It had been 15 years since the Japanese Kazuya Hiraide had sighted Shispare (7,611m), a peak in the Pakistani Karakoram to which he had promised to dedicate his life as a mountaineer. His obsession eventually led to his climax, which he reached on his fourth attempt. There, at the top, he knelt in the snow, pulled off one of his gloves, and rummaged in an inside pocket of his duvet. He pulled out a photograph of his mountaineer friend Kei Taniguchi, who died two years earlier (in 2015) in a mountain accident. With the help of one of his ice axes, he dug a generous hole in the snow and buried the image there. He had come to think that he had finally found a mountain that was impossible to climb. Had he been alive, Taniguchi would have been by his side that day. But he only kept his memory and photograph. “That day I was able to bury the pain that paralyzed me. I knew she hadn’t left, that she was traveling with me, in my heart,” she explains, pointing to the left side of her chest. Afterwards, Kazuya Hiraide went more than a year without climbing, wondering what she had learned from her long relationship with Shispare, the mountain that had been “the yardstick” of his shortcomings “as a climber and as a human being” for fifteen decades.. Unable to find an answer, he decided to go and look for it on another mountain.
Hiraide, 43, is one of the most celebrated mountaineers of the 21st century, a perfect stranger even outside of the marketing that turns Europeans, North Americans and Canadians into figures. Touring Spain (Bilbao, MendiFilmFestival) and at the hands of his sponsor Gipuzkoan (Ternua), Hiraide’s presence is a rare luxury worth savoring, which is why the interview begins with breakfast and ends with dinner. It takes time to understand the life of a climber so exceptional that he, he warns, looks askance in retreat “but not before tackling a couple of challenges, for example on the west face of K2. I have changed, my life has changed, having a family with two children aged seven and four changes everything… but I still keep the passion ”, he assures apologetically.
Hardly anyone could have climbed most of the mountains that Hiraide has climbed in the Himalayas – they had to be found first. You had to want them too. Until the age of 20, Hiraide was an athlete, long distance runner. However, something was wrong: “Starting from point A to reach point B seemed very restrictive to me, so I started dreaming of a discipline that would allow me to create my own itineraries, go where I wanted and do it by competing only with myself. That’s how I turned to mountaineering,” he explains over his first coffee and after running 15 kilometers. He still runs every day. Suddenly he takes off a shoe, his sock, and shows a right foot that is missing four toes, amputated in 2005, after having climbed the northwest ridge of Shivling with his friend Kei. His naturalness is disconcerting, but then he takes off the slipper from his left foot and there are the stumps of three other toes, severed just a year ago. So, he says, “I thought my career was over. I spent three days in a hospital in Pakistan without even turning on my phone, assuming my sadness, ready to drop everything. My wife convinced me to continue… ”, he smiles with a gesture of relief. “To be a mountaineer you have to be strong, have experience and a lot of mental strength… but it took me years to understand that to climb hard I first had to be a stronger person, a better person.” he chains with a humble gesture.
Hiraide decided to create his itinerary almost literally: he photocopied all the maps of Karakoram he could find, assembled them into a large mural and started reading the works of the Japanese Alpine Club to learn which peaks had been conquered and which they were a question mark. He colored those that had been climbed green, marking the ascent routes red. With his huge map unfolded, several blank areas, unexplored areas, stood out conspicuously. There he was, dressed in the recklessness of youth and not accepting defeat as defeat. In total, since 2001, she has amassed 18 expeditions and the ascent of 12 new routes, including her three Golden Piolets: 2008, SW Face of Kamet, 7,756m, together with Kei Taniguchi, the first woman to receive the prize; 2017, north-east face of Shispare (7.611m); 2019: south face of Rakaposhi (7,788m).
For years Hiraide has traveled the valleys of the Karakoram with his huge map in hand, looking for “hidden treasures”. He needed to explore as much as he needed to climb, to make his way, to feel the freedom to move without restriction. He was young and convinced himself that “there was no mountain he couldn’t climb if he was willing to lose his life trying”. But without knowing why, he’s become obsessed with Shispare, the leitmotif of much of his career, the place to return to when he’s lost “direction” in his life. Almost all of the expeditions he has done have been paid for from his own savings, first working for a sports equipment distributor, and since 2012 as a high-altitude cameraman.
In 2010 life comes across a horrible episode which, once again, takes him away from mountaineering. He was climbing Ama Dablam to open a new route, together with the German David Goettler, when the danger of avalanches and the instability of the terrain forced him to retire. They soon found themselves stuck in an exit alley and called for a helicopter, used to handling all types of rescues on nearby Everest. The pilot placed a skid in the snow and carried Goettler away. He returned and followed the maneuver, but the propeller touched the hillside and the plane fell into black smoke, bouncing off the wall. Pilot and co-pilot are dead. Hiraide has stopped climbing. A year later, he was able to speak to the families of the disappeared: they begged him to continue climbing, to enjoy the gift of staying alive. He decided to go back to a remote mountain where rescue was not possible.
At the beginning of his career, climbing partners were mere accessories: he was satisfied with being able to secure them while climbing. But then he met Kei and was amazed not only by his technical prowess but also by his ability to make Hiraide’s dreams come true. “It’s extraordinary to find a will like yours, an identical level of commitment. The strength of the cordada multiplies,” he explains excitedly. Before every expedition, I was faced with the same question by myself: “Am I busy enough to assume I might lose my life?” Now his experience allows him to distinguish a severe, technically demanding climb from a dangerous one: “If it’s tough, I’ll go with courage; if it is dangerous, I will turn around to save my life and that of my partner ”, he sums up, not without noting that this type of decision is extremely delicate, the result of a great deal of experience. When he lost Kei, he knew a loss of that caliber could kill him. Simply: “I could not find enough strength to go on with my life. He lived in a stupor, not wanting to do anything. I decided to go back to Shispare,” he reveals. “But even though I eventually made it to the top, I didn’t learn any lessons from the experience. I returned in a lethargic state. Another year passed on empty until I decided to go to Rakaposhi… and what I found at its peak was a much humbler version of myself. I began to understand that my approach to mountaineering had been wrong, selfish, competitive, obsessive. I see this in my new partner, Kenro Nakajima. I climb with him so that he doesn’t kill himself, so that he learns from my mistakes».
Hiraide assures that conquests no longer interest him, he no longer wants to paint a green peak on a map. She understood that what matters most to him are the questions that lead him to the mountains and the answers that, sometimes, he finds in his gut. The Karakoram map, recently discovered by him, was the physical representation of his vital map. A space to be completed, a space of freedom where almost everything was still to be done.
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