Reinhold Messner is a mountaineer, adventurer, explorer, and author from the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol.

He is renowned for making the first solo ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen and for being the first climber to ascend all fourteen “eight-thousanders” (peaks over 8,000 metres (26,000 ft) above sea level). He is the author of at least 63 books, many of which have been translated into other languages.

Messner September 17, 2014, has turned 70.

Another article celebratory, we really wanted to, you would think.

Maybe you’re right! But I can not resist the temptation and write, late in the evening, a few days before the anniversary, September 17, 2014.

Messner I think it is a formidable man. A figure that has floated between myth and reality as very few. Estimated, often hated, but always respected. Nobody will ever think to define it negatively in an absolute sense.

But even in this case I do not say anything new, so I remain a few lines before inevitably get bored and lose your focus.

What Messner would say is simple. Without Messner culture of the mountain would have been different. And to prove it I’ll make a parallel.

If Bonatti mountaineering talking about can not be said to have been outdone, and even as a narrator of the mountain, for sure he has not spent much energy as many RM, disclose to fight for a strong idea of the mountain.

Messner took place (his famous idea of wilderness, the conquest of the useless and many others) have been the cornerstones of thought and mountaineering in general naturalistic. Ideas very trenchant, often fundamentalist than grains, but certainly consistent, even granite in their certainty.

His ideas were not only these. They have become books, MANY BOOKS (alas for my fund expenses). But also a number of museums that have developed different themes related to the mountain and more generally to nature.

Has invested time and money. It certainly had the support of influential friends, girlfriends institutions. Everything you want. But the result remains: culture, culture of knowledge. And for that I think merits infinite gratitude.

A few days ago a friend told me “posted” comment a little ‘sarcastic, basically saying that he would rather invest the time differently than the reading of a book by Messner. Here we are at this point. I think that a book Messner, at least one should read it all to understand, even just touch, some issues that go far beyond climbing. Courage, freedom, defeat, just to name a few. Self-knowledge, in a nutshell. Do it, read a book, maybe not any, the best (link).

And if you happen to go visit one of its museums.

Visiting one of these, in Castel Firmiano in Bolzano, beautiful logic for exhibition, frame, pathos, I had the opportunity to reflect on a detail (God is in the details, he said Mies van de Rohe). Well, one thing struck me in that museum that tells the thread and mark the history of the mountain and climbing. It struck me that throughout the exhibition, there was a photo of a Reinhold himself, that story certainly helped to write it (if only for being the first man to climb all 14 “eight thousanders”). I think Messner (which I never knew), is this. A person with a personality overflowing but with a decidedly ego under control.

After hearing set for 50 years, more or less, as the greatest mountain climber of all time, here, I think this is a really outstanding quality.