Füssen climber Luis Stitzinger scales Mount Everest for the second time

Created: 05/25/2022, 08:20

The summit ridge of the southern route, so often a source of traffic jams, was now inhabited by only a few climbers.

© Luis Stitzinger – goclimbamountain.de

Füssen/Mount Everest – After climbing Mount Everest in 2019 via the Tibetan northern route, professional mountaineer and state-certified mountain and ski guide Luis Stitzinger (53) from Füssen has now also managed to climb via the southern route in Nepal.

According to his own statements, after an expedition of only 16 days, he climbed the highest mountain in the world for the second time in mid-May with his single guest Graham Keene from Great Britain - at 68 years old now the oldest British summiteer.

Stitzinger is now back at home in Ostallgäu.

In addition to the Füssener and Graham Keene, all other thirteen participants, three guides and two film team members of the expedition operator "Furtenbach Adventures" from Innsbruck - whose team Keene and Stitzinger belonged to - successfully reached the summit on May 13th via the Nepalese southern route.

After eleven deaths and endless traffic jams, the 8849 meter high Everest was heavily criticized in 2019.

Few are on the move

“Together with our group of 17, there were only about 80 to 90 people in total.

That's really very little for Everest," reports Stitzinger about the past tour.

The temperature and weather conditions on the mountain were just as unspectacular as the number of ascents.

"Minus 17 to 19 degrees at the summit, that's sort of bathing weather for Everest."

The normal temperatures at this altitude are usually around -26 to -28° C. All this is due to an unusually hot and stable weather situation over Asia, whose hot air bubbles over the Himalayas even caused the jet stream - an atmospheric equalizing current at 10,000 m.a.s.l. , which regularly causes problems with high-altitude mountaineering, he explains.

According to meteorologists, this is a unique constellation since the weather data was recorded.

Second time up

With the ascent via the southern route, the Füssener was successful for the second time within a few years on the highest mountain on earth (the Kreisbote reported several times).

The first time, in 2019, as a mountain guide from the same organizer, he and a group of six participants managed to climb the north route, the north-east and north ridges from the 5200-meter-high base camp on the Tibetan plateau.

The week before last he and his single guest climbed the southern route via the "Western Cwm" and the southern ridge from the Nepalese base camp at 5300 meters on the "Khumbu Glacier".

Nevertheless, the mountain guide admits that there were difficulties with the ascent this time too.

"Incredibly slow mountaineers all held up for hours at the beginning until they could finally be passed at the 'Balcony' (snow balcony after five hours of walking, beginning of the ridge section to the south summit, 8751 meters, editor's note)", says Stitzinger .

"I should be used to it by now, but so much selfishness - keeping others waiting for hours just to avoid a few minutes of letting faster ones through - I still can't get my head around."

"The beauty outweighs that," Stitzinger draws a positive conclusion from his recent ascent of Mount Everest.

After all, standing on the highest peak on earth on a dream day and being able to enjoy the cloudless view over the entire Himalayas, the Tibetan plateau and the subtropical foothills is not a matter of course.

And now he knows both routes on the highest and most famous mountain in the world.

"That completes my picture of Everest, that's what I'm most happy about," says the 53-year-old with a smile.

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Hard preparation

But without conscientious preparation, such a tour is not feasible even for professionals like Stitzinger.

The preparatory strategy of the Innsbruck organizer "Furtenbach Adventures" therefore includes, among other things, a six-week hypoxia training at home (sleeping with limited oxygen supply in your own bed) as well as a control passage at a six-thousander (Mera Peak, 6476 meters) with several high camps, which the group together on April 27 mounted.

"Only in this way and with the use of artificial oxygen when climbing a mountain is it possible to manage such an incredibly short time," emphasizes Stitzinger.

Incidentally, the professional mountaineer and mountain and ski guide from Füssen, together with his wife Alix von Melle - according to his own statements, with seven eight-thousanders climbed without the use of artificial oxygen - is currently the most successful German high-altitude mountaineer - two multivision lectures about Mount Everest and other joint eight-thousander expeditions: Am July 7th in the "Tiefstollenhalle" in Peißenberg and on July 8th in the "Filmburg" in Marktoberdorf.

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