Yūichirō Miura

Yūichirō Miura

Yūichirō Miura ( Japanese 三浦 雄 一郎 , Miura Yūichirō ; born October 12, 1932 in Aomori , Aomori Prefecture , Japan ) is a Japanese alpinist .

Life

Yūichirō Miura is the son of the ski pioneer Keizō Miura . In 1970 he became known worldwide for the daring project to ski down the summit of Mount Everest . After a climb that lasted 2 months, he reached the summit and wanted to try the longest downhill run in skiing history. The descent was to go on May 6, 1970 from the South Col through the Lhotse Wall. The run, in which Miura reached 160 km / h, was slowed down by a parachute. When colliding with small rocks, he lost control and slid 200 m down the ice wall. Shortly before a crevasse he lay where he was and was seriously injured. In addition, six Nepalese Sherpas were killed on this expedition . This company can be seen in the Canadian documentary Schußfahrt vom Mount Everest (orig. The Man Who Skied Down Everest ), which received an Oscar for best documentary in 1976 . Miura spent 3 million dollars on his extravaganza. In 2003, at the age of 70 years and 222 days, Miura was the oldest climber to climb Mount Everest. For this he received an entry in the Guinness Book of Records . He broke that record in May 2013 when he reached the summit of Mount Everest for the third time at the age of 80 years and 223 days.

Other spectacular downhill runs from Miura were: Mount Fuji (1966), Mount McKinley (1967), Popocatepetl (1968), Torres del Paine (1969) and Kilimanjaro (1981)

literature

1978: Miura, Yuichiro (with Eric Perlman) The Man who skied down Everest , San Francisco, Harper & Row (Engl.)

Web links

• The Japanese were the oldest people to reach the peak of the Spiegelartikel
• Biography (Engl.) ( Memento of 12 October 2007 at the Internet Archive )