Alan Hinkes

Alan Hinkes OBE (born 26 April 1954) is an English Himalayan high-altitude mountaineer from Northallerton in North Yorkshire.

Hinkes took 26 attempts to climb the 14 eight-thousanders (not counting his ascent of Shishapangma Central (West) in 1990), giving a first attempt success rate of circa 54%.

Hinkes spent 21 years on his "Challenge 8000", starting with his ascent of Shishapangma in 1987, and ending with his ascent of Kangchenjunga in 2005.

His 30 April 1990 ascent of Cho Oyu, which he completed alone in low visibility, is disputed by one observer.

Cho Oyu has a broadly flat summit plateau with no cairn (the traditional prayer flags on Cho Oyu's summit plateau do not mark the "technical" summit).

The summit is a small unmarked "hump" (or "bump") (which many Cho Oyu YouTube summit videos miss).

While the height differential of this hump is small, Ralf Dujmovits, 3-time Cho Oyu summiter, notes that for a strong climber to get to the "hump" area can take another 30 minutes.

Hinkes logged the expedition's 30 April 1990 Cho Oyu ascent in the 1991 American Alpine Journal (AAJ), as well as the expedition's ascent of Shishapangma 12 days later on 12 May 1990, but he notes they climbed Shishapangma's central (west) summit (the true summit is circa two hours further on).

Hawley's biography notes French expedition leader Benoît Chamoux "unhappy with this, as she did not credit Chamoux with Shishapangma either" (Hawley had compelled the famous Himalayan mountaineer Ed Viesturs to re-climb Shishapangma for the same reason, which he did).

A particular death that Hinkes notes was fellow U.K. climbing partner, Alison Hargreaves, who died on K2 in 1995, weeks after Hinkes had summited K2.

Hinkes is recorded as summiting Mount Everest on 19 May 1996.

He regards K2 as the hardest eight-thousander mountain ("an easy place to die"), which he climbed on his third attempt (he abandoned his first attempt, when closing in on the summit, to rescue a stricken Swedish climber).

He ranks Kanchenjunga as the second hardest eight-thousander mountain, which he also climbed on his third attempt.

As an eight-thousander climber, Hinkes has encountered death on his own expeditions, and on neighbouring expeditions.

Several of his climbing partners subsequently died on mountains.

Hinkes had to be air rescued from Nanga Parbat in July 1997 when flour from a burnt chapati got up his nose, making him sneeze so violently that he prolapsed a disc.

He had to wait 10 days in agony before being rescued and brought to Islamabad for treatment.

He has been referred to as the "chapati man" (even by himself) from this incident.

Hinkes has climbed eight-thousanders in many styles: expeditions (Cho Oyu, Manaslu, Nanga Parbat), two-man alpine (Makalu, Dhaulagiri) and alone (Gasherbrum I, Gasherbrum II), and permutations in between.

He has climbed new lines (Shishapangma, Kangchenjunga, Annapurna), he has climbed as guide (Broad Peak), as camera man (Everest), and set speed records (Annapurna).

He has climbed several on first attempt, others on third (Nanga Parbat) and fourth attempt (Makalu).

He has climbed with well-known mountaineers, including several expeditions with Doug Scott and Chris Bonington.

He describes himself as risk-averse ("I climb to live, not to die", "The summit is optional, getting down is mandatory"), who places value on understanding, and being in the right position, to capitalise on breaks in weather.

His later climbs were mostly two-man climbs with experienced sherpas (Pasang Gelu), where Hinkes could stay in control of events and react quickly.

He was not averse to leveraging the resources of bigger expeditions alongside.

Unusually for a 20–year high-altitude Himalayan eight-thousander, he has never lost any fingers or toes (or "other bits" as he describes it), to frostbite.

Over the years, Hinkes has had public arguments with other chasers of the 14 eight-thousanders.

He is the first British mountaineer to claim all 14 Himalayan eight-thousanders (mountains above 8,000. m in height), which he did on 30 May 2005.

Hinkes is the first British mountaineer to claim to have summited all 14 mountains with elevations above 8,000.

m, known as the eight-thousanders, when he summited Kangchenjunga on 30 May 2005, aged 50 years and 34 days.

It was first achieved by Reinhold Messner in 1986 (all without oxygen), and two decades later, Hinkes was only the 13th person to claim the feat, days after U.S. climber Ed Viesturs became the 12th person on 22 May 2005.

It is a rare feat, as the ratio of deaths to summits on several eight-thousanders is at one-in-five (Annapurna, K2, Nanga Parbat, Kangchenjunga).

This should not be interpreted as meaning that a "death-rate" is circa 20%, as the statistic ignores the number of attempts (and also partial attempts, and/or route stocking activity etc.).

However, given that climbing the eight-thousanders requires multiple failed attempts (Hinkes took two attempts on average), and the most failures are usually on the most dangerous mountains, the risk of death in attempting all 14 eight-thousanders is material.

The source of the dispute was that Himalayan chronicler Elizabeth Hawley, whose Himalayan Database is used by online databases like AdventureStats, "unrecognised" his Cho Oyu ascent in Spring 2005 (15 years after summiting).

Hawley based her decision on an interview with Hinkes, and on other team members.

Hawley agrees Hinkes reached the summit plateau (as does Eberhard Jurgalski list ), but questions how Hinkes could have been on the “technical” summit for certain, if he could not see it.

"But his claim to have now climbed all 8000ers is open to question. In April 1990 he and others reached the summit plateau of Cho Oyu. It was misty so they could not see well; nine years later Hinkes said he had “wandered around for a while” in the summit area but could see very little and eventually descended to join the others, one of whom said they had not reached the top."

Australian climber Andrew Lock (who completed all 14 in 2009), was critical of Hinkes on their successful 1998 ascent of Nanga Parbat.

Spanish climber Iñaki Ochoa de Olza, (who died on Annapurna of pulmonary edema, after completing 12 eight thousanders without oxygen), alleges that Hinkes had left him to bleed to death in order to summit K2, which Hinkes countered was factually untrue (Hinkes abandoned his first K2 climb, despite nearing the summit, to successfully rescue a stricken Swedish climber).