Tomaz Humar dies on the north face of Langtang Lirung 7,234m
17 November 2009 - 6:09pm
http://www.climbing.com/news/hotflashes/tomaz_humar_dies_on_langtang_lirung/
There's a NZ connection, because another Slovenian climber Vanya Furlan, who once climbed with Tomaz, climbed several hard routes here including a bold new solo line on the South face of Mt Cook.
17 November 2009 - 8:47pm
#2
I was going to mention this. I met Vanja on the top of the summit rocks of Cook with Cameron Rosie after he had just climbed the Slovenian route on the south face, We had done ZUrbriggens, summited and were resting at the top of the rocks when we saw this lone figure come barrelling down the ice cap. We offered for him to join our rope for the descent down the Linda but he declined, preferring to downclimb Zurbriggens, which he did in about 3 hours! I think he was back at the hut at about 5pm from a 2pm summit, compared to our 9 or 10pm! This would've be Jan 94?
What i remember most about Vanya was that he smoked like a train but could walk uphill faster than i could run on the flat! I think he said he was sponsored to climb by the government of Solvenia and that to have such sponsorship was a good way to earn money but it meant you had to keep doing hard routes to maintain it. We hung out with him a bit after that climb and he spent some time in Auckland as well. He was a pretty handy rock climber. I remember that his gear was mostly 80's vintage which probably reflected the still relatively low living standards of the ex-communist states.
Vanja was killed in a rock climbing accident in Slovenia in 1996? after making an ascent with Tomaz Humar of the North? Face of Ama Dablam, during which they managed to drop their rack! I think they won the Piolet D'Or for that route.
18 November 2009 - 12:25am
#3
Vanya and Tomaz won the Piolet d'Or together in 1996. Vanya was here in 1994, staying at Wyn Irwin and soloing, as I was also doing. He was young, bold, and very fit, but not technically accomplished then. Vanya was killed rockclimbing in the Julian Alps, when a bolt failed, apparently .
Slovenian climbers took an interest in NZ after the the visit of Slavko Svetičič in March 1990. At that time I was was soloing alpine rock on Unicorn and Dilemma, and Slavko was soloing whatever ice he could find on all the big faces. We climbed the South Face of Mt Cook together, with Slavko leading directly up a vertical ice cliff on a 5.5mm spectra rope.
Slavc was a much more experienced climber than Vanya, and was considered among the best in the world at the time, just as Tomaz Humar was currently considered the best in the world.
When Slavc's photo's of the then unclimbed 5000 foot wall on the East face of Fastness were seen back in Slovenia it created a huge interest in NZ climbing. A face such as this in Europe would have had dozens of routes. Slovenians really hungered for big adventures and unclimbed walls and there was nothing much left for them to do for them in the European alps. The Eiger was just a half a days climbing for them and the details of the approach and ascent were well known. NZ represented a frontier to them, with so many big unclimbed faces. The face on Fastness has never had another summer ascent, and there's acres of vertical rock on the right hand side to keep the best rockclimbers busy for years.
The attitude was once of excellence, these climbers were partly sponsered by their national mountaineering club, and had to perform and get results; but being climbers they were awesome guys who were easy to get along with. It's not possible for a Kiwi to get as climbing fit as these guys unless we climb in a place that has better weather, so that you can climb all the time.
There are some funny stories that I can't write about publically but these guys loved to live life to the max...
After doing Fastness Slavc went to attempt the first ascent of the so-called last great mountaineering problem, which at that time was the East Face of Popes Nose, and probably would have got it if it hadn't been for bad weather. That attempt help give Nick Craddock & Co the impetus to get the route done a few months later, when it was iced up. .
Er, tenuous!
But you climbed with Vanya? I'm interested in what you picked up from that experience about what the Slovenian approach to climbing is all about. And how does it compare to NZ?