Arnold Glatthard

Arnold Glatthard (born June 16, 1910 in Meiringen ; † November 23, 2002 there ) was a Swiss ski racer , mountain guide and politician .

biography

The trained businessman worked as a state-certified mountain and ski guide from 1932. From 1935 to 1954 he was the trainer and head of the Swiss national ski team and head of ski instructor training for the Canton of Bern. As a ski racer, he won the Lauberhorn race and the Arlberg-Kandahar race in 1935 .

In 1936 he was involved in the rescue operation of Toni Kurz , who had an accident on the north face of the Eiger , who died a few meters above Glatthard and other rescuers hanging on a rope. The drama made international headlines and was processed in several books and films.

In 1940 he founded the world's first mountaineering institute in Switzerland and, from 1954, continued to train Indian and Nepalese Sherpas . Among them was Tenzing Norgay , one of the first to climb Mount Everest . On behalf of the Swiss Foundation for Alpine Research, he founded the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, India , in 1953 . He was also the inventor of the Glatthard ice screw with a conical long shaft and fine thread. This screw-in and screw-out ice securing device replaced the previously common ice hooks, which had to be knocked in at the risk of the ice breaking out and then painstakingly picked from the ice.

From 1967 to 1970 he was president of the Meiringen municipal council and initiator of the Meiringen-Hasliberg mountain railways . In 2000 he was made an honorary citizen. His brother Karl Glatthard (1913–1982) was the central president of the Swiss National Association for Sport and National Council in the canton of Bern.

Web links

• Peter Bernet: Glatthard, Arnold. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . December 28, 2006 .
• Arnold Glatthard died. In: skialpin.ch from November 26, 2002.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Peter Stettler: Glatthard, Karl. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 18, 2005 .