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Oiarzabal's Pursuit
12:57 p.m. EDT Sep 1, 2003
It was just over a month ago that Juanito Oiarzabal stood atop GI and tied Reinhold Messner’s record of eighteen summits on the world’s 8,000m peaks. Now, Oiarzabal is ready to head to Tibet to climb Cho-Oyu again. If successful, he will surpass Messner’s record altogether and tie Ang Rita’s 8,000m peak record of nineteen summits.
Of course, all three climbers have chalked up repeat summits on a number of the fourteen 8,000m peaks. Oiarzabal’s very first 8,000m summit was Cho Oyu (8,201m), which he climbed in 1985. However, he states that this next Cho Oyu trip was planned before his summer Gasherbrum plans had come together, and was not with the intent of surpassing Messner and matching Ang Rita.
Yet Oiarzabal’s relentless schedule indicates a strong opportunity to bust through the record books. He leaves for Cho Oyu on September 4. Next spring, he plans to head to K2 with Edurne Pasaban as members of the expedition “To the Edge of the Impossible Thing.” Between Cho Oyu and K2, Oiarzabal barely takes time to rest. In January, he heads to Aconcagua. In February, he’ll take part in a forty day expedition to the desert between Libya and Egypt. After that, he’ll go for an acclimatization trip to Ama Dablam before leaving for K2.
As for any “rivalry’ with Messner, Oiarzabal says that he climbs first for himself and acknowledges it would be a great personal achievement to reach nineteen 8,000m summits. Besides… now that Messner is involved with politics, Oiarzabal thinks “he has more important things to do than to read my Web page.”
Image of Cho Oyu courtesy of ExplorersWeb files.
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