David Lama

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David Lama
Lama in 2014
Personal information
NationalityAustrian
Born(1990-08-04)4 August 1990
Innsbruck, Austria
Died16 April 2019(2019-04-16) (aged 28)
Howse Peak, Alberta, Canada
Websitewww.david-lama.com
Climbing career
Type of climber
Highest grade
Retired2011
Medal record
Men's competition climbing
Representing  Austria
IFSC World Championships
Bronze medal – third place 2009 Xining Lead
IFSC European Championships
Gold medal – first place 2006 Yekaterinburg Lead
Gold medal – first place 2007 Birmingham Bouldering
IFSC Climbing World Cup
Winner 2008 Overall
Updated on 13 May 2013.

David Lama (

Piolet d'Or for this first ascent.[3]

Biography

David Lama was born in 1990. His father is a mountain guide from

Himalaya veteran Peter Habeler first watched Lama climb in a climbing camp organized by Habeler. Afterward, Habeler immediately called Lama's parents to tell them that their boy had an unusual talent. Lama then became part of the competition climbing team coached by Reinhold Scherer.[4][5]

Competition climbing

In 2004, 14 years old, Lama won the European Youth Cup. In the same year, he climbed his first 5.14b (8c) route.[6]

He repeated his win at the European Youth Cup in 2005 and moved on to Senior competitions in 2006. The International Federation for Sport Climbing (IFSC) changed their rules so that Lama, only 15 years old at the time, could compete in the Senior World Cup.[6][7] Lama became the youngest person to compete at the World Cup and the first to win both a lead and a bouldering World Cup final in his first season.[8]

Lama became

World Championships in the lead discipline.[9]

In 2011 he retired from competition climbing so he could focus solely on mountaineering.[4]

Mountaineering

Cerro Torre

Cerro Torre in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, South America

In 2009 Lama announced his intention to

protection in case of a fall. Nobody had done this before, all previous ascents had used climbing aids of one kind or another. Alpinist legend Reinhold Messner even called the undertaking "crazy and impossible".[10]

For his first attempt in 2009 Lama brought along a film crew provided by his sponsor Red Bull.[11] This first attempt ended in failure. Lama and his climbing partner Daniel Steuerer had to turn around due to bad weather.[11][12] Back at base camp the conditions stayed bad and the team had to abandon the endeavor for the 2009/2010 season.[13]

The aftermath of this first attempt started a scandal in the mountaineering scene. Both Lama and the Red Bull film crew were heavily criticized. The film crew had left behind at least 30 drilled bolts next to a route already laden with bolts. 700 metres of fixed rope and five haul bags were also left behind along the route.[14][15] Argentinian guides were hired to remove the equipment, but they did not manage to remove all of it and none of the bolts were removed.[16]

Lama stated that he was not aware of the large number of bolts that were drilled by the film team, but he took full responsibility for the actions and promised not to repeat the mistake.[12] He promised to remove the remaining equipment in the following year.[16]

They returned for a second attempt in January 2011. Peter Ortner [de], a more experienced climber, replaced Steuerer as Lama's climbing partner from this point onward. This initial ascent had to be aborted as well because the headwall was full of ice. On February 12, during a small good weather window, the two climbers managed to reach the summit using some aid techniques. This ascent raised the morale of the team after the long series of failures and was used for scouting out the free route.[12][13]

In January 2012, Lama and his team returned for a third expedition. A few days before the planned ascent they got the news that the climbers Jason Kruk and Hayden Kennedy had completed the compressor route, using as few bolts as they could manage. On their way back down they removed all the bolts they deemed unnecessary in order to restore the challenge of the mountain. They removed more than 120 bolts in total, most of them from the historical 1970 Cesare Maestri gas-powered compressor ascent. The headwall of the compressor route and one pitch below were completely freed of bolts.[17][11] This move caused a heated debate in the mountaineering community. Both climbers were briefly detained by Argentinian police and the removed bolts were confiscated.[18] Lama's first reaction was that he did not need the bolts for his climb anyway and he moved ahead with his free climbing attempt.[11] Since the old bolted route was not climbable anymore by regular means, the film crew had to ascend the summit via the west side of the mountain and rappel down with ropes in order to document the next attempt.[12][13]

On January 19, 2012, Lama and Ortner finished the first free ascent of Cerro Torre via the south-east ridge compressor route in 24 hours in total.[19] According to Lama, they brought five bolts along, but they did not have to place any of them.[12] They ascended to the left of the crack climbed by Salvaterra and Mabboni, here Lama took one fall, but he managed to climb it on the second attempt. He later rated this crux 8a (5.13b) in terms of difficulty. The two climbers slept for the night in bivouac sacks below the Ice Towers. On the next day, after ascending most of the headwall, they went right of the compressor, following cracks and flakes in the rock, all the way to the summit. All previous routes went left of the compressor.[20][12][21][13]

In 2013, National Geographic made David Lama "Adventurer of the Year" for his free ascent of Cerro Torre.[22]

The documentary Cerro Torre: A Snowball's Chance in Hell documents the ascent.[21][14]

Lunag Ri

View of Nangpa La and the Lunag Ri-massif, seen from the Cho Oyu base camp. The top of Lunag Ri is on the far right of the picture, half right in the background is the Lunag Ri IV, behind on the far left is the Jobo Rinjang.

In 2015 Lama teamed up with American climber Conrad Anker in order to climb the 6,895 m (22,621 ft) Lunag Ri, one of the highest unclimbed peaks in the Himalayas.[23][24][25]

Their first attempt was on November 12, 2015. They picked a rock crevice that would allow them to climb up to the northwest pillar of the mountain. Up on the ridge they planned to follow it up to the peak using mixed climbing techniques.[26] It was already late when they reached the top of the ridge, so for the night they set up a bivouac underneath a boulder. They continued in the early morning of the next day. Lack of ice and bad snow conditions complicated protection.[23] They did not manage to reach the summit during the next day. They had to make the decision whether to dig in and wait out another night, at potential temperatures of -40 °C and strong wind, or turn around and descend the mountain.[27] They decided for the latter and aborted the attempt around 300 metres below the summit.[28][25]

They had to abandon the endeavor for that year, but returned for a second attempt in 2016.

On November 6, 2016, during the second attempt, Anker had a

rappel down the mountain. Lama called for an emergency helicopter rescue at base camp. Twelve hours after the heart attack, Anker underwent surgery in Kathmandu.[27] A thrombotic occlusion was removed from his proximal left anterior descending artery.[24] As a result of this injury Anker quit high-altitude climbing.[29]

Lama was left behind without a climbing partner at the base camp. Since Anker had declared that he would not return, Lama decided to start another attempt alone.[28]

This third attempt was started on November 8, 2016. Lama ascended the north-west ridge via a longer, but easier rock crevice and set up camp. Since he had no climbing partner he had to use

roped solo techniques in order to ascend the ridge, climbing one pitch as lead, setting up an anchor and then rappeling back down to remove protections.[30] Ascending the mountain this way together with a heavy backpack turned out to be too much of a challenge. Lama aborted this third attempt as well, not far from the location of the high point of the first expedition with Conrad Anker.[27]

On October 23, 2018, Lama returned for a fourth and final attempt. Again solo, he ascended the mountain in three days over the north-west ridge. He followed the same line he had taken on his first solo attempt.[30] He had to set up a bivouac two times for the nights at temperatures of -30 °C with 80 km/h storm gusts.[25] During the entire third day he was unable to feel his toes. He decided to push on despite this and reached the summit at 10:00 a.m. After a few minutes on the summit, he immediately rappeled back down. At midnight he was back at base camp. He did not lose any of his toes.[28]

Death

On 16 April 2019,[31] Lama, along with climbers Jess Roskelley and Hansjörg Auer, was caught in an avalanche on Howse Peak in the Waputik Range of the Canadian Rockies.[32][33] The group had climbed a new route on the east face of Howse Peak, one of the most challenging Canadian rock-and-ice faces.[2][32][34]

Photographs from Roskelley's phone indicate that the three climbers had reached the summit on Tuesday, 16 April at 12:44 PM.[35] Their bodies were found on 21 April 2019.[33] It can be deduced from a photograph taken from Icefields Parkway by a climber from Canmore that a large cornice broke off above their route. He reported that the resulting avalanche swept the southeast face at 1:58, 31 minutes after they had reached a steep couloir above a basin to descend their route. Their bodies were recovered from an avalanche cone below the icefall route "Life by the Drop". The shallow layer of snow covering the climbers is a further indicator of a cornice break as the cause of the accident.[36]

Competition climbing results

David Lama in 2014 at the 1. Free Master Solo Event in Lienz, Austria

[37] [38] [39]

IFSC World Championships

Discipline 2009
Xining
Lead 3

UIAA and
IFSC European Championships

Discipline 2006 2007 2010
Lead 1 4
Bouldering 1

Number of medals in the UIAA and IFSC Climbing World Cups

Overall winner in IFSC World Cup 2008.[40]

Lead / Combined

Season Gold Silver Bronze Total
2006 3 1 4
2007 1 1
2008 1 1
2009 1 1
Total 5 1 1 7

Bouldering

Season Gold Silver Bronze Total
2006 1 1
2008 2 2 4
Total 3 2 5

IFSC Climbing World Youth Championships

Discipline 2004
Youth B
2005
Youth B
2006
Youth A
Lead 1 1 3

European Youth Cups

  • European Youth Cup Winner 2004[41] and 2005[42] (youth B, lead).

Notable ascents

Sport climbing

Alpine climbing

References

  1. ^ a b
    • "David Lama frees the Compressor route... while Kruk & Kennedy's bolt chopping is hotly debated". planetmountain.com. 23 January 2012. Retrieved 22 May 2013.
    • Jack Geldard (January 2012). "David Lama and Cerro Torre; A Mountain Set Free". ukclimbing.com. Retrieved 22 May 2013.
  2. ^ a b Peter Beaumont; Joanna Walters (19 April 2019). "Three mountaineers killed in avalanche in Canada". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
  3. ^ a b Piolets d'Or (31 July 2019). "Winners Piolets d'Or 2019". Rock and Ice - The Climber's Magazine. Archived from the original on August 2, 2019. Retrieved Aug 2, 2019.
  4. ^ a b "David Lama Continues Bold Solo First Ascents". 26 March 2018. Archived from the original on June 21, 2019.
  5. ^ "David Lama Biography". Archived from the original on June 21, 2019.
  6. ^ a b Bisharat, Andrew (19 April 2019). "In the wake of tragedy, climbers pay homage to David Lama". National Geographic. Archived from the original on April 21, 2019.
  7. ^ Buhl, Marius. "Der Alpinist als Künstler (engl: The alpinist as an artist". Zeit.de. Mit 15 änderten Offizielle des Erwachsenenweltcups für ihn die Regeln, Lama durfte teilnehmen und gewann als jüngster Kletterer aller Zeiten Wettkämpfe in der Boulder- und in der Vorstiegstechnik.
  8. ^ "World Competitions: David Lama". International Federation of Sport Climbing. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  9. ^ "Old IFSC website: David Lama results (2010)". Archived from the original on December 7, 2010.
  10. ^ "Ohne Hilfsmittel: Lama schafft "unmöglichen Berg" (engl: Without aid: Lama does "impossible mountain")". Focus. Archived from the original on June 25, 2019.
  11. ^ a b c d "Oben, ohne. David Lamas Kampf am Cerro Torre". Welt.de. 15 October 2015. Archived from the original on December 31, 2016.
  12. ^ a b c d e f "Nach der Kompressor-Route: David Lama im Interview". Klettern.de. 2 August 2012. Archived from the original on June 26, 2019.
  13. ^ a b c d Dirnhofer, Thomas (Director) (Mar 13, 2014). Cerro Torre: A Snowball's Chance in Hell (Full length documentary). Red Bull Media House.
  14. ^ a b "Cerro Torre teaches climber David Lama lesson of a lifetime". Sydneys Morning Herald. 24 April 2015. Archived from the original on July 13, 2017.
  15. ^ "Maestri Unbolted Update: Climber David Lama Frees Cerro Torre's Compressor Route". National Geographic. 2 February 2012. Archived from the original on June 26, 2019.
  16. ^ a b "Lama Speaks Out on Compressor Debacle". Alpinist. Archived from the original on May 30, 2019.
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External links