Reinhold Messner - for his first Himalayan expedition he was going to go straight up the highest sheer rock face in the world – the 15,000-foot, ice-covered face of Nanga Parbat. In 1970 he became the first person to ever summit this Gateway to Hell using this borderline-suicidal route, then he camped on the summit, descended the other side, and subsequently became the only person to ever cross the mountain from one side to the other.