Gerlinde kaltenbrunner husband
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The list of alpinists who’ve climbed all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen is exceedingly small—Reinhold Messner, Jerzy Kukuczka, and Ed Viesturs among nine others—and includes exactly one woman: Austrian Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner.
If, like me, you expected the greatest female alpinist of all time to be a stern matron of the summits, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner will be a pleasant surprise. The 41-year-old Austrian has to be among the kindest and soft-spoken climbers around; she was an oncology nurse, after all. Nine months after she finished her last 8,000-meter peak—K2, via the tremendously difficult North Pillar route—Kaltenbrunner came to Everest Base Camp to attempt a new line along the ridge from Lhotse (27,939 feet) to the summit of its neighbor Nuptse (25,790 feet).
With Kaltenbrunner at Base Camp is her husband and constant climbing companion, Ralf Dujmovits, 50, one of Germany&
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“I’ve coped quite well with the corona pandemic so far,” Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner tells me. “I’m very lucky that we live in the countryside. The forest starts right behind the house. I’ve always made an effort to be out in the fresh air a lot and to strengthen my immune system.” In 2011, with her success on the Chinese north side of the 8,611-meter-high K2, the Austrian became the first woman to scale all 14 eight-thousanders without bottled oxygen. In 2017, the Italian Nives Meroi also managed to do so.
In recent years, Gerlinde has faded from the limelight. With her partner, yoga instructor Manfred Jericha, she lives at Lake Attersee in Upper Austria. Together they offer yoga courses and trips. Kaltenbrunner is also still in demand as a lecturer. This Sunday she turns 50.
Gerlinde, half a century, how does that feel to you?
Very well. Now I’m turning 50 and I’ve been able to experience and learn so
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Ralf Dujmovits, dream vanishes of climbing Everest without supplementary oxygen
Ralf Dujmovits, in 2009 the first and so far only German mountaineer to have climbed all 14 eight-thousanders, has failed to realise the dream he has been caressing for years: climbing Everest without supplementary oxygen. During the gods three decades, the 55-year-old alpinist and former husband of Austria's Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, the first woman to have climbed the 14 x 8000ers without supplementary oxygen, managed to reach the summit of all the highest mountains in the world except for Sagaramāthā, more commonly referred to as Everest, which he climbed in October 1992 with the use of O2 as of the South Col. From that moment onwards, Dujmovits has always dreamed of reaching the highest point in the world on his own accord. In the ensuing years he carried out various attempts but, as he han själv stated "Each time something went wrong or circumstances were not good enough."
Dujmovits had traveled to Ti