Andrew James LockOAM is an Australian high-altitude mountaineer. He became the first, and still remains the only, Australian to climb all 14 "eight-thousanders" on 2 October 2009, and is the 18th person to ever complete this feat. He climbed 13 of the 14 without using bottled oxygen, only using it on Mount Everest, which he has summited twice. He retired from eight-thousander climbing in 2012.
Climbing
His preferred climbing style is in very small teams, mostly climbing without even sherpa support, and without the use of bottled oxygen. His physical ability to perform at high altitude has been noted by other Himalayan climbers. The term "gritty" is often used to describe Lock, and he is noted for his understated and self-depreciating manner. Unusually for a long-standing high-altitude climber, Lock has lost no digits to frostbite. Climbing all 14 eight-thousanders, and surviving, is an uncommon feat as the deaths-to-summits ratio on some of the mountains is at one-in-five, and it often takes more than one attempt, on average, to climb an eight-thousander. He has achieved six first Australian ascents of eight-thousanders, namely Dhaulagiri, Nanga Parbat, Hidden Peak, Manaslu, Annapurna, and Shishapangma. He has made four solo ascents of eight-thousanders, namely Lhotse, Broad Peak, Shishapangma Central and Cho Oyu. He summited Mount Everest twice. His first 8,000-metre summit was of K2, which he climbed in 1993 with a small team that included legendary Himalayan climber Anatoli Boukreev, who later died in 1997 on Annapurna. The "Savage Mountain" lived up to its fearsome reputation when three of his summit partners were killed in separate falls, and Lock rescued a Swedish climber. In 2004, he was a climber and cinematographer for the acclaimed Discovery Channel six-part miniseries, Discovery Channel-Ultimate Survival: Everest, which has been broadcast many times in North America. On that expedition, Lock had to rescue three members of other teams coming down from the summit, giving up his own oxygen along the way. Lock has climbed with several leading high-altitude Himalayan mountaineers, including Anatoli Boukreev, Göran Kropp, Doug Scott and Wojciech Kurtyka, and Iván Vallejo & Iñaki Ochoa de Olza. After Ecuadorian Iván Vallejo, Lock is the second, and still the only other, Southern Hemisphere climber to complete all 14 eight-thousanders. While Lock has climbed with partners that he did not particularly enjoy, or get on with, his unhappy experience when climbing with U.K. mountaineer Alan Hinkes, on Nanga Parbat in 1998, is recounted in his book, Summit 8000. In May 2011, Lock attempted Everest for the third time, but his first without supplementary oxygen. His solo climb of Everest's North Ridge was unsuccessful due to high winds and blizzard conditions. Lock made a second attempt to summit Everest solo, via the North side, without supplementary oxygen in May 2012, but abandoned the climb 300 metres from the summit due to self diagnosed early symptoms of Cerebral Oedema. . Lock retired from personal high-altitude climbing after his 2012 Everest experience, however, a final "oxygenless" ascent of Everest, remains a potential project. He continues to guide commercial expeditions to Mt Everest and other peaks in the Himalaya and around the world, specialising in small teams with high logistical support.
