Hannelore Schmatz

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Hannelore Schmatz of West Germany, was born on 16 February 1940. She perished of exhaustion on October 2, 1979 as she was returning from successfully summiting Mount Everest via the southern route, the first woman and first German citizen to perish on the upper slopes of "Chomolungma."^[1]

Schmatz was on an expedition via the South East Ridge route with her husband when she died at 8,300 meters (27,200 feet). Gerhard Schmatz was the expedition leader, fifty years of age at the time and the oldest man to summit Everest. On the same expedition was the American Ray Genet, who also died while descending from the summit.

In 1984, police inspector Yogendra Bahadur Thapa and Sherpa Ang Dorje fell to their deaths while trying to recover Hannelore’s body on a Nepalese police expedition.^[2]^[3]^[4]

For years, Hannelore's mortal remains could be seen by anyone attempting to summit Everest by the southern route. About 100 meters meters above Camp IV she sat, leaning against her pack with her eyes open and her hair blowing in the wind. ^[5] High winds eventually pushed her remains over the edge and down the Kangshung Face.

Lene Gammelgaard, the first Scandinavian woman to reach the peak of Everest, quotes the Norwegian mountaineer and expedition leader Arne Næss, Jr. describing his encounter with Schmatz's remains, in her book Climbing High that tells the account of her own 1996 expedition.