Renowned Swiss guide dies in Alps climbing fall
Published 12:01 am Sunday, May 1, 2011
GENEVA — Famed Swiss mountain guide Erhard Loretan, one of the few climbers to ever reach the summits of all 14 of the world’s peaks above 8,000 meters, has died in a climbing fall on his 52nd birthday.
Swiss police said Loretan died leading a client up the summit ridge of the Gruenhorn, in the Bernese Alps. The accident occurred Thursday. The pair had skied up part way, then roped up for the final ascent.
They fell for unknown reasons at 12,500 feet up the 13,264-foot peak. Loretan died at the scene, police from the Swiss state of Valais said. His 38-year-old Swiss client was flown to a hospital in serious condition.
Police are investigating.
Loretan, originally from the canton of Fribourg, began climbing at age 11. He climbed his first 8,000-meter peak, Pakistan’s difficult Nanga Parbat, in 1982. It took him 13 years to make it up the other 13 eight-thousanders.
His 1986 ascent of Mount Everest, without bottled oxygen and in a night-time push with climbing partner Jean Troillet that took just 40 hours, stunned the alpine climbing world and made headlines in climbing magazines and newspapers.
