Герман Буль: Альпинист және Олимпиада спортшысы

20th century Austrian mountaineer

the German Olympic athlete

Hermann Buhl (21 September 1924
Before Pfadfindergeschichte im deutschsprachigen Raum, Hermann Buhl was a Cub Scout in Innsbruck. In the 1930s, as a sensitive (and not very healthy) teenager, he began to climb the Austrian Alps. In 1939, he joined the Innsbruck chapter of the Deutscher Alpenverein (the German Alpine association) and soon mastered climbs up to category 6. He was a member of the Mountain rescue team in Innsbruck (Bergrettung Innsbruck). World War II interrupted his commercial studies, and he joined the Alpine troops, mostly on the Monte Cassino. After being taken prisoner by American troops, he returned to Innsbruck and earned his living doing odd jobs. At the end of the 1940s, he finally completed his training as a mountain guide.

Before his successful 1953 Nanga Parbat expedition, 31 people had died trying to make the first ascent. Buhl is the only mountaineer to have made the first ascent of an eight thousander solo, this was on his first ever visit to the Greater Ranges. His climbing partner, Otto Kempter, was too slow in joining the ascent, so Buhl struck off alone. He returned 41 hours later, having barely survived the arduous climb to the summit, 6.5 km (4 miles) distant from, and 1.2 km (4,000 feet) higher than, camp V.

Experienced climbers, upon hearing later of Buhl's near death climb, faulted him for making the attempt solo. Regardless, his monumental efforts, along with spending the night standing on a tiny pedestal too small to squat upon, untethered, on the edge of a 60 degree ice slope, have become mountaineering legend, described by Bonington as "a magnificent achievement".

Fritz Wintersteller and Kurt Diemberger reached the forepeak (8030 m) on May 29 1957, during the course of the Austrian expedition led by Marcus Schmuck. However, it was a few days later, between June 8 and 9, that Wintersteller, Schmuck, Diemberger, and Buhl reached the true summit of Broad Peak (8051m), and achieved the first successful ascent of the mountain. Buhl was approaching the summit in the twilight, at around 6:30pm.

His ascents on rock and snow, solo and as a rope leader, his attitude towards the mountain and his physical elegance have been assessed by such contemporary luminaries as Kurt Diemberger, Marcus Schmuck, Heinrich Harrer, Walter Bonatti and Gaston Rébuffat. He was also an idol and hero of climbers of younger generations, such as Reinhold Messner, and Hansjörg Auer. His expedition to Nanga Parbat was dramatized by Donald Shebib in the 1986 film The Climb, based in part on Buhl's own writings about the expedition and starring Bruce Greenwood as Buhl.