Tag: Mountain Climbing

On a Mountaineering Expedition

Alexis Pache was a Swiss mountaineer. In 1905, he joined a British-led and funded outfit that attempted to climb the world’s third-highest peak, a Nepalese mountain called Kanchenjunga. He was recruited by a fellow Swiss climber, a man named Jules Jacot-Guillarmod. The group also recruited another Alpine mountaineer from Italy. So, this was truly an international expedition. The British leader of the group was named Alexander.

At over 28,000 feet above sea level, Kanchenjunga today is recognized as one of the most challenging mountains in the world to climb. Glaciers that cling to the mountainside often cause avalanches of ice that make any attempt life-threatening. The locals traditionally believed that the mountain gods felt that the peak was sacred and protected it by using the avalanches to brush off any pesky humans who attempted to scale its summit.

Yet, the group was undeterred. Remember that this was a period in western history when men were stretching the limits of human endurance. Robert Peary would reach the North Pole (maybe?) in 1909, and Amundsen would beat Scott to the South Pole two years later. Groups raced each other to be the first to do this or accomplish that before all extreme tests on the globe were conquered.

The group started out by setting up base camps at lower levels and letting their bodies adjust to the thinning air at those altitudes. But at the last base camp, Alexander, the British leader of the climbers, began to behave strangely. He started viciously beating the Nepalese workers the expedition had hired as porters and helpers on the climb. Alexis tried to calm the English fellow and reason with him, but all that did was bring the man’s ire down on the young Swiss. Now, Jules had seen this type of behavior before on high altitude climbs; as some people moved into the thinner air, a type of mania or craziness sometimes overtook them.

In fact, Jules had been on another expedition with Alexander when the pair had attempted to scale K-2, the second highest mountain on earth. At that time, Alexander had brandished a pistol and threatened several members of the group. And, again, it seemed that this man had succumbed to the lack of oxygen to his system. However, the Nepalese workers whispered that the mountain god had possessed Alexander in an effort to keep the foreigners off the sacred mountain.

A sharp disagreement broke out one night when Jules some of the others tried to take command of the expedition away from Alexander. He and Alexis and the Italian suggested that they strike out for a lower camp immediately, that the weather was good enough for them to attempt a descent. They said that they would do well to strike out in the dark so that the most challenging part of the climb down could be accomplished during the day, when the dangers of an avalanche could be better seen. But Alexander sharply disagreed. Again, Alexis tried to play peacemaker, but he received a severe tongue lashing from Alexander for his efforts. The man then stormed off to his tent and refused to come out, pouting like a child.

Undeterred, the rest of the party set out in the dark. However, an avalanche occurred soon after the group left. The screams of those in the party could be heard by the group who remained behind in the upper camp. The avalanche swept away Alexis and three of the Nepalese helpers in the group. From the safety and comfort of his tent, Alexander laughed. “I told them they were foolish to go out in the dark,” he later reported.

The next day, Alexander had his workers strike his tent and he descended the mountain in the daytime, working his way carefully down to the next lower base camp. As he worked down the glacier, he passed the group that included Jules and the bodies of Alexis and those of the Nepalese workers.

And he neither stopped or spoke to anyone as he passed.

What kind of sick, twisted man would behave in such a cold, cruel manner? Alexander was his birth name, but he changed it later in life to Aleister.

You know him as Aleister Crowley, called by some as the most evil man who ever lived.

On Discovering a Body

Erika and Helmut loved climbing in the mountains. Germans have long been mountain climbers even before the pastime became a middle-class sporting activity. In mid-September, 1991, the couple were on a climbing vacation and hiking near a glacier along the Austrian/Italian border when they came upon the body.

The man was clearly dead, and, being in the Alps, the pair assumed that the man died of injuries sustained in pursing mountain climbing. After all, the hobby is not without its inherent dangers; rock and snowslides, sudden storms, altitude sickness, and more can overtake even the most experienced climbers. So, accidental death seemed to be obvious thing for Erika and Helmut to assume when they contacted the authorities and reported finding the body.

Their assumptions were wrong. First of all, the man had no ID on him. Forensic scientists believed he was around 45 years old, and he was fairly short (about 5’5″ or 1.7 meters tall) and thin. His clothes were simple and the things scattered near his body told of someone who was in the mountains for something other than sport. Moreover, the scientists could tell that this man had been healthy when he died. And then the mystery deepened. They found the wounds. The man had been shot through his shoulder, and the projectile had hit a major artery. They had found the cause of death, at least.

As to who shot him, well, there was no way to tell. The ice from the glacier had preserved him, luckily, but that did not help the doctors with what led him to be in that place at that time and receive the fatal wound he received. They were confident at the time that where he was found by Erika and Helmut was where the man had died; in other words, the body had not been moved there by the killer. However, it was later proven that the man had been killed elsewhere and the body was moved to the place where the German hiking tourists found him.

But who–or what–moved him?

We know that, most likely, the man’s body was moved not by a human but rather by the ice that had preserved his body. In fact, the body may have been moved a considerable distance by the ice. And that wound, that shot, still perplexed the scientists. After some full body scans, they discovered that the projectile was still in the body. But this information brought them no closer to determining who killed this mystery man.

On the other hand, the finding of the projectile did help them date the killing of the man, at least generally. You see, the projectile lodged in the man’s shoulder was an arrowhead. And the man found by Erika and Helmut, so well preserved by the ice that he looked like someone who had died recently and discovered in the Otztal Alps, probably died of his wound some 5,400 years ago.

He’s known today as Otzi, the Iceman.