Karl Golikow

Karl Golikow (born March 20, 1935 in Silesia ; † September 3, 1972 on Piz Badile ) was a German mountaineer. In the 1960s he was one of the most active and successful alpinists in Germany.

biography

He was born in 1935 as the son of Willy and Anny Golikow in Silesia. After attending primary school, he moved with his parents to Bremen in 1946 , where he completed an apprenticeship as a mechanical fitter from 1950 to 1953. He then moved to Stuttgart and became engaged to Adelheid Reiter. Since 1956 he was active as a mountaineer.

In 1960 he climbed the Laliderer Spitze in the Karwendel as well as the Dachl and the Rosskuppe in the Gesäuse . In 1960/1961 he climbed the Great and the Western Peaks of the Three Peaks in the Sexten Dolomites , the Great Peaks over the Direttissima and without a bivouac . He reached the western pinnacle via the French and Swiss guides . On the Civetta in the Dolomites, between 1961 and 1965, he climbed the summits Livanosführe (1961), Punte Civetta and Punta Tissi (both 1965).

In 1964 he traveled a lot in the Mont-Blanc group , where he climbed the north faces of the Aiguille de Triolet and the Courtes , as well as the south-west pillar of the Aiguille du Dru and in 1965 the Grand Capucin via the first-climber route. In the same year he also stood on the summit of Punta Penia on the Marmolada in the Dolomites , which he reached via the southwest face and the south pillar.

In 1966 he was one of the first to climb the Eiger north face via the John Harlin route . In 1967 he was involved in an expedition to the Hindu Kush and also took part in an unsuccessful tour to Nanga Parbat . He also climbed the Rotwand via the southwest face and the Sass Maor via the east face, among other things .

In 1969 he got into a rockfall at the Walker pillar of the Grandes Jorasses , where his companion Jörg Lehne was killed. He had to recover for a long time from a thigh fracture he suffered. Then he climbed the calanque and the north face of Monte Pelmo , among other things .

Tragedy on Piz Badile

At the beginning of September 1972 he wanted to climb the northeast face of Piz Badile in the Bergell Alps together with 19-year-old Otto Uhl . In order to advance faster, the two of them had only climbed with small backpacks over the north edge into the lower part of the wall, where they met the two mountaineers Siegfried Hupfauer and Alois Ritter. The further rise turned into a tragedy.

Golikow and Uhl got carried away and were overtaken by Hupfauer and Ritter on the right route. In addition, the four climbers got into a severe sudden fall in the weather . Due to slides of snow, waterfalls and rockfalls, a descent seemed too dangerous for them, which is why they set up two bivouacs. When trying to bivouac Golikov hochzuprusiken , Otto Uhl died due to exhaustion and frostbite. Golikov survived the night, but was very exhausted and affected by frostbite on his legs. The other two climbers tried to pull him up, but had to give up due to exhaustion and a fall on the rope of Golikov. They secured him to a stand and only reached a bivouac box on the summit late at night . The next morning, Golikov was rescued from the stand dead by rescue workers.

The tragedy was dealt with by the magazine Alpinismus (Issue 2/73, pp. 26 and 40) and the book Security and Risk in Rock and Ice (Volume 1, pp. 16b. 18) by Pit Schubert .

On September 14, 1972, Karl Golikow and Otto Uhl were buried in the cemetery in Untertürkheim .

Web links

• Historical alpine archive