The 1934 Nanga Parbat climbing disaster resulted in the loss of 10 lives on Nanga Parbat, the world's ninth-highest mountain [1] and one of the 14 eight-thousanders. [2] The disaster, which happened during the 1934 climbing season, included nine climbers who died in what was, at the time, the single deadliest mountaineering accident in history.
In 1934, German climber Willy Merkl led a well financed expedition to Nanga Parbat (located in Jammu and Kashmir, British India; present-day Gilgit-Baltistan, northeastern Pakistan), [3] with the full backing of the new Nazi government. Early in the expedition Alfred Drexel died, probably of high altitude pulmonary edema. [4] The Tyrolean climbers Peter Aschenbrenner and Erwin Schneider reached an estimated height of (7,895 m / 25,900 ft) on July 6, but were forced to return because of worsening weather. On July 7, they and 14 others were trapped by a ferocious storm at 7,480 m (24,540 ft). During the desperate retreat that followed, three famous German mountaineers, Ulrich Wieland , Willo Welzenbach and Merkl himself, as well as six Sherpas, died of exhaustion, exposure and altitude sickness, and several more suffered severe frostbite. The last survivor to reach safety, Ang Tsering, did so having spent seven days battling through the storm. [5] It has been said that the disaster, "for sheer protracted agony, has no parallel in climbing annals." [6]
Jonathan Neale wrote a book about the 1934 climbing season on Nanga Parbat called Tigers of the Snow. He interviewed many old Sherpas, including Ang Tsering, the last man off Nanga Parbat alive in 1934. The book attempts to narrate what went wrong on the expedition, set against mountaineering history of the early twentieth century, the background of German politics in the 1930s, and the hardship and passion of life in the Sherpa valleys. [7]
Mountaineering, mountain climbing, or alpinism, is a set of outdoor activities that involves ascending mountains. Mountaineering-related activities include traditional outdoor climbing, skiing, and traversing via ferratas that have become sports in their own right. Indoor climbing, sport climbing, and bouldering are also considered variants of mountaineering by some, but are part of a wide group of mountain sports.
The International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA) recognises eight-thousanders as the 14 mountains that are more than 8,000 metres (26,247 ft) in height above sea level, and are considered to be sufficiently independent of neighbouring peaks. There is no precise definition of the criteria used to assess independence, and, since 2012, the UIAA has been involved in a process to consider whether the list should be expanded to 20 mountains. All eight-thousanders are located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia, and their summits are in the death zone.
Nanga Parbat, known locally as Diamer, is the ninth-highest mountain on Earth, its summit at 8,126 m (26,660 ft) above sea level. Lying immediately southeast of the northernmost bend of the Indus River in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Nanga Parbat is the westernmost major peak of the Himalayas, and thus in the traditional view of the Himalayas as bounded by the Indus and Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra rivers, it is the western anchor of the entire mountain range.
Hermann Buhl was an Austrian mountaineer. He was innovative in applying Alpine style to Himalayan climbing. His accomplishments include the first ascents of Nanga Parbat in 1953 and Broad Peak in 1957.
Alan Hinkes OBE is an English Himalayan high-altitude mountaineer from Northallerton in North Yorkshire. He is the first British mountaineer to claim all 14 Himalayan eight-thousanders, which he did on 30 May 2005.
Edmund Viesturs is a high-altitude mountaineer, corporate speaker, and well known author in the mountain climbing community. He is the only American to have climbed all 14 of the world's eight-thousander mountain peaks, and only the fifth person to do so without using supplemental oxygen. Along with Apa Sherpa, he has summitted peaks of over 8,000 meters on 21 occasions, including Mount Everest seven times.
Andrew James Lock OAM 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 three times. He retired from eight-thousander climbing in 2012.
Günther Messner was an Italian mountaineer from South Tyrol and the younger brother of Reinhold Messner. Günther climbed some of the most difficult routes in the Alps during the 1960s, and joined the Nanga Parbat-Expedition in 1970 just before the beginning of the expedition due to an opening within the team.
Willy Merkl was a German mountain climber who is most notable for his attempt to lead a German-American team up Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas in 1932.
Amir Mehdi was a Pakistani mountaineer and porter known for being part of the team which managed the first successful ascent of Nanga Parbat in 1953, and of K2 in 1954 with an Italian expedition. He, along with the Italian mountaineer Walter Bonatti, are also known for having survived a night at the highest open bivouac - 8,100 metres (26,600 ft) - on K2 in 1954.
Ang Tharkay was a Nepalese mountain climber and explorer who acted as sherpa and later sirdar for many Himalayan expeditions. He was "beyond question the outstanding sherpa of his era" and he introduced Tenzing Norgay to the world of mountaineering.
The 1939 American Karakoram expedition to K2 was the unsuccessful second attempt by American mountaineers to climb the then-unclimbed second-highest mountain in the world, K2, following the 1938 reconnaissance expedition. Fritz Wiessner, the leader of the expedition, and Pasang Dawa Lama got to within 800 feet (240 m) of the summit via the Abruzzi Ridge – a difficult and arduous route – with Wiessner doing practically all the lead climbing. Through a series of mishaps, one of the team members, Dudley Wolfe, was left stranded near the top of the mountain after his companions had descended to base camp. Three attempts were made to rescue Wolfe. On the second attempt three Sherpas reached him after he had been alone for a week at over 24,000 feet (7,300 m) but he refused to try to descend. Two days later the Sherpas again tried to rescue him, but they were never seen again. A final rescue effort was abandoned when all hope for the four climbers had been lost.
Ang Tshering was a sherpa known for his participation in the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition and the 1934 Nanga Parbat climbing disaster.
The Mazeno Ridge is an arête, a long narrow ridge, and part of the Nanga Parbat massif in Gilgit–Baltistan, Pakistan, in the Himalayan range. The ridge is the longest of any ridge on the eight-thousand-metre peaks in the Himalayas. A series of eight subsidiary peaks form the ridge, the highest being Mazeno Peak at 7,120 metres (23,360 ft). All eight subsidiary peaks have been climbed, but a complete traverse of the ridge and ascent of Nanga Parbat was only successfully achieved in 2012, and as of 2019, no other expedition has reached the summit of Nanga Parbat via the Mazeno Ridge.
Pasang Kikuli (1911–1939) was a Nepalese mountain climber and explorer who acted as sherpa and later sirdar for many Himalayan expeditions. He died on the 1939 American Karakoram expedition to K2, attempting to rescue a stranded climber.
On the 1953 German–Austrian Nanga Parbat expedition Hermann Buhl succeeded in making the first ascent of Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain in the world. He reached the top on 3 July 1953 and this was and remains the only time an 8,000-metre summit was first reached by someone climbing alone. The expedition was led by Karl Herrligkoffer who went on to lead a long series of attempts to climb eight-thousanders in the Himalaya and Karakoram.
The 1955 French Makalu expedition was the first to successfully climb Makalu, the Himalayan mountain 12 miles (19 km) to the southeast of Mount Everest, on the border between Nepal and Tibet. At 8,485 metres (27,838 ft) Makalu is the fifth-highest mountain in the world and an eight-thousander.