Norbert Joos (1960 – 2016)

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.

Stroke on Kangchenjunga

Joos had climbed 13 of the 14 eight-thousanders, all without bottled oxygen. Only Mount Everest was missing in his list. In 2006, after his fifth failed attempt on Everest, the Swiss said finally goodbye to the eight-thousanders. Two years earlier he had suffered a stroke during the descent from Kangchenjunga. Nevertheless, he tried Everest once more. “I just had to go there again and feel what was possible. Otherwise I would have kept Everest always in mind. Now it’s okay for me,” Joos later said in an interview. He criticized commercial climbing on the highest mountain on earth: “As a real climber you should stay well clear of Everest.”

“Only for young and crazy guys”

As the “most important thing I have achieved as a climber” Joos described the first ascent of Annapurna East Ridge with the first traverse of this eight-thousander from south to north in fall 1984, along with his Swiss compatriot Erhard Loretan (who fell to death in 2011). “Of course, we were very good climbers then, but we were also lucky,” Joos later recalled. “On the basis of my experience to date, I wouldn’t do it anymore. Only young and crazy guys can do things like this.”