Karl Blach

Karl Blach (born July 24, 1929 in Vienna ; † August 9, 1976 on the Dachstein ) was an Austrian mountaineer.

Life

The chemical engineer moved to Neumarkt im Hausruckkreis in 1948 and worked in Venezuela from 1956 to 1961 , where his two sons Roland and Reinhard were born. Then he lived again in Neumarkt, where his daughter Margot was born. After working in Vienna for two years, he moved with his family to Salzburg , where he managed the branch of an international beverage company.

Blach was a certified mountain and ski guide and was accepted into the Austrian Alpine Club in 1952 . He achieved some difficult first ascents, including the first winter ascent of the north face of the Schermberg ("Linzerweg") in 1950 with Karl Lugmayer . It is one of the highest walls in the Eastern Alps. A report on the three-day ascent, written by Lugmayer, appeared in the British Alpine Journal , the world's oldest mountaineering magazine .

In 1952, Blach and the German Jürgen Wellenkamp climbed the north face of the Eiger as the tenth rope team . In 1955 he and Karl Reiss made the first ascent of the 600 m high Schreckhorn south pillar, one of the most beautiful rocky routes on a Bernese 4000er. In 1956 the first ascent of the direct north-west face ( Himmelsleiter ) of the Großer Möseler with H. Raditschnig, S. Jungmair and E. Kernmayr followed, a high alpine steep ice tour on the second highest mountain in the Zillertal Alps.

In 1976, Blach and his two sons were killed in a violent fall in the weather on the Dachstein south face.

Web links

• Personal folder on Karl Blach (PDF) in the historical Alpine archive of the Alpine associations in Germany, Austria and South Tyrol (temporarily offline)
• Alpinwiki