1934 Nanga Parbat climbing disaster

The 1934 Nanga Parbat climbing disaster resulted in the loss of 10 lives over the climbing season including 9 who died in what was, at the time, the largest mountaineering accident in history.

Willy Merkl, leader of the expedition
Nanga Parbat

In 1934, Willy Merkl led a well financed German expedition to Nanga Parbat, with the full backing of the new Nazi government. Early in the expedition Alfred Drexel died, probably of high altitude pulmonary edema.[1] The Tyrolean climbers Peter Aschenbrenner and Erwin Schneider reached an estimated height of (7,895 m / 25,900 ft) on July 6, but were forced to return because of worsening weather. On July 7 they and 14 others were trapped by a ferocious storm at 7,480 m (24,540 ft). During the desperate retreat that followed, three famous German mountaineers, Uli Wieland, Willo Welzenbach and Merkl himself, and six Sherpas died of exhaustion, exposure and altitude sickness, and several more suffered severe frostbite. The last survivor to reach safety, Ang Tsering, did so having spent seven days battling through the storm.[2] It has been said that the disaster, "for sheer protracted agony, has no parallel in climbing annals."[3]

Books

Jonathan Neale wrote a book about the 1934 climbing season on Nanga Parbat called Tigers of the Snow. He interviewed many old Sherpas, including Ang Tsering, the last man off Nanga Parbat alive in 1934. The book attempts to narrate what went wrong on the expedition, set against mountaineering history of the early twentieth century, the background of German politics in the 1930s, and the hardship and passion of life in the Sherpa valleys.[4]

See also
  • List of highest mountains

References
  • Neale, Jonathan (2002). Tigers of the Snow. St Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-26623-5.
  • Mason, Kenneth (1987) [1955 published by Rupert Hart-Davis]. Abode of Snow: A History of Himalayan Exploration and Mountaineering From Earliest Times to the Ascent of Everest. Diadem Books. ISBN 978-0-906371-91-6.
  • Simpson, Joe (1997). Dark Shadows Falling. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-04368-4.
  • Lemtur, Nokmedemla: "Locating Himalayan porters in the Archivalien der Expeditionsgesellschaften of the German Alpine Club (1929–1939)." in: MIDA Archival Reflexicon (2020), ISSN 2628-5029, 1–11.
Notes
  1. Neale, pp. 123-130
  2. Mason pp. 230-233
  3. Simpson, pp. 196–197
  4. https://www.amazon.com/Tigers-Snow-Fateful-Sherpas-Mountaineering/dp/0312266235/
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