Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner biography
Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, (born December 13, 1970, Kirchdorf an der Krems?, Austria), Austrian mountain climber, one of many first girls to climb all 14 of the world’s “eight-thousanders”—peaks 26,250 ft (8,000 metres) and better—and the primary lady to take action with out utilizing supplemental oxygen-breathing equipment.
Kaltenbrunner grew up within the small resort neighborhood of Spital am Pyhrn, nestled within the Alps of central Austria. As a toddler, she grew to become an achieved skier, however she progressively grew to become extra desirous about trekking within the mountains close to her dwelling. Her first climbing expedition was on the age of 13, when she ascended Sturzhahn (6,654 ft [2,028 metres]), a mountain in west-central Austria. Kaltenbrunner continued enhancing her mountaineering abilities within the Alps throughout her adolescence and whereas she pursued coaching as a nurse. In addition, after seeing images of the excessive mountains of the Karakoram Range (stretching alongside the parts of the Kashmir area administered by Pakistan, China, and India) when she was 16, she resolved to sometime climb 8,000-metre peaks in south-central Asia.
Kaltenbrunner ascended the primary of those mountains, Broad Peak within the Karakorams, in 1994, though she reached a decrease peak (26,335 ft [8,027 metres]) than the true summit. Over the subsequent 17 years she climbed to the highest of all 14 giants, starting with Cho Oyu (26,906 ft [8,201 metres]) within the central Himalayas close to Mount Everest in 1998. She employed the Alpine type of mountaineering pioneered by climber Reinhold Messner and others, through which climbers carry a minimal quantity of apparatus on expeditions, have little or no exterior help (e.g., porters), and don't use supplemental oxygen. This type is especially difficult for folks climbing at elevations above 8,000 metres, the benchmark for a area often called the “death zone” for the thinness of the air there. At first her nursing work financed her expeditions, however, after efficiently scaling Nanga Parbat (26,660 ft [8,126 metres]) within the western Himalayas in 2003, she grew to become a full-time skilled climber. Whereas it had taken her practically a decade to achieve the tops of her first 4 8,000-metre peaks, she was in a position to climb all the remaining ones within the subsequent eight years, scaling two every in 2004 and 2005. This included reascending Broad Peak to its true summit (26,401 ft [8,047 metres]) in 2007 and likewise Xixabangma (26,286 ft [8,012 metres]) in 2005, which, in 2000, she additionally had climbed to a decrease summit. Several of these mountains concerned a couple of try to achieve the highest, amongst them Mount Everest (29,035 ft [8,850 metres]), the world’s tallest mountain, the place she was unsuccessful in 2005 however prevailed in 2010; and K2 (28,251 ft [8,611 metres]) within the Karakorams, the world’s second highest peak, which took a number of aborted tries (notably in 2007, 2009, and 2010) earlier than she lastly reached the summit of this her final 8,000-metre peak in August 2011.
During the time that Kaltenbrunner was looking for her purpose, two different climbers—Oh Eun-Sun of South Korea and Edurne Pasaban of Spain—had been additionally on observe to turn into the primary lady to summit all the 14. Kaltenbrunner maintained that she was not competing with them and even climbed two of the peaks, Broad in 2007 and Dhaulagiri I (26,795 ft [8,167 metres]; in Nepal) in 2008, concurrently Pasaban. Oh topped her closing peak, Annapurna I (26,545 ft [8,091 metres]), additionally in Nepal, in April 2010, however controversy arose concerning the veracity of her claimed 2009 summit of Kanchenjunga (28,169 ft [8,586 metres]) on the India-Nepal border. Pasaban indisputably topped her 14th peak, Xixabangma, in May 2010, climbing every aside from Everest with out supplemental oxygen. Thus, when Kaltenbrunner accomplished her K2 climb, she grew to become the primary lady to summit all 14 with out oxygen.