based on are different person to person.

[@BinaryRex18]

Nobody asked me, but if I may put my two cents in, I feel the 3 "best" climbers ever are Edward Whymper, George Mallory and Reinhold Messner. Whymper for that iconic first ascent of the Matterhorn which has been immortalised in the collective imagination of alpinists, Mallory because he conducted multiple attempts on everest at a time when that mountain was unmapped and unknown, and Messner because he has achieved everything a mountaineer can achieve including technically difficult climbs (knows the Alps like the back of his hand, climbed all 8000ers multiple times without oxygen, and on top of that contributed a lot to alpinism with his writing and insight).

[@akseli9]

Messner is right. Who is "better"? George Mallory climbing up over 8000 very near the summit of Everest (Chinese route) in 1924 in tweed coat and hobnail boots? Or Ueli Steck free soloing the north face of the Eiger in less than 3 hours, free soloing the southwest face of Annapurna with no sleeping bag, almost no food and no warm jacket in less than 28 hours? Or David Breashears filming Lowe and Destivelle on Trango Tower, overcoming his fear and panic at each and every second of the many days and nights spent hanging on a vertical face at 6000 on a single piton?

[@zymnasium]

This is what modesty looks like. Messner is the GOAT.

[@ripapa6355]

lol, "in his castle in Tyrol"

[@versusminus77]

haha, you tell him messner. hail messner. seriously.