Hannelore Schmatz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hannelore Schmatz (born February 16, 1940 in Regensburg ; † October 2, 1979 on Mount Everest ) was a mountaineer and the first German to stand on the summit of Mount Everest.

In 1975 Schmatz climbed the summit of Tirich Mir . Four years later, she and her husband Gerhard Schmatz took part in an expedition to Mount Everest over the southeast ridge, the classic southern or Hillary route. One day after her husband had stood on the summit, she decided at short notice to also climb from the south saddle to the summit with the next team, although she had not originally planned that. Gerhard Schmatz was the expedition leader and at that time, at 50 years of age, the oldest person to have made it to the summit. Hannelore Schmatz died of exhaustion on the descent at an altitude of 8,300  m , shortly after seeing her climbing partner, the American Ray Genet , die of exhaustion.

In 1984, while on an expedition by the Nepalese border police, the police inspector Yogendra Bahadur Thapa and the Sherpa Ang Dorje died in a crash while trying to recover the body of Hannelore Schmatz.

For years the remains of Hannelore Schmatz were a landmark on the climb from the south saddle towards the summit. She was sitting a few hundred meters above the South Col, leaning against her backpack; her brown hair was blowing in the wind. The Danish lawyer and mountaineer Lene Gammelgaard quoted the Norwegian mountaineer and expedition leader Arne Næss in her book "Climbing High" about her ascent of Everest in the disaster season 1996, that mountaineers felt pursued by Hannelore Schmatz's open eyes when they passed. This was probably either an optical illusion or a hallucination as a result of the altitude effects, of which there are many examples on Everest. Storms at high altitude probably blew her body over the ridge into the Kangshung Wall .

The first German to stand on the summit and then return was only 20 years later Helga Hengge , who took part in an expedition by Russell Brice on the Tibetan north side of Everest in 1999 .

credentials

  1. ^ Everest summiter Hannelore Schmatz . Everest News. Retrieved April 8, 2008.
  2. ↑ Gerhard Schmatz: Ascent of Mt. Everest 8,848 m - highest mountain on earth . In: Dr. Gerhard Schmatz. My life . Retrieved October 13, 2009.
  3. ↑ Audrey Salkeld: Report from Base Camp . PBS . May 9, 1996. Retrieved April 8, 2008.
  4. ↑ List of climbers who lost their lives on the Everest while climbing . Everest Summiteers Association. Archived from the original on August 29, 2009. Retrieved April 8, 2008.
  5. ↑ 2 Nepalese Mountaineers The Looking for Body on Everest . The New York Times . October 29, 1984. Retrieved April 8, 2008.
  6. ^ A b David Breashears: High Exposure. An Enduring Passion for Everest and Other Unforgiving Places. Edinburgh / New York / Melbourne 1999, p. 24.
  7. ↑ Lene Gammelgaard: Climbing High: A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy . The New York Times . Retrieved April 8, 2008.
personal data
SURNAME Schmatz, Hannelore
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mountaineer
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH regensburg
DATE OF DEATH 2nd October 1979
Place of death Mount Everest