Hannelore Schmatz

Hannelore Schmatz
Hannelore Schmatz
Born
Hannelore Ledermann

(1940-02-16)16 February 1940
Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany
Died2 October 1979(1979-10-02) (aged 39)
Mount Everest
SpouseGerhard Schmatz

Hannelore Schmatz (née Ledermann;[1] 14 February 1940 – 2 October 1979) was a German mountaineer and the fourth woman to summit Mount Everest. She collapsed and died as she was returning from summiting Everest via the southern route; Schmatz was the first woman and first German citizen to die on the upper slopes of Everest.[2][3]

Biography

In 1962, Schmatz married her husband, Gerhard Schmatz, who was the first European to climb all Seven Summits.[4][5] The pair lived in Neu-Ulm, where Gerhard ran a notary office. Her husband introduced Schmatz to mountaineering and together, they climbed Manaslu in May 1973, Tirich Mir in July 1975, and Lhotse in June 1977. Between 1973 and 1976, the couple made it an annual tradition to scale one of the highest mountains.[6] With the ascent of Tirich Mir, Schmatz was the first German woman to climb a seventhousander mountain.[7]

Death

Schmatz was on an expedition via the South East Ridge route with her husband Gerhard Schmatz, who was the expedition leader and the oldest man to summit Everest at the time at age 50. Hannelore Schmatz initially didn't plan to go to the summit, but decided to do so shortly after her husband began making his way down the day before. On the same expedition was the American Ray Genet, who also died while descending from the summit. Exhausted from the climb, they had stopped to bivouac at 28,000 feet (8,500 m) as the night approached, despite their Sherpa guides urging them not to stop. Ray Genet died later that night and both the Sherpa and Schmatz were distressed, but decided to continue their descent. Then at 27,200 feet (8,300 m) Schmatz sat down, said "Water, Water" to her Sherpa and died.[6][8] Sungdare Sherpa, one of the Sherpa guides, remained with her body, and as a result, lost most of his fingers and toes.[9]

Genet's body ultimately disappeared under the snow, but Schmatz's body remained where she died on the mountain.[10]

It was in 1999, 20 years later, that Helga Hengge was the first German woman to survive reaching the summit of Mount Everest. She made the ascent from Tibet via the North Side route. In 2009, Billi Bierling followed Hannelore Schmatz's route from the south to the summit and back.[11]

Body

For years, Schmatz's remains could be seen by anyone attempting to summit Everest by the southern route. Her body was frozen in a sitting position, leaning against her backpack with eyes open and hair blowing in the wind, about 100 metres (330 ft) above Camp IV.[12] Her body was held in place by her climbing rope during gale gusts until 1982, when an unidentified climber is presumed to have cut the cord.[8]

In 1980, while travelling through Kathmandu, her husband bought a Leica camera carried by Schmatz during her death from a local vendor for $200. Schmatz's husband assumes that someone stole the camera from her body while on the mountain.[8]

During a 1981 expedition Sungdare Sherpa was the guide again for a new group of climbers. He had refused at first due to losing his fingers and toes during the 1979 expedition, but was paid extra by climber Chris Kopcjynski. During this climb down as they passed Schmatz's body, Kopcjynski was shocked, thinking it was a tent and stated "We did not touch it. I could see she had on her watch still."[13]

In October 1984, police inspector Yogendra Bahadur Thapa, 36, and his guide, Ang Dorjee, 35, fell to their deaths while trying to recover Schmatz's body on a Nepalese police expedition.[14][15]

British mountaineer Chris Bonington spotted Schmatz from a distance in April 1985, and initially mistook her body for a tent until he got a closer look.[10]

Lene Gammelgaard, the first Scandinavian woman to reach the summit of Everest, quotes the Norwegian mountaineer and expedition leader Arne Næss Jr. describing his encounter with Schmatz's remains, in her book Climbing High: A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy (1999), which recounts her own 1996 expedition.[16] Næss' description is as follows:

"It's not far now. I can't escape the sinister guard. Approximately 100 meters (300') above Camp IV she sits leaning against her pack, as if taking a short break. A woman with her eyes wide open and her hair waving in each gust of wind. It's the corpse of Hannelore Schmatz, the wife of the leader of a 1979 German expedition. She summited, but died descending. Yet it feels as if she follows me with her eyes as I pass by. Her presence reminds me that we are here on the conditions of the mountain."

The wind eventually blew Schmatz's remains over the edge and down the Kangshung Face.[17]

See also

References

  1. ^ Who's Who in the World, 1978-1979. 1978. p. 826.
  2. ^ "Everest summiter Hannelore Schmatz". Everest News. Retrieved 8 April 2008.
  3. ^ Banks, Nick (1980). "An Account of the 1979 Swabian Everest Expedition". The New Zealand Alpine Journal. 33: 102–104.
  4. ^ Gerhard Schmatz: Höchste Berge, wildeste Meere, Ulm 2005.
  5. ^ "Statistics of 7 summits climber Schmatz". 7summits.com. Archived from the original on 9 June 2012. Retrieved 10 March 2012.
  6. ^ a b "Dr. Gerhard Schmatz - Mt. Everest - höchster Berg der Erde". Schmatz-online.com. Retrieved 16 February 2019.
  7. ^ "Sturm auf die Göttin". Der Spiegel (in German). 26 February 1978. ISSN 2195-1349.
  8. ^ a b c Holm, Carsten (27 April 2003). "Der magische Gipfel". Der Spiegel (in German). ISSN 2195-1349.
  9. ^ "The Alpine Club Spirit of Mountaineering Initiative" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 March 2012. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
  10. ^ a b Simpson, Joe (1997). Dark shadows falling. The Mountaineers Books. pp. 119–. ISBN 978-0-89886-549-3. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
  11. ^ "Mount Everest: Südrouten-Bezwingerin Billi Bierling erzählt". Münchener Merkur (in German). 22 June 2009.
  12. ^ Gammelgaard, Lene. "Climbing High: A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 April 2008.
  13. ^ Rana, Bhola (31 October 1981). "West German woman found frozen in Everest climb". United Press International.
  14. ^ Salkeld, Audrey (9 May 1996). "Report from Base Camp". PBS. Retrieved 8 April 2008.
  15. ^ "2 Nepalese Mountaineers Die Looking for Body on Everest". The New York Times. 29 October 1984. Retrieved 8 April 2008.
  16. ^ Gammelgaard, Lene (1999). Climbing High: A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy. Harper Collins. ISBN 9780060953614.
  17. ^ Breashears, David (1 May 1999). High exposure: an enduring passion for Everest and unforgiving places. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-85361-1. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
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