Another sad message from the Karakoram: The Canadian climber Serge Dessureault fell to his death at K2, the second highest mountain on earth, from an altitude of 6,700 metres. This was announced by the Alpine Club of Pakistan. The 53-year-old’s body was taken to the Advance Base Camp. Dessureault had led an expedition from Quebec. The four members wanted to be the first climbers from this Canadian province to reach the 8,611-metre-high summit of K2. They wanted to ascend via the so-called Abruzzi route (the Southeast ridge).

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One of the all-time best high altitude climbers would have celebrated his 70th birthday this Saturday. But he missed this day of honor by more than 28 years: In fall 1989 Jerzy Kukuczka died at the age of 41 in an accident on Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain on earth. The Pole had previously scaled as the second climber after Reinhold Messner all 14 eight-thousanders. At times it looked as if Kukuczka could even snatch away the crown from Messner, but then the South Tyrolean closed the eight-thousander match with his ascents of Makalu and Lhotse in fall 1986. Just one year later, in September 1987, when the rather publicity-shy Kukuzczka completed his collection, Messner honored him with the words: “You are not the second, you’re great.”

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He would have liked that. At Tengboche Monastery in the Khumbu area, at almost 4,000 meters, with a view to Mount Everest, Lhotse and Ama Dablam, Ueli Steck’s ​​family bid farewell to the Swiss top climber during a Buddhist ceremony. The 40-year-old had fallen to death on Sunday on the 7861- meter-high Nuptse. “According to the Nepali tradition, the deceased was cremated in an impressive three-hour ceremony,” Steck’s family informed via Facebook. Uelis wife Nicole, his parents and parents-in-law took part. “The family perceived the ceremony as very solemn and impressive, sad and at the same time liberating.” The family will take a part of the ashes back to Switzerland, where a public memorial is planned for friends, acquaintances and companions. Place and time are not yet fixed. On Ueli Steck’ homepage ​​an online book of condolence was established.

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Why did Ueli Steck choose Nuptse to acclimatize himself? This is a question I ask myself, since on Sunday the news of the death of the Swiss spread like a run-fire. A few days earlier, the 40-year-old had climbed towards the West Shoulder of Everest. That made sense. After all, he planned to climb on his Everest-Lhotse traverse via the West Ridge and the Hornbein Couloir to the highest. But Nuptse? Not exactly the classic tour to get acclimatized. What was the added value besides making additional height meters?

Reinhold Messner speculated in several interviews that Ueli might have planned to try the “great horseshoe”, the never-attempted round trip form Nuptse to Lhotse and Everest across the ridges between the mountains. I see no evidence for this after all I have heard and read. The Frenchman Yannick Graziani wrote in his blog that Ueli had asked him three days before his death, if he wanted to accompany him on Nuptse. The 43-year-old, who wants to climb Everest without bottled oxygen this spring, declined. It was really just an acclimatization trip, Yannick’s team told me on request: “Ueli never said or wrote about Nuptse or horseshoe. He was waiting for his Sherpa friend Tenji to recover from frostbite and reach together the West Shoulder.”

On Monday, I had written to some top climbers asking how they had experienced Ueli. Two other answers reached me.

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Again one of the really great high altitude climbers was torn out of his life: The 55-year-old Swiss Norbert Joos fell to death on Piz Bernina in the canton Grisons. According to Swiss media reports, Joos had guided a group to the 4049-meter-high summit. On the descent the roped party of three, to which Joos belonged, fell 160 meters deep. Joos was found dead, the other two climbers, a woman and a man from Italy, survived seriously injured.

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Austria is mourning another of its great climbers. On Friday – the day when in Linz Edi Koblmueller was buried, who had frozen to death on a ski tour in Georgia – Albert Precht died in a climbing accident in Crete. The 67-year-old and his 68-year-old longtime climbing partner Robert Joelli fell to death, when they were climbing the Kapsa Wall in the Pervolakia Gorge. The cause of the accident is still unclear. Precht had traveled with his wife and friends from his hometown Bischofshofen to the Greek island where he regularly spent climbing holidays for years.

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