Mustagh Ata 2005 – Speed Record as a Personal Milestone

China: Speed record on Mustagh Ata – 7,546 m! The aim was to climb the summit as quickly as possible and then return to base camp even faster.

It took the two German Dynafit athletes, Benedikt and Sebastian Haag, together with the internationally renowned high-altitude mountaineer Matthias Robl – who tragically lost his life in an accident in 2008 – a remarkable 10 hours and 41 minutes to cover the 3,100 metres of elevation gain on Mustagh Ata (7,546 m) in the Kunlun Mountains in China, and the subsequent descent. Traditional expeditions take four days for this route. On 23 August, the trio reached the summit in temperatures of -35 degrees after just 9 hours and 25 minutes, and the team was back at base camp 1 hour and 16 minutes later: a new speed record! This new style of mountaineering was a radical experiment for Böhm and Haag. Inspired by ski mountaineering racing, they consistently put their goal into practice on Mustagh Ata.

"The Mustagh Ata in 2005 was a pioneering achievement. We came from nowhere. A year earlier, a combination of ignorance and overconfidence had nearly killed us on the 6,000-metre peaks in the Peruvian Andes. A year later, we had learnt from our mistakes and had a clear goal we had worked hard towards: we wanted to apply the methodology of ski mountaineering racing directly to high mountains and reach the summit of Mustagh Ata in a non-stop push from base camp (without a series of camps). For the first time, we were confronted with death shortly before our speed ascent when we found two climbers who had come to an accident. One of them was still alive, but died that same evening after we had brought him to an altitude of 7,000 metres. Nevertheless, we did not lose heart and went ahead with our experiment of a speed ascent that had never been attempted before. Starting directly from base camp, we set off non-stop for the summit and reached it in an incredible 9.5 hours. After another hour, we were back at base camp. It was a minor sensation and the start of a series of speed ascents on high mountains."