“Despite the premonition, we were utterly amazed at what happened there,” says Luis Stitzinger after his return from Manaslu. “This was a true tent city in the base camp.” As reported earlier, the 48-year-old had led a team of eight of the German expedition operator Amical alpin to the 8,163-meter-high summit in Nepal last Saturday. Along with Luis, his 46-year-old wife Alix von Melle, reached the highest point. For both, it was their seventh eight-thousander and the sixth which they scaled together, all without bottled oxygen. At the beginning of the expedition eleven of the 14 members of the Amical team had become infected with flu by ill porters. “It was a bad start,” says Luis. “Some members had to abandon the whole thing. It was a pity.” I reach Luis on the phone at a hotel in Kathmandu:

Luis, first of all congratulations on your seventh eight-thousander. How did you experience your summit day?

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Unless a climatic miracle happens, Sweden’s highest peak will soon be only the number two in the country. Scientists of the University of Stockholm measured that in August the South Summit of Kebnekaise in Lapland was only 2099 meters high, which is a record low. The summit is covered by a small glacier. In the past 18 years this ice cap has melted by about a meter per year on average. “It’s a clear trend”, says geographer Gunhild Rosqvist. Climate change was to blame: “There is no doubt that the melting process is caused by the warmer weather.”

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