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Messner - A mystery solved?
14:58 p.m. EST Feb 6, 2004
Is a bone discovered on Nanga Parbat more than three years ago the key the Günther Messner's disappearance?
On June 27, 1970, Reinhold Messner and his brother Günther accomplished one of the boldest feats in mountaineering history when they made the first ascent of the Rupal Face -- the world’s highest rock wall -- and reached the summit of Nanga Parbat. It was their first attempt on an 8,000m peak. It would also be Günther’s last.
The Descent, Günther Goes Missing
In Reinhold’s account, it was a combination of the weather, the hour, Günther's exhaustion, and having no ropes to descend back down the wall safely, that led the brothers to opt for descent down the less steep, but unknown Diamir face on the west side of the mountain. In a grueling two days that left both near total collapse, Reinhold went ahead to scout a route through the crevasses. He returned for Günther, only to find his brother had disappeared under an avalanche. Günther was never seen again.
A Sign?
Over the years, Reinhold has returned to Nanga Parbat five times - sometimes to look for signs of his brother, other times to climb. His searches turned up nothing until July 2000, when he returned again with brother Hubert, Wolfgang Thomaseth and Hans Peter Eisendle. Reinhold wanted to retrace the steps of Albert Mummery, who lost his life on the very first ascent of the peak in 1895. He, too, was never seen again. Rumor had it however, Reinhold was back to look for Günther.
After weeks of cold rain, the weather broke and on July 26, Wolfgang and Hans went out to photograph the Diamir glacier. According to a report in the Die Ziet, they returned with a “greenish piece of material and a bone” found on the north side of the glacier. Hubert, a physician, identified the bone as a fibula. The question was, “Whose?” Based on its location, the team believed it might belong to Mummery, or perhaps was the bone of a Pakistani climber who’d perished near the same area. There was another possibility, though. It might have belonged to Günther.
Die Ziet reports that Hubert was initially skeptical it could be Günther's, who believed it to be older than thirty years and too long to be his brother’s. But the team packed up the bone and brought it back with them from the mountain.
Last year, when Reinhold learned that the body of the Pakistani climber had been found, he decided to send the bone out for genetic testing at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Austria's Innsbruck University. Anatomy pathologist Eduard Egarter, said initial testing indeed suggests a strong possibility that the fibula is Günther's. The measurement of the bone also matched Günther's size. Though Reinhold concedes the initial testing is not yet conclusive, he believes the results of further testing (expected within two months) will provide a positive confirmation.
Animosity and Lingering Questions
If so, it could finally put to rest the question of Reinhold’s credibility, raised in recent years by fellow expedition members from the 1970 expedition. Like Reinhold, Max-Engelhardt von Kienlin and Hans Saler have written their own books about the 1970 Nanga Parbat expedition to “set the record straight.” They make strong claims that that Messner abandoned Gunther for his own ambition and concocted the avalanche story to hide his guilt. “Rubbish,” says Reinhold, who believes both are motivated by opportunism, money and, in von Keinlin’s case, vindictiveness (von Keinlin’s wife left him to marry Messner.)
In an interview with the Guardian, von Kienlin states, "There's no doubt he abandoned his brother. When we met him in Gilgit afterwards he merely asked: 'Where is Günther?" Von Kienlin also dismisses the genetic testing as well. "When it was first found the bone was too big to be Günther's. Suddenly it's not so big. Perhaps it shrank. It's become a holy object."
Reinhold intends to return to Nanga Parbat next year for a further search of his brother’s remains.
Image of Nanga Parbat courtesy of Tomaz Humar.
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