1934 Nanga Parbat climbing disaster

In 1934, German climber Willy Merkl led a well financed expedition to Nanga Parbat (located in Jammu and Kashmir, British India; present-day Gilgit-Baltistan, northeastern Pakistan),[3] with the full backing of the new Nazi government. Early in the expedition Alfred Drexel died, probably of high altitude pulmonary edema.[4] 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, Ulrich Wieland, Willo Welzenbach and Merkl himself, as well as 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.[5] It has been said that the disaster, "for sheer protracted agony, has no parallel in climbing annals."[6]

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.[7]

• List of deaths on eight-thousanders

• 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)". MIDA Archival Reflexicon. Max Weber Stiftung. doi:10.25360/01-2022-00026. Retrieved 2023-03-15.

Notes

• Bechtold, Fritz (1936). Nanga Parbat Adventure: A Himalayan Expedition. Translated by Tyndale, H.E.G. (First ed.). New York: E.P. Dutton.