The mountaineering scene mourns the death of the Slovenian Grega Lacen. Last Friday the 43-year-old was en route in the mountains near the village of Jezersko, which lies in northern Slovenia near the border with Austria. On his descent down a snow-covered mountain path, Lacen apparently slipped and fell to his death over a steep wall. About 600 ascents were listed in Grega’s tour book. He also left his mark in the Himalayas and the Karakoram.
On the top of Everest in 2000
In 1998, at the age of 22, Lacen scaled the eight-thousander Dhaulagiri in Nepal without bottled oxygen. In 2000, he was part of the team of the Slovenian ski mountaineer Davo Karnicar, who was the first person to ski down from the summit of Mount Everest completely to the base camp (Karnicar died last September in a forest accident in Slovenia). During that Everest expedition Grega reached the highest point on earth – above the South Col he used a breathing mask.
In 2012, Lacen led a Slovenian expedition to the eight-thousander Broad Peak in Pakistan, during which five team members reached the summit – without bottled oxygen and without the support of high altitude porters. Grega himself renounced the summit to accompany an exhausted companion down to base camp.
