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Mountaineering pioneer no more

Last Updated 02 May 2011, 16:16 IST
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Loretan had been leading a client up the summit ridge of the Grünhorn, a peak in the Bernese Alps, when they fell, the Swiss police said. Loretan died at the scene, the police said. His 38-year-old Swiss client was flown to a hospital and was in serious condition.

Loretan was born on April 28, 1959, in Bulle, Switzerland, and began climbing at age 11. He climbed his first 8,000-meter peak, the difficult Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, in 1982. It took him 13 years to make it up the other 13 8,000-meter mountains.

Loretan was known to favour quick, lightweight expeditions that minimized the time in which he was exposed to danger. His 1986 ascent of Mount Everest, without bottled oxygen and in a night-time push that took just 40 hours, made headlines in climbing magazines and newspapers.

His reputation as one of the world’s top mountaineers was cemented when he climbed Kanchenjunga, in Nepal, the world’s third-highest mountain at 8,586 meters (28,169 feet), in 1985. At that time, only the Italian Reinhold Messner and the Polish mountaineer Jerry Kukuczka had climbed all the 8,000-meter peaks. Last year, the Spanish climber Edurne Pasaban became the 25th, and only the second woman, to achieve that feat.

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(Published 02 May 2011, 16:16 IST)

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