Spanish climber, 73, on Himalayan adventure

 

Carlos Soria grew up wandering the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains that loom north of Madrid. Still climbing now at 73, he is making his mark on the vast freezing slopes of the Himalayas. On March 5 the grey-haired Spaniard sets off for Nepal, aiming to add a twelfth 8,000-metre (26,000-feet) peak to his list of conquests – a feat he says is already unequalled for a climber of his age. “These are the mountains of my childhood, my youth, my whole life, the ones I have seen the most of,” he says, gazing at the peaks that loom over his home village of Moralzarzal, his eyes sparkling, his face lined and faintly wrinkled. Now his aim is Annapurna, a formidable peak of 8,091 metres in the Himalayas known for its high risk of avalanches. “It’s a bit dangerous, but I’ll just have to see... Above 7,000 metres, if something happens to you, no one can help,” he says. “I have permission to climb Dhaulagiri if I am doing well and feel like it,” he says, naming another even higher Nepalese peak near the first, standing 8,167 metres. That would leave only one peak of more than 8,000 metres in the world left to conquer for the muscular pensioner, who stands 1m 65 cm high (five foot four inches) and weighs 59 kilos (130 pounds). “The last one left is Kanchenjunga,” he says – the 14th peak on his list, also in the Himalayas. “That would be for next spring.” Soria says he has climbed more of the world’s highest peaks than anyone of his age. “Nine 8,000-metre peaks after turning 60 and more after turning 65,” he says. “There are people who have climbed some mountains, but not like me.” Soria left school at 11 and worked as a frame maker and then an upholsterer in Madrid, just south of where he lives now. But he heard constantly the call of the mountains. “Whenever there was snow I would leave at noon with a little sandwich and a yoghurt to go cross-country skiing,” he recalls. “It was the post-war period. There was very little money and no information” published about the mountain routes, he says, recalling his younger days during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.