Edi Koblmueller, one of the most famous Austrian mountaineers froze to death a few days after his 69th birthday at a ski tour at the 5047-meter-high Mount Kazbek in Georgia. The guide had led an eight-member group of the operator “Bergspechte”. A 59-year woman from Austrian also died. According to media reports, she had been slower than the other members of the group and Edi had remained with her. “The local group told us that Edi Koblmueller and the woman ran into a blizzard,” it says on the website of “Bergspechte”. The other members of the group were able to escape from the snow storm into a shelter. The bodies of the two victims were later found and recovered by helicopter.

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This year’s jury of the Piolet’s d’Or has given the “Oscar of mountaineering” to two teams. The jury lead by the former US top climber George Lowe awarded “two very different ascents to represent the spirit of modern mountaineering”, as the members said. The Golden Ice Axes go to the Canadians Raphael Slawinski and Ian Welsted for their first ascent of the 7040-meter-high K 6 West in Karakoram on a new route via the Northwest Face and to the Swiss climber Ueli Steck for his solo ascent via the South Face of the eight-thousander Annapurna in Nepal. The awards were given to the climbers during a gala in Courmayeur in Italy at the foot of Mont Blanc on Saturday evening.

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