Mountaineer legend says it's down to luck

FRANKFURT - Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner is perhaps one of the world's last great adventurers: he has conquered the planet's highest peaks, crossed Antarctica and hunted for the elusive yeti.

That he has lived to tell those tales, is mainly down to luck, he says.

Now 73 years old with an unruly mop of gray hair and a full beard, the man who counts German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a walking buddy says he is always in pursuit of the next challenge.