Mountaineering pioneer Max Eiselin has died aged 94

Swiss mountaineering pioneer Max Eiselin passed away on July 9 at the age of 94. According to an obituary written by Eiselin himself and published on Tuesday, he had been “on a steep, gruelling final push” towards his last major summit.

He had now reached the summit – “physically exhausted, but content and free as a bird”, as stated in the obituary in the German-language Luzerner Zeitung. He looked back on his long journey and once again saw before his eyes all that was beautiful and unique about his life’s journey.

Eiselin experienced many unique moments. Under his leadership, the first ascent of the world’s seventh-highest peak, Dhaulagiri, was achieved in May 1960. In an article on the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) website, the expedition leader at the time describes how the mountaineers wore reindeer-skin boots, used tents they had sewn themselves, and found that the oxygen cylinders did not have sufficient pressure. “So we were ‘forced’ to become the first expedition to do without oxygen,” Eiselin is quoted as saying.

The aircraft “Yeti” also became famous in the wake of the first ascent. The Pilatus Porter served at the time as a transport aircraft for the eighth expedition to make the first ascent of Dhaulagiri. “But it was to be this aeroplane that cost Eiselin the summit,” wrote the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on Tuesday in an obituary. According to the report, the expedition leader had to deal with engine trouble on the aircraft – and thus missed up the chance to join his comrades. He did not stand on the summit of the eight-thousander himself.

First mountaineering shop

Eiselin also demonstrated a pioneering spirit as an entrepreneur. In the 1950s, he was the first person in Switzerland to open a shop selling mountaineering equipment, as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung reports.

As a young mountaineer and ski tourer, he could not – and would not – put up with the often very limited range of mountaineering equipment available in sports shops, as the Swiss Keystone-SDA news agency reported in 2017. The article was prompted by the closure of the last Eiselin mountaineering shop in Switzerland.\founding members Zurich and Geneva.

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Translated from German, reviewed by an English Department journalist.