SO CLOSE

Mountaineer Has World Records Stripped in a Spat Over Just 15 Feet

Cartographer Eberhard Jurgalski compared climber routes with satellite data to find that many mountaineers don’t actually reach the summits.

A world-famous mountaineer has had his two Guinness World records taken away after a cartographer asserted that he was just 15 feet short of reaching the peak of Annapurna, Nepal. Reinhold Messner held the title of being the first climber to scale all 14 “eight-thousanders,” the mountains that are more than 8,000 meters in height above sea level, and the first to do so without supplementary oxygen. Messner said cartographer Eberhard Jurgalski was “not an expert,” but according to the Daily Mail, Jurgalski completed extensive research that compared mountain climber routes using satellite data and found that many mountaineers, including Messner, actually never hit the summits. Guinness World Records said they agreed: “Many climbers – usually through no fault of their own – stopped before reaching the summit.” They modified his title, calling him a “legacy” holder, and have replaced him with Edmund Viesturs, who completed the series in 2005.