19 82


19 86


MOUNTAIN PEOPLE


First film with Julie Tullis. “The highest film team in the world” would go on to climb and film to 8,000m on Nanga Parbat, the Gasherbrums and K2.


“WE LOOKED DOWN AT THE SNOW UNDERFOOT, AND TO OUR AMAZEMENT IT SEEMED TO BE AGLOW. THEN THE LIGHT WENT OUT.”


Trapped in a storm on K2 in which Julie Tullis, Alan Rouse and three others die. Diemberger and fellow Austrian Willi Bauer are the only climbers to survive the descent, though both suffer severe frostbite which resulted in amputations.


19 91


19 93


20 13


historical imagination”, and not least by Reinhold Messner whom Diemberger bears a light-hearted grudge against. This is for a perceived misrepresentation of the events of Herman Buhl’s death, among other things. Messner, he says with a glint in his eye, does not write his own books but merely dictates them or puts the “Messner cherries on the top”. One of these cherries was to suggest in a biography of Herman Buhl’s life that Buhl’s “star was on the wane” at the time of his death on Chogolisa, a fact denied by Diemberger who was climbing with him. “Buhl was going very well... There were many letters sent about that one”, Diemberger recalls with a smile. Diemberger is such a convivial host and so warm that it’s hard sometimes to remember that you’re in the presence of one of history’s foremost – and most hardened – alpinists. The conjuring through conversation of his dead friends, the myths and the arguments, the films, the books; all the stories floating around do little to reinforce the reality of the occasion. There is also a modest mysticism to Diemberger which lends him a certain authority although he is too self-deprecating to make much of this. During his recent bout of illness, however, Diemberger became reflective, and there is another extraordinary sequence in Verso Dove where he makes what he calls “my last will and testament”. In the scene his disembodied voice floats over ethereal images he himself shot from the summit of Everest, saying that “nature is pitiless but grandiose… but there must be a place for love”. Diemberger has discovered this wisdom over the course of a rich and tumultuous life and will continue to be known for it.


Part of a Catalan expedition which establishes a new route on the East Face of Broad Peak.


R Kurt winning the fifth Piolets d’Or Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013.


Words: Ben Williams.


Ben Williams is a journalist and BMC member. Read more of his work at www.portfoliopp.wordpress.com


Continues film work in Tibet with his daughter Hildegard, a Cambridge University ethnologist.


Wins the fifth


Piolets d’Or Lifetime Achievement Award.


R Making the first ascent of Dhaulagiri in 1960.


36 | CLIMB. WALK. JOIN.


PHOTO COPYRIGHT: KURT DIEMBERGER


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61