Hans Saler

Hans Saler (born November 2, 1947 in Munich ) is an extreme mountaineer and circumnavigator . At the age of 14, he already managed the most difficult alpine walls and first ascents on his own.

At the end of the 1960s, he was one of the best mountaineers in Europe and was awarded by Dr. Karl Maria Herrligkoffer invited to his next Nanga Parbat expedition . He was just on an expedition in South America. Hans Saler was able to finance the cost of the crossing from there by chance that he took a photo in La Paz when police officers shot a bearded man. It later turned out that it was the revolutionary Inti , Che Guevara's successor . That photo made him enough money for a while.

The other members also belonged to the elite of young extreme mountaineers at the time: Gerhard Baur , Werner Haim , Felix Kuen , Günter Kroh , Gert Mändl , Günther and Reinhold Messner , Peter Scholz , Jürgen Winkler. In June 1970 four of the participants, first Günther and Reinhold Messner, then Felix Kuen and Peter Scholz, reached the summit via the 4500 meter long and extremely difficult Rupal flank, which had not been climbed until then. Since Günter Messner died on the descent under circumstances that are still unclear, the expedition was canceled so that other mountaineers planned for the summit, such as Hans Saler, had to descend - after they had previously looked for the Messner brothers in the so-called death zone.

Three participants in the expedition, Reinhold Messner, Hans Saler and the expedition guest Max von Kienlin , have published their memories of the events on Nanga Parbat in books. More than three decades after the expedition, there was a dispute in court about the "truth" long ago.

After the Nanga Parbat expedition, Hans Saler went to Australia , where he and a friend built a multihull boat ( trimaran ) out of plywood . After three and a half months, a distance of about 10,000 kilometers and a hurricane, they reached South Africa .

In 1973, Hans Saler successfully climbed Dhaulagiri III for the first time . Afterwards he hiked the then completely forgotten Way of St. James from France to Galicia and wrote a multi-part series for the radio about it - a first beginning of today's boom on the pilgrimage route. Then he built a seaworthy sailing yacht on his own in Munich, with which he crossed the Atlantic even before the interior of the boat was finished. Subsequently, the ship served Hans Saler and his current wife Truus Saler for four and a half years as an apartment and means of transport across the world's oceans.

Today Hans Saler lives with his wife in Chile and leads tours through the mountains there.

literature

• Between light and shadow. The Messner tragedy on Nanga Parbat . A1 Verlag GmbH, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-927-74365-8 .
• Between light and shadow. The Messner tragedy on Nanga Parbat . Updated new edition. A1 Verlag GmbH, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-940666-12-3 .
• Walking the tightrope of my life. Nymphenburger, Munich 2010, ISBN 3-485-01304-8 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Saler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Hans Saler on the A1 Verlag website