Ludwig Purtscheller

Ludwig Purtscheller (October 6, 1849 – March 3, 1900) was an Austrian mountaineer and teacher.

Purtscheller pioneered climbing without a mountain guide, who in the 19th century did all the route finding and lead climbing. By the end of his life he had recorded climbing over 1,700 mountains. A celebrated climb was the traverse of the Meije together with the Zsigmondy brothers in 1885, which to this date is considered a classic alpine route. He is best known for his first ascent of Kilimanjaro in 1889, together with the German mountaineer Hans Meyer.

After a descent of the Aiguille du Dru with G. Löwenbach and Jakob Oberhollenzer on August 25, 1899, an ice axe broke and the rope team fell into a bergschrund. Purtscheller was injured and he was transferred to a hospital in Geneva and later Bern. After several months of recovery, he contracted pneumonia and died on the approximate date of his planned return home. In a eulogy, the American climber and mountain historian W.A.B. Coolidge called him "the greatest mountaineer who had ever lived".

Wikipedia

Zsigmondy's parents were Hungarians: Adolf Zsigmondy, born in Pozsony, and Irma von Szakmáry, born in Mártonvásár. Emil Zsigmondy was an excellent alpinist, known for the risky nature of many of his climbs. He began mountaineering as a teenager, climbing the Reisseck in Austria in a round trip of 26 hours with his brother, Otto Zsigmondy. By the late 1870s the two brothers were climbing without guides in the Zillertal Alps. In 1881, they climbed the Ortler from the Hochjoch.

Emil Zsigmondy was the friend and companion of Ludwig Purtscheller, the great pioneer of guideless Alpine climbing. Emil and Otto climbed with Purtscheller in 1882 and 1884, including an ascent without guides of the Marinelli Couloir on Monte Rosa and the first guideless traverse of the Matterhorn. Zsigmondy's outstanding achievements include the first ascent by the east arête of the 3,983 metres (13,068 ft) high Meije in the Massif des Écrins range, made by Zsigmondy, his brother Otto, and Purtscheller on 26 July 1885. A few days later he died on the same mountain. He was killed in an attempt to climb the south face of the Meije on 6 August 1885, probably as a result of his rope slipping off a rock. The face was only conquered in 1912 by the South Tyrolese climbers Angelo Dibona and Luigi Rizzi with the brothers Guido and Max Mayer. Emil Zsigmondy's grave is a few miles away from the accident site in the small cemetery of Saint-Christophe-en-Oisans in the Dauphiné Alps. He had graduated as a doctor of medicine in 1884, less than a year before his death.

American historian and mountaineer W. A. B. Coolidge would later write:

It is impossible, of course, to fix the precise date at which guideless climbing began to be abused. But no one can doubt that one of the first signs of the change in men's views was the tragic death of Emil Zsigmondy on the Meije in 1885 . . . there are limits even to human skill and human daring, and, in the opinion of the present writer, these were overstepped on that occasion.

Zsigmondy is commemorated by the Zsigmondyspitze in the Zillertal Alps, the Brèche Zsigmondy on the Meije (part of the route followed on the successful July 1885 climb), and the Zsigmondyhütte (Rifugio Zsigmondy Comici) in the Sexten Dolomites.

Wikipedia

Hans, Ludwig and Yohani

Hans Meyer would never make the summit if it weren’t for Ludwig Purtscheller, an Austrian mountaineer and Yohani Kinyala Lauwo, a rebellious Chagga villager who would guide the expedition. Purtscheller was a mountaineering superstar in 1885 after he summited La Meije in France, the last major Alpine peak to be summited. He knew how to use an ice ax and that was crucial in bagging Kibo, the highest of the three crater cones. Lauwo was a rebellious teen who didn’t want to be conscripted into building the German’s roads along with his fellow villagers. He was in the courthouse the same day Meyer showed up seeking permits for his third expedition. Meyer needed a guide and Lauwo figured walking up the mountain barefoot draped in blankets was better than broiling in a construction crew destined to become road kill.

Meyer’s plan was simple, but well thought out – a guide to future trekking companies. By using a series of base camps, food and equipment could be supplied to the team without delay. He used Abbott’s camp at 13,000 feet and established new camps at 14,201 (Lava Tower Camp) and another at 15,260 just below glacier line. He took state of the art equipment and chose to scale the southeast slope whose ice cliffs had less severe inclines than the northern crater.

At 1 a.m. on Oct. 3 1889 Meyer’s party left their camp at 14,100 feet, and by 10 a.m. were on the lower slopes of the Ratzel Glacier. The incline was 35 degrees and the team started cutting ice steps. Meyer wore no climbing irons and chiseling each step required twenty strokes with the ice saws. Hard work in the thin air. It took two hours to reach the upper limits of the glacier where the incline was much less severe. With the ice scaled it was another two hours trudging in waist high snow over weathered ice grooves that put them at the crater’s rim.

The summit was still another 500 feet, and Meyer and Purtscheller knew they were running on fumes. They decided to retreat to base camp and try again. Three days later using the route they already marked and carved they reached the rim in six hours and successfully summited. Once atop the rim, the secret of Kilimanjaro was revealed. A huge gaping crater with a 600-foot drop to an ice floor below was the secret concealed for centuries. On Oct. 18 they entered the crater and Meyer studied it. In all, the expedition spent 16 days above 13,800 feet.

Historic Meltdown

Kibo would not be climbed again for another 20 years and it wasn’t until 1912 that Mawenzi, the second highest cone on the crater and the more technically challenging, would be successfully climbed.

Meyer continued to climb in Europe and South America but spent much of his life as a respected academic at the University of Leipzig before dying in 1929. His plaque commemorating his effort is prominent in today’s Kilimanjaro National Park.

Purtscheller returned to Europe and would die from pneumonia following a climbing accident. In all, he conquered 1700 peaks and is in the unofficial Alpinists Hall of Fame. Lauwo would outlive everybody and become Kili’s most famous guide over the next 70 years. He lived to be 125 and at the 1989 centennial celebration of Meyer’s expedition was honored as a co-first ascendant. Posthumous certificates were issued to the anonymous African porter guides on the Meyer expedition.

Meyer had named Kibo Kaiser Wilhelm Spitz (peak) but with Tanzania’s independence in 1961 it was renamed Uhuru Peak (freedom) an apt name. Kilimanjaro’s majesty has become a symbol for today’s African independence, but its history is tied to the colonial era through Meyer, Purtscheller and Lauwo’s heroics.

As for Tanganyika, it was a bad bet by Bismarck. The colony never turned a profit and with the loss of World War I, Germany’s East African gambit melted into history along with the glacier atop Mount Kilimanjaro.

Steve Ginsberg