Alan Hinkes


Alan Hinkes OBE is an English Himalayan high-altitude mountaineer from Northallerton in North Yorkshire. He is the first and remains the only, British mountaineer to claim all 14 Himalayan eight-thousanders, which he did on 30 May 2005.

14 Eight-thousanders

British record

Hinkes is the first British mountaineer to claim to have summited all 14 mountains in the world with elevations greater than 8,000 meters, known as the eight-thousanders, when he summited Kangchenjunga on 30 May 2005, aged 50 years and 34 days.
No other British mountaineer has yet claimed this. It was first achieved by Reinhold Messner in 1986, and two decades later, Hinkes was only the 13th person to have claimed the feat, days after U.S. climber Ed Viesturs became the 12th person on 22 May 2005.
It is an uncommon feat, as the ratio of deaths to summits on several eight-thousanders is at one-in-five. This should not be interpreted as meaning that a "death-rate" is circa 20%, as the statistic ignores the number of attempts. However, given that climbing the eight-thousanders requires multiple failed attempts, and the most failures are usually on the most dangerous mountains, the risk of death in attempting all 14 eight-thousanders is material.
Hinkes took 26 attempts to climb the 14 eight-thousanders, giving a first attempt success rate of circa 54%. Hinkes spent 21 years on his "Challenge 8000", starting with his ascent of Shishapangma in September 1987, and ending with his ascent of Kangchenjunga in May 2005. Hinkes is recorded as summiting Mount Everest on 19 May 1996.

Observations

He regards K2 as the hardest eight-thousander mountain, which he climbed on his third attempt. 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. 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 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" from this incident.
Hinkes has climbed eight-thousanders in many styles: expeditions, two-man alpine and alone, and permutations in between. He has climbed new lines, he has climbed as guide, as camera man, and set speed records. He has climbed several on first attempt, others on third and fourth attempt. He has climbed with well-known mountaineers, including several expeditions with Doug Scott and Chris Bonington.
He describes himself as risk-averse, 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, 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, to frostbite.
Over the years, Hinkes has had public fall-outs with other chasers of the 14 eight-thousanders. Australian climber Andrew Lock, was critical of Hinkes on their successful 1998 ascent of Nanga Parbat. Spanish climber Iñaki Ochoa de Olza,, alleges that Hinkes had left him to bleed to death in order to summit K2, which Hinkes countered was factually untrue.

Cho Oyu dispute

His 30 April 1990 ascent of Cho Oyu, which he completed alone in low visibility, is disputed by some observers. Cho Oyu has a broadly flat summit plateau with no cairn. The summit is a small unmarked "hump" . 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.
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. Hawley based her decision on an interview with Hinkes, and on other team members. Hawley agrees Hinkes reached the summit plateau, but questions how Hinkes could have been on the “technical” summit for certain, if he could not see it.
: The influential Himalayan chronicler decided, years after Hinkes' climb, not to accept his view; she remains the only publicly verifiable source of dispute on Hinkes' climb. She died in 2018.
Hinkes logged the expedition's 30 April 1990 Cho Oyu ascent in the 1991 American Alpine Journal, as well as the expedition's ascent of Shishapangma 12 days later on 12 May 1990, but he notes they climbed Shishapangma's central summit. Hawley's biography notes French expedition leader Benoît Chamoux: unhappy with this, as she did not credit Chamoux with Shishapangma either. Hinkes would not climb with Benoît Chamoux, or any of the French team members, again.
: Czech Himalayan mountaineer photographed Hinkes' on the summit plateau of Cho Oyu in 1990 and claims the ascent
Hawley does not use the public accounts of the non-French team members. Czech team member :cs:Josef Rakoncaj|Josef Rakoncaj, photographed Hinkes on the summit plateau of Cho Oyu, and states Hinkes summited in his book "Na hrotech zeměkoule". Italian team member Mauro Rossi lists the 1990 ascent of Cho Oyu in his public resume. Climbers with several Cho Oyu ascents, have disputed Hawley's main Cho Oyu summit criteria, "Did you see Everest?", and the incorrect behaviours it is creating.
Hawley's Himalayan Database records 3,681 ascents of Cho Oyu of which 18 are "unrecognised" since 1960, despite the difficulty of finding Cho Oyu's "technical" summit, and that older expeditions considered the summit plateau as sufficient. Chamoux's 1990 Cho Oyu expedition comprise seven of these "unrecognised" ascents, while a German commercial trekking expedition, led by Günther Härter, who summited Cho Oyu just 19 days after Chamoux in 1990, comprise another six.
The dispute is noted in many Hinkes interviews. He highlights the lack of any evidence, or publicly verifiable sources, for the allegation, and he is supported by the Alpine Journal, and the British Mountaineering Council. Hinkes says he spent "at least an hour and a half" criss-crossing the flat summit plateau, alone, until he "was sure there was no more uphill". Hawley's "Seasonal Stories" suggest an aversion to Hinkes, and her biography lists Alan Hinkes as a climber: she did not like.
AdventureStats.com record 8,000m ascents not independently verified. Their website states that unless given written proof otherwise, "No proof other than the explorer's word is required", implying they give credit to Hawley's unverified allegations. It contrasts, for example, with Hawley, AdventureStats, and :de:Eberhard Jurgalski|Eberhard Jurgalski's, acceptance of Denis Urubko's acclaimed 2009 ascent of Cho Oyu's Southeast face, who reached the Cho Oyu summit plateau in the dark and in a snowstorm, per his summit photo from his AAJ log..
The paragraph in Elizabeth Hawley's 2005 Seasonal Stories remains the only publicly verifiable source of the dispute over Hinkes' Cho Oyu ascent. No climbing journal disputes Hinkes' ascent, and some publicly support it. However, Hawley retains a well-earned stature as a Himalayan chronicler, and her Himalayan Database is the source for most online Himalayan ascent databases. Hawley passed away in 2018.

Personal

In January 2006, after Kangchenjunga, Hinkes was awarded an OBE in the 2006 New Year Honours List for his achievements in mountaineering. He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the University of Sunderland in 1999, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of York in 2007. He was awarded Yorkshire Man of the Year in 2005, and was made an honorary citizen of his hometown Northallerton in the same year.
Hinkes is an avid photographer and released a photographic essay book in October 2013 called 8000 Metres Climbing the World's Highest Mountains. He is the subject of an October 2017 documentary by filmmaker, Terry Abraham, Alan Hinkes: The First Briton To Climb The World's Highest Mountains. Hinkes has frequently appeared on British television over the years, particularly regarding Himalayan events/stories, including BBC News, Sky News, Newsnight etc.
Hinkes started life as a geography and PE teacher, which he abandoned to concentrate on climbing. He never married but has a daughter, Fiona, whose picture, Hinkes displays in most summit photographs.

Ascents

Eight-thousanders

This list includes all 27 successful and unsuccessful 8,000 metre expeditions, as also noted by Alan Hinkes in his book, but reconciled from several other published climbing journal articles side of mountain with Cumbrian Everest Expedition.