Renowned as one of the greatest mountaineers of all time, Reinhold Messner has achieved an astonishing array of daring feats in his 79 years on this planet.
northern Italian region of South Tyrol, he grew up in a hamlet in the Dolomites called St Peter, the second of nine children. By the age of five he had summited his first Dolomite mountain alongside his father. As a teenager, he climbed all over the region, teaming up with his younger brother Günther. During the 1960s he dominated mountain climbing in the Alps, graduating
