Markus Kronthaler

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Markus Kronthaler in Camp 1 on Nanga Parbat 2004

Markus Kronthaler (born April 5, 1967 in Kufstein ; † July 8, 2006 on Broad Peak , Pakistan ) was an Austrian mountain guide and high-altitude mountaineer .

Alpine life

The wild emperor

At the age of 15, Kronthaler was already climbing difficult routes in the climbing mountains of the Wilder Kaiser . After training as a businessman, he was buried in an avalanche on the Wilder Kaiser in 1986. Through this experience he began several years of training courses, which he completed as a state-certified mountain and ski guide . From 1988 to 2003 he was a member of the Federal Gendarmerie as an alpine bowel . After a difficult mountain rescue operation, he was awarded the Austrian Lifesaver Medal in 1999 . From 2003 he worked full-time as a mountain guide in Kufstein. He was drawn more and more to high-altitude mountaineering. It seemed particularly important to him to come to terms with alpine historical events and to follow in the footsteps of pioneers of extreme mountaineering. He did not pursue media interests, commercial success or new records. Only through his numerous multimedia lectures did he gain broader recognition. On May 4, 2005, he was named Sportsman of the Year 2004 by the city of Kufstein . On January 7, 2006, he suffered a bruised chest and other injuries in a crash with a snow plow over 100 meters at the Totenkirchl . He owed his survival only to the fact that he fell on enough fresh snow between rocks. This accident didn't stop him from continuing to search for his limits.

Expeditions

Aerial view of Shishapangma (left)
The Ama Dablam
The Mutztagata
The Nanga Parbat from the Märchenwiese from
Broad Peak as seen from Concordia

In 2000 Kronthaler was allowed to take part in the four-person Austrian gendarmerie mountain guide expedition to Shishapangma . As far as possible, skis were used. Kronthaler reached the middle summit of the eight-thousander . The main summit was not reached.

A successful ascent of Ama Dablam followed in 2002 .

The year 2004 was dominated by the ascent of Nanga Parbat . The six-person Austrian Nanga Parbat edelweiss expedition 2004 to the "Germans' Mountain of Fate" was led by Kronthaler himself. The background was a "mountaineering" reappraisal of the historical Nanga Parbat expeditions from 1932 to 1939 and 1953, as well as the person Peter Aschenbrenner , who, together with Erwin Schneider, was the only survivor of the 1934 German Nanga Parbat expedition . The Muztagata should be climbed beforehand. Due to persistent bad weather, however, only an altitude of about 7400  m could be reached. The weather conditions in the Kinshofer route on the Diamir flank of the Nanga Parbat, the most traveled route, were also unfavorable. Progress on the ascent was delayed and forced Kronthaler to turn back a hundred meters below the summit when night fell. A Saxon mountaineering group that reached the summit in the dark got into mountain difficulties. One climber died in a fall during the descent, two others got lost and were found at the end of their tether. Kronthaler and his group stayed one day and one night longer in the death zone at camp 4 to take care of the badly ailing German mountaineers and bring them down to the valley. The various reports and representations of the events triggered some violent media reactions. Kronthaler processed these experiences combined with meticulous historical research in high-profile multimedia lectures in Austria and Germany.

On May 21, 2006 Kronthaler set out to climb Broad Peak and Chogolisa in the course of the expedition In the footsteps of Hermann Buhl . The ten-person team consisted of experienced mountain guides and mountain rescuers . Since this expedition was also characterized by bad weather, the ascent of Chogolisa had to be abandoned prematurely. Kronthaler and Sepp Bachmair and Peter Ressmann set off from Camp 3 (approx. 6,950  m ) to the summit on the night of July 5th to 6th, 2006, after having besieged Broad Peak for weeks and shortly before the end of the ascent permite . To save weight for the ascent, they left all water and food in the camp. Peter Ressman reached the pre-summit on July 6th at around 5 p.m., the main summit around an hour later. During the night he got back to camp 3, where he went down on skis from around 7500  m . On the descent, he met Kronthaler and Bachmair below the pre-summit, who were bivouacking in a snow cave (approx. 7950  m ). Both continued the ascent the next morning, but Kronthaler in particular made very slow progress due to the lack of water, so that they did not reach the main summit on July 7th between 3 and 3:30 p.m. During the descent, Kronthaler's condition deteriorated rapidly. Despite numerous attempts by Bachmair to move Kronthaler forward by supporting, carrying or pulling, they did not succeed in overcoming the counter-slope to the pre-summit during the night. On the morning of July 8th, Kronthaler died of exhaustion and lack of fluids on the summit ridge of Broad Peak. Bachmair made it alone up to approx. 7800  m . During the further descent to base camp, he received support from the Polish mountaineer Piotr Morawski and the Spanish doctor Jorge Egocheaga . Morawski immediately stopped his ascent to the summit to provide assistance, but two days later he reached the summit alone. Egocheaga had climbed Broad Peak in 21 hours just two days earlier and, to help, had climbed from base camp to an altitude of around 7,300  m in eight hours . It was not possible to recover Kronthaler's body ; he was initially left unburied on the mountain. The expedition and the death of Markus Kronthaler were documented by Jochen Hemmleb in the book Broad Peak - Traum und Albtraum .

Salvage expedition

A year later, on June 17, 2007, Georg Kronthaler , Markus Kronthaler's brother, set out with a team of five to rescue the body on Broad Peak. In the course of the expedition, a memorial plaque was placed in Urdukas . Fortunately, there were several expeditions on the mountain at the same time, so that the rescue team could be offered greater security. Despite the adverse weather conditions, the team succeeded on July 20, with significant support from Pakistani helpers, in recovering Markus Kronthaler's corpse, which was the highest recovery of a corpse to date. With a rescue bag specially developed for this project , the corpse could be brought to the base camp at approx. 5000  m in stages . Kronthaler was transferred to Austria at the beginning of August 2007, cremated and buried in Kufstein. After this expedition, Georg Kronthaler founded the Markus Kronthaler Mountain Rescue Foundation . They are intended to implement various social projects, but above all to support Pakistani mountain guides in training to become mountain rescuers. Georg Kronthaler was the first recipient of the " Media Prize for Civil Courage" awarded by the Fritz Roth Foundation , which honors people who have dealt with grief in an unusual way.

literature

  • Jochen Hemmleb: Broad Peak - dream and nightmare - on the trail of Hermann Buhl's last expedition . Tyrolia, Innsbruck 2007, ISBN 978-3-7022-2811-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Official Gazette of the City of Kufstein, October 2005 (PDF; 1.4 MB) Markus Kronthaler honored as "Sportsman of the Year 2004"
  2. ↑ See blog entry from July 1, 2006 on Markus Kronthaler's website
  3. ^ "Highest-altitude body recovery in history" (English, July 25, 2007)
  4. ↑ See summary of the rescue expedition (July 24, 2007)
  5. ↑ About the family mourning and the rescue, see the article by Bayerischer Rundfunk , published on November 13, 2017 on YouTube .
  6. ↑ Daniela Fobbe terminal: undertaker Fritz Roth - The ideas live on. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. December 15, 2013, accessed June 7, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Guido Wagner: Mountaineer trains for a year to rescue dead brother 8000 meters. In: Kölnische Rundschau . May 29, 2016, accessed on January 9, 2020 (A paid registration is required for the full text of the article.).
personal data
SURNAME Kronthaler, Markus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian mountaineer
DATE OF BIRTH April 5th 1967
PLACE OF BIRTH Kufstein , Tyrol, Austria
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 2006
Place of death Broad Peak , Karakoram