With Carlos Soria Fontán (Ávila, 1939) It’s always time to get up early. He does it every day: “I got up at 5:30, I got ready, at 7:00 I was training at the climbing wall, then I went shopping and was ready at 9:30 for the interview.” . He welcomes us at his house in Moralzarzal, in the mountains of Madrid, with his Manaslu t-shirt and his Mountains of Life pendant that always accompanies him. Today it’s time to talk about a project that the Peñalara Mountaineering Club put on the table and that excites him as if he were a child, although he is on his way to turning 86: “In spring we are going to the Himalayas 50 years after the first Spanish expedition that summited an eight-thousander. We want to celebrate it in the same Manaslu that we climbed in 1975. I am crazy to go and achieve it.”
Soria was part of the historic expedition that first attempted the assault on Manaslu in 1973 and finally succeeded in the spring of 1975, so this The project is a tribute on its 50th anniversary to that first Spanish expedition in which a young Carlos Soria was just 36 years old, although those who reached the summit were Gerardo Blázquez and Jerónimo López.
The Spanish mountaineer will try to summit the summit of Manaslu in the spring of 2025 at the age of 86, the first eight-thousander conquered by a Spanish expedition in 1975 with Soria on that team.VIDEO: CHEMA REY
A historic challenge at 86 years old
Carlos Soria is preparing day by day to be able to face a challenge within the reach of only the chosen ones: conquering an eight-thousander at the age of 86 and doing so after his serious accident in May 2023, in Dhaulagiri, when a Sherpa took him over. at 7,700 meters and he fractured his fibula, which forced the expedition to make a very dangerous 17-hour descent in which Carlos Soria was miraculously saved.
We can do two things in Manaslu: mountaineering history and help the children of Sama school
Carlos Soria, Spanish mountaineer
Now, his mind is set on the Manaslu in five months. Training in the climbing wall, in the mountains, climbing… Everything to arrive in the best shape for the spring of 2025. Carlos looks back and remembers how he experienced his first attack on an eight-thousander: “The first time I experienced it with impressive emotion, it was the year 73 and a group of us from Madrid went -Soria is from Avila by birth but he also feels like a Madrid native- to the Himalayas to conquer one of the great mountains. We were revolutionized, we had meetings every day… I even have the budget for that expedition and a magazine that we published with all the good moments of the expedition of 73. And well, it was very nice. It was a very rainy autumn, with 150 porters plus the Sherpas and the liaison officer and we passed through very complicated places with a lot of water… We did not reach the summit.”
To the next, In 1975, they made history: “Then we already knew where we were going. At that time we did not have equipment to go to a big mountain, far from it. The most we had done was Alaska, but it wasn’t an eight-thousander like now. “That truly was the revolution.”
The Manaslu expedition 1975PEÑALARA ARCHIVE
This was the first Spanish eight thousand in 1975
Carlos Soria reviewed with MARCA what the first eight-thousander was like that crowned a Spanish expedition in the Himalayas. “I keep this magazine ‘Cimas’ from 1975 that is almost dedicated to the conquest of Manaslu. There is a famous photo of me in which you can see how I ride the rope above 7,000 meters with this ice ax like this and a hammer that I was holding on to. Furthermore, I already had my backpack on my back to go to the summit and in a very difficult 40-meter section I got sick. Therefore, on that occasion I could not sleep, I was not able to reach the summit, which Gerardo Blázquez and Jerónimo López did, but the expedition was crowned and it was a team effort. A total team that had worked to make the summit and well, we became delighted with life.”
Images from the 1975 Manaslu expedition
Sama, the ‘other’ town of Carlos Soria
Soria recounts the difference between an expedition from 50 years ago and the one they will now face next spring in Manaslu: “The boots back then were German, with a felt boot, a leather boot and also a boot cover. And that weighed, nevertheless, more than a kilo more than every boot today. The feather monkey now has also changed a lot. Other things like the sleeping bag are very similar. And the ice axes are different as you can see,” says the mountaineer while preparing for the main photo that later illustrates this report.
The man from Avila He gets emotional remembering Manaslu: “It brings back a lot of memories for me. Because it is the only mountain of the 14 eight thousand that has life around it. It has glaciers, but not as many as others that are far from civilization. There is a small town there called Sama, which is wonderful. The first time we were there in 1973 it was the third expedition that happened. The first was a Japanese woman, then some Germans and then us,” Soria recalls.
There is a part of the Manaslu 2025 project that has a clear social component. Carlos Soria will return to his Himalayan village, Sama, a village located at 3,500 meters on the slopes of Manasluwhere the mountaineer from Ávila began an educational project in 2011 at the school attended by 100 boys and girls between 5 and 12 years old: “In Sama they love us a lot, it’s like my town, I’m almost an adopted son. In the spring of 2010, my friend Sito Carcavilla and I returned to Manaslu to try and in the spring we couldn’t go up. It was very bad and on the way down we saw that they had built a school. The lower part of Manaslu is full of life and they had built a wonderful school. We thought we could bring them pencils, notebooks, materials and they told us: ‘Here we need 70 mattresses, 70 quilts and whatever you can bring.’
Carlos Soria poses with an image of a child in SamaCHEMA REY PHOTO
Carlos Soria returned to summit in the fall of 2010 in Manaslu: “We came up with the idea of making t-shirts that we sold, we did two treks, one that went with me at the beginning to bring what they asked us for – mattresses and duvets – and another that went with Sito who brought boots, material and absolutely everything like clothes for children, balls, uniforms and BBVA paid them English teachers for a time. It was a very beautiful time for us, because Sama is not just any town, it is our town, my town. “Now we are going to help the school.”
I train every day and I am very excited because although there are many things that hold me back, my desire to go there is so great that everything keeps me going.
Carlos Soria, Spanish mountaineer
“In Sama we also met the lama, I stayed in the monastery having dinner with them and sleeping there next to the fire with the son, a younger lama who is possibly the one there now. So it’s not just about going to Manaslu, it’s about going to that place. And our intention is to help the school above all, by bringing them some computers, so that they can use them, we’ll see, but we will do something and we will take it ourselves. It’s going to be very exciting,” says Soria while showing us photos of children from Sama.
Support from the Community of Madrid
Now, 50 years after that first Spanish expedition that reached the summit of Manaslu, Soria is preparing thoroughly to fully reach the spring of 2025. It is an expedition supported by the Community of Madrid and that is looking for sponsors to face it in the best conditions: “Now I am very excited because although there are many things that hold me back, my desire to go there is so great that everything pushes me forward. I want to go and I’m fighting for it, with my knee, with my leg, the one that broke precisely a couple of years ago. And well, there I am, but fine,” says Soria about the fact of having to face another eight thousand at the age of 86.
“I train every day. Once inside the house, other times in the mountains and other times at the climbing wall because I have noticed in the climbing wall that I build a lot of muscles and that is what I need. When the accident happened I was feeling very strong and I hadn’t felt that for a long time. I already had the prosthesis on my knee, but we went like a shot towards the summit although then the accident happened. It was a terrible injustice, but hey, now we are going to fix it by going back to Manaslu and doing it 50 years later, which is very nice,” Carlos tells us when he tells us how he prepares for Manaslu.
Carlos Soria at the climbing wall trainingCHEMA REY PHOTO
Summit in Manaslu at 71 years old
Carlos Soria is the first mountaineer to have completed ten of his twelve eight-thousanders after the age of 60. It is curious thatManaslu, the eighth highest mountain on the planet, was crowned by the Avila mountaineer in 2010: “I had to wait 37 years from my first attempt. I made a great climb, without oxygen, at 71 years old and without any problems. We had very good time. There were quite a few people, several Spaniards and in the end only two of us climbed,” he points out when remembering his summit on the fifth attempt of a mountain that is surely the most special for Carlos.
The plan for this expedition that Soria will lead in the spring of 2025 is already defined: “The idea is to go to acclimatize for 14 days in the Khumbu Valley, before going by helicopter to the Manaslu base camp. Once we have done that, Sito, Luis and I go up to camp 1, sleep, go up to camp 2, go down again to camp 1, sleep again and go down to base camp. And we are already prepared to go to the summit when the weather is good. If the good weather takes a long time, we have places to do some training. That is our strategy and it has worked well for us.”
Expedition and sponsorship
The team that will be part of the ‘Manaslu 50 years later’ expedition is already underway, with Carlos Soria at the helm: “It is possible that I could come Site Carcavilla -his guardian angel in Dhaulagiri-, what is certain is that he will accompany us Luis Miguel López Soriano and his camera to tell everything that happens, in addition to Jorge Palacios, Pedro Mateo and Lucía Guichot. The president of Peñalara also comes, Javier Garridothe vice president, Alberto Flechosoand a woman like Belen Rodriguezwho is going to try to climb to the top in one go and go down. We may be together at the summit because we will leave earlier and Belén will ascend when everything is assembled, there is a rope fixed where it is needed and the track is made to be able to go at full speed. It is another incentive that this expedition has, the ascent that would be a female record.”
Belén Rodríguez, world record in the race
Belén Rodríguez, from the Peñalara Club, will be part of the Manaslu expedition 50 years later along with Carlos Soria. She is a speed specialist, a mountain runner, who will try to do the Manaslu summit with a route from base camp (4,750 meters), summit (8,163 meters) and return to base camp. She would be the first woman to attempt it and it is estimated that it will take between 20 and 30 hours to complete a very difficult route.
Belén is a sports nutritionist and has several mountain records, since she does very well at altitude. The idea is that when Carlos Soria makes the attack to the summit from field 3, the Peñalara runner leaves field b Take it to begin your adventure towards the summit of Manaslu, with the possibility of meeting both at the top of this eight thousand.
Now, Belén is preparing thoroughly and has a challenge ahead of her from Puerta del Sol in Madrid to the summit of Peñalara to train for the next event in Manaslu.
Belén Rodríguez, ultratrail of the Peñalara Club
The project and the expedition depend largely on the support of sponsors, although the endorsement from the Community of Madrid guarantees that in the spring of 2025 they will be in Manaslu for a historic event in Spanish mountaineering: “We want to do many things but we depend a lot on the budget we have. We can’t make plans, but we’re going. This puts the cherry on top 50 years later in the Himalayas, it has a part of the history of Spanish mountaineering and also a social component.”
Club Peñalara
“The idea of this expedition came from the Peñalara Clubwith which many of us have a connection as we are from Madrid and have been members for years. The president and the vice president remembered that it will now be the 50th anniversary of our first expedition that we crowned in Manaslu and then, everything got underway,” says Soria about this project in which, in addition to the expedition, there will be talks, conferences , literary and documentary contest. Our idea is to crown and carry there our flag of the Community of Madrid, the flag of the club, of my town Moralzarzal…”
Carlos looks happy, radiant, with the hope of putting the best possible end to his legendary career. With Manaslu he began his love for the Himalayas at the age of 34 – his first expedition in 1973 – and with Manaslu he can put the cherry on top at the age of 86 in the spring of 2025. “It would be fantastic, just the fact of trying it with all my companions and Fighting for it is wonderful. We need sponsors to help us. We have a lot of visibility around the world and this would be the first time that it has been done not only here, in Madrid or in Spain, but in the world. If we manage to get me up 50 years later…”, he says excitedly, imagining a summit that would be the culmination of his life in the mountains. The Manaslu waits. And Carlos Soria’s dream too… because at 86 years old you can continue to fulfill dreams.
