A legendary mountaineer has been stripped of his two Guinness World Records after a hobby cartographer claimed he was five metres short of a summit.
Reinhold Messner, 79, is considered to be one of the world’s greatest climbers and was the first man to scale the world’s 14 tallest mountains.
Messner, from South Tyrol in Italy, climbed all the mountains in the world over 8,000 metres which earned him the Guinness World Record title in 1986.
He also earned a Guinness World Record for summitting the tallest mountains without using oxygen tanks.
However, Eberhard Jurgaliski, a map enthusiast said that the esteemed climber was actually five metres short of summitting Annapurna in Nepal in 1985.
As a result, the 79-year-old was stripped of both his titles.
Messner was outraged at the news, calling Jurgalski “clueless” and “not a real expert”.
Jurgaliski discovered that climbers had misidentified the summits of at least three of the highest peaks.
The amateur cartographer used photos, route descriptions and satellite data to determine that the new peak of Annapurna is 8,091m.
Guinness World Records confirmed that it had used the research conducted by Jurglaski to remove Messener’s titles from him.
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He was instead listed as a “legacy” record holder for his extraordinary climbs.
“Many climbers – usually through no fault of their own – stopped before reaching the summit,” said Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of Guinness World Records.
“In the same way that we require marathon runners to finish the full 42.195km course and circumnavigators to cover at least the 40,075km circumference of the Earth, for a mountain climb to qualify for a Guinness World Record title, we must insist on a base-camp-to-true-summit ascent, as per the updated 8000ers.com guidelines,” said Glenday.
Jurgaliski’s research cut down the list of all those that had climbed the 14 highest peaks – 44 – down to just four.
The title of being the first man to summit all 14 peaks is now held by American mountaineer Edmund Viesturs, who completed the near-impossible feat in 2005.
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Jurgaliski’s findings have received a frosty reception in the climbing world.
Mr Messner maintained that “of course we reached the summit”, saying that Mr Jurgalski had “mixed up the mountains”.
Meanwhile, Hans Kammerlander, Messner’s partner on the Annapurna summit, said: “If Jurgalski accuses us of not reaching the highest point, that is nit-picking by a theorist. It has nothing to do with the actual climb.”
The findings also took the title of first woman to climb all 8,000 peaks away from Austrian climber Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner.
The new titleholder is now Dong Hong-Jua, a Chinese mountaineer who completed the set in April.
Messner was the first male climber to summit Mount Everest with no oxygen in 1978.
The same year, he also became the first mountaineer to ascend an 8,000 unaccompanied when he scaled Nanga Parbat.
After a mountain porter was left to die on K2 this year he said that “mountains that you can book in a travel agent aren’t mountains anymore, they are fakes”.
