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MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
Second first ascent of an 8,000m peak with his first ascent of Dhaulagiri.
“JULIE TULLIS DIED IN HER TENT AND DIEMBERGER CRAWLED OFF THE MOUNTAIN ALONE. THE MISSING FINGERS OF HIS RIGHT HAND BEAR WITNESS TO THIS ORDEAL.”
Makes a number of trips to the Hindu Kush, driving from Austria in a VW bus. First ascents included Nobasium Zom (7,070m) and Tirich West IV (7,338m).
First ascent of Shartse II (7,457m) to the east of Lhotse Shar.
Meets English climber Julie Tullis on Gogarth sea cliffs.
R Kurt at Everest Basecamp in 1978 with his Arriflex- Standard 16mm Camera and a famous (adapted)
Leica-1200 mm-Telyt Lens. He was well-fed, but needed energy and good luck…guaranteed by a fortune-necklace.
Climbs Makalu (8,481m) in the spring and Everest in the autumn, with Pierre Mazeaud.
with their deaths today, much as Reinhold Messner returns time and again in his books to the loss of his brother on Nanga Parbat. “One has to be critical in choosing your climbing partner. If you give too much confidence and trust right away you may be cheated – cheated is perhaps too strong a word – but you may end very disappointed. A real friendship can only build up over a certain amount of events and time.”
Climbs Gasherbrum II (8,035m).
In his written accounts of successes in the 1960s and 1970s, Diemberger seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself, applying the alpine techniques learned under Buhl’s tutelage to succeed on a handful of summits of around 7,500m in low-key expeditions to Nepal and the Hindu Kush. Sometimes stunning first ascents seem tacked on to cultural wanderings, almost as an afterthought, and in this way Diemberger is perhaps spiritually closer to an earlier age of early Himalayan explorers, figures like the Victorian Tom Longstaff, or Eric Shipton, or Bill Tilman. If Diemberger appears dissatisfied with climbing – at least
Directs the Emmy Award-winning film of the American Everest Expedition, East Face.
as a unique pursuit – during this period then his burgeoning career as a high-altitude filmmaker would go some way to curing his restlessness. High-altitude film work would win him an Emmy in 1982, among other career awards,
34 | CLIMB. WALK. JOIN.
and take Diemberger back to the very highest mountains. In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, and well into his fifties, a remarkable second burst of form would see Diemberger summit Everest, Makalu and Gasherbrum, as well as K2.
The lounge at Kurt Diemberger’s house is a bit like a solicitor’s office, rigorously organised but with files spreading over most surfaces, including the sofa. He is, by his own admission, a man of “painstaking precision” in all aspects, including climbing – “otherwise I’d be dead”. He is also almost comically restless and during the course of our conversation gets to his feet perhaps ten times to check or corroborate something in a book or input a detail into his aging computer. This pernicketyness seems instinctive: a form of self protection which has served him well, but it is also born of an almost legalistic interest in the version of the truth to be presented. It’s perhaps sad that the history of mountaineering is squabbled over like so many bones, but the importance of truth to mountaineers – and the cattiness of the group – can be seen from the life-long legal battle Walter Bonatti fought to establish his version of what happened on the first ascent of K2, among other cases. Diemberger is riled by the opinions of armchair historians and commentators, people he thinks suffer from “a lack of
PHOTO COPYRIGHT: KURT DIEMBERGER
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