Going back? Why mountain climbers are returning to the ‘death zone’ to correct mistakes

Eberhard Jurgalski stands in the shade of a tree in L'rrach on Aug. 5, 2022. A peak is the highest point of a mountain that can be reached. But finding it was not so easy before the widespread availability of GPS devices. Who has really been to the summits of all 14 eight-thousanders? A man from L'rrach is causing a stir in the mountaineering world because he denies that you have actually reached the summit. | Philipp von Ditfurth

Within the trove of Jurgalski’s research, however, there was one particular result that was especially polarizing. Reinhold Messner, an Italian climber and arguably the world’s greatest alpinist, was at the center of the issue.

Messner was the first to climb Everest solo, the first to do so without oxygen — at a time when doctors thought such a feat was physically impossible — and, among many impressive feats, he was also the first to climb all mountains on planet earth over 8,000 meters tall.

There are only 14 peaks above that 26,200-foot high mark — often called the ”death zone” — and Messner climbed each of them without oxygen. When he summited his last one, Lhotse, in 1986, it was the end of a 16-year journey and cemented his legacy, in the eyes of climbers, forever.

But after collating a variety of data points, including everything from GPS, satellite imagery and Messner’s own accounts of the climb, Jurgalski concluded that Messner did not summit at least one of those mountains, Annapurna.

As a result, Jurgalski said that the Tyrolean hero could no longer lay claim to his greatest accomplishment: being the first to climb all of the world’s tallest peaks.

A mountaineering mess

In this Thursday, April 19, 2018, file photo, Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner gives a speech after being congratulated by Nepal's government in Kathmandu, Nepal. Spain's Princess of Asturias prize for sports this year has been awarded to two European mountain climbers: Italian Reinhold Messner and Poland's Krzysztof Wielicki. The judges said Wednesday, May 16, 2018, the pair embody the essence of mountain-climbing, setting new levels of accomplishment and providing inspiration for younger generations. Messner was one of the first two climbers to scale Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen 40 years ago. | Niranjan Shrestha

While Jurgalski created a whole new record called the “Legacy Table” to keep Messner at the top, the news went off like a bomb.

The mountaineering community rallied around Messner, with Ed Viesturs — the American who now sits atop the list of first person to climb all 14 peaks — relinquishing his new title.

Messner called Jurgalski all kinds of names, not least of which was, “armchair chronicler,” as he has never even seen the Himalayas with his own eyes.

Those familiar with the matter — and even folks distant to it — debated the relative merit of independent research as opposed to the lived experience of an individual.

When the American Alpine Club wrote the story, it called it “The 8,000 Meter Mess.” Navigating the nuance of the situation, the New York Times wondered “What is a summit?”

Yet, in the last five years since the mess, climbers have been returning to the mountains to correct their mistakes. The same community that was upset about Messner is making sure that they do not have an asterisk next to their own names on Jurgalski’s list.

A new era

This past Monday, Jurgalski published four new “tables,” which is the name he gives for the records that are stored on his website. One was an updated list of those who have summited all 14 8,000-meter peaks, and another was the list of those who have returned to Manaslu — the Nepali mountain that is the eighth tallest in the world — to correct past summits.

Jurgalski said that there were scores of corrections in the past five years. Of the Nepali mountaineers who’ve corrected their summits while guiding, Jurgalski explained that there are probably hundreds of return trips. “There are too many to count,” he said.

The false summit of Manaslu, in particular, affected a lot of climbers. About 2,000 climbers went to the wrong summit of that mountain, which has two distinct high-points at its top. The true summit is the one further away from the traditional climbing route and requires a dangerous shuffle across a narrow, corniced ridge to reach.

Jurgalski takes partial blame for this confusion as he helped spread the word that the first peak was in fact the true summit. Once he figured out something was amiss, however, he included the change in his 2020 updates. Then, the following year, new drone footage proved Jurgalski emphatically correct.

Since his team published its findings, however, that one mountain alone has had 34 climbers return to correct their records.

While that number may seem small, to put it in context, each of those climbs is a major expedition up a grueling and life-threatening mountain. The climbing window is mostly quite short, with only a few weeks in either spring or fall when the weather cooperates.

When averaged out, that’s about three successful summits each potential season since Jurgalski’s research was published.

Correcting past mistakes

The significance of the effort to complete just one of these climbs only emphasizes the feat of Carlos Soria Fontán.

Fifteen years after he first climbed Manaslu to the false summit, he returned in 2025 at the ripe old age of 86 and reached the actual tallest point on the mountain. In correcting his own record, he set a new one by becoming the oldest person to ever summit an 8,000-meter peak.

But even more telling, said Jurgalski, is how many of the top echelon of climbers have also returned.

Of the 39 climbers who have reached the summit of all 14 of the world’s tallest mountains, 23 of them came back to correct past mistakes. Collectively, those 23 mountaineers reclimbed 42 different peaks.

After all that he went through in the years following the debate about whether or not Messner reached the true summit of Annapurna, Jurgalski said that climbers returning to the mountains to get to the actual tallest point vindicates his perspective.

“Every human is doing mistakes,” Jurgalski said. “If they don’t want to correct them, then they can say, ‘OK, I did a mistake and I leave it as it is.’”

But with so many mountaineers reclimbing those impossibly hard mountains, it might just be that history is proving the findings of the “armchair chronicler” worth pursuing.