“Clearly the best all-round mountaineer in the world” in his time was the Austrian Hermann Buhl, Reinhold Messner once told me. “Buhl was at least 50 years ahead of his time.”
Buhl achieved the first ascents of two eight-thousanders in Pakistan: Nanga Parbat in 1953 and Broad Peak in 1957 – without bottled oxygen. Only his companion from Broad Peak, the Austrian Kurt Diemberger succeeded who was also the first to climb Dhaulagiri, achieved this feat.
Speed and precision on the mountain
Hermann Buhl was born in the Austrian town of Innsbruck on 21 September 1924, 100 years ago today. His mother died young and his father had to temporarily place his two sons in an orphanage. Later, his aunt and an uncle took little Hermann into their family. Buhl’s first mountain tour at the age of ten took him alongside his father up the 2,677-meter-high Glungezer near Innsbruck. Buhl began climbing as a teenager. The rocks in the Karwendel, Wetterstein and Wilder Kaiser mountains became his playgrounds of stone. In 1943, he managed his first major new tour: the West Face of the Maukspitze in the Kaiser Mountains.
In the following years, Buhl perfected his technique. He set milestones in the Dolomites and in the Mont Blanc region. “When he was rock climbing, he was so focused that you couldn’t talk to him at all,” Marcus Schmuck (1925 – 2005), another of Buhl’s companions on the first ascent of Broad Peak, once told me. “There was only speed and precision when climbing.”
Legendary solo ascent to the summit of Nanga Parbat
At the beginning of the 1950s, Buhl was in the form of his life: in 1952, the Austrian was the first to climb the Northeast face of Piz Badile in the Alps solo, as well as the East Face of the Watzmann, also solo and in winter. No wonder the German expedition leader Karl Maria Herrligkoffer invites him to join the 1953 Nanga Parbat expedition.
But Buhl is stubborn. It doesn’t bother him that Herrlighoffer at the base camp has called for a turnaround several times. The German may be good as a fundraiser and expedition organizer, but not as a mountaineer. There are still 1,225 meters in altitude and a distance of over six kilometers between the highest camp and the summit. When his tent partner Otto Kempter is not ready to set off at the agreed time on the planned summit day, Buhl trudges off alone – without bottled oxygen.
Bivouac standing
He expects his companion to catch up with him, but then registers that Kempter is giving up. Buhl now knows that he will only make it alone or not at all. On and on he climbs, simply ignoring the fact that his strength is dwindling. Pure will drives him up.
In the early evening hours of 3 July 1953, Buhl finally reaches the highest point at 8,125 meters. “I am not aware of the significance of the moment, nor do I feel anything of victory joy, I don’t even feel like a winner. I’m just glad that I’m up there and that all these exertions have come to an end for the time being.”
Stimulants to keep from falling asleep
But Buhl was mistaken. The real martyrdom was yet to come. He spends the night standing on a small rocky outcrop. Buhl swallows tablets against frostbite and the stimulant Pervitin to keep from falling asleep. 41 hours after setting off, he returns to the highest camp with the last of his strength. An incredible feat of energy. Buhl looks as if he has aged years in two days.
“For a normal mountaineer, what Buhl did was not survivable,” Reinhold Messner told me. In 1995, Japanese mountaineers needed 39 hours for the same route, despite modern equipment and precise knowledge of the route.
Revolutionary style
After the first ascent of Nanga Parbat, Buhl fell out with expedition leader Herrligkoffer. The dispute over the exploitation rights of the expedition ends up in court. In Austria, Buhl is named “Sportsman of the Year”. He becomes an idol for an entire generation of mountaineers.
On 9 June 1957, Buhl along with his Austrian compatriots Diemberger, Schmuck and Fritz Wintersteller also succeeds in the first ascent of the 8,051-meter-high Broad Peak. In contrast to the Nanga Parbat expedition, with a small budget, in a small team, without porters, again without bottled oxygen – a revolution in high-altitude mountaineering at the time.
Fallen to his death on the Chogolisa
Two and a half weeks after his summit success on Broad Peak, Buhl dies. While attempting to first climb the 7,654-meter-high Chogolisa together with Diemberger, a cornice breaks off below him on the summit ridge. Buhl falls to his death. The two Austrians had wanted to climb the mountain in alpine style – as a duo with only one tent in their packs and in one go.
“The fact that he thought of the next step and wanted to try it out in an experiment on Chogolisa shows that he was on the threshold of a new era,” Reinhold Messner told me about Buhl. “He really would have revolutionized mountaineering once again in the 1960s.” Hermann Buhl was only 32 years old when he died. He left behind his wife Eugenie and three daughters. The memory of his outstanding achievements as a mountaineer remain alive to this day.
