Marianne Pretorius

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Torres de Paine

Cerro Torre

Marianne Pretorius born 2 September 1976, is a South African rock climber, specialising in big walls. In 2004 she became the first woman to scale the East face of the Central Torres del Paine in Chilean Patagonia. In February 2005 she climbed the "Compressor" route on Cerro Torre. On 21 August 2005 Pretorius, in the company of Peter Lazarus, James Pitman and Andreas Kiefer reached the top of Trango Tower in Pakistan, becoming the third woman to step on the summit.

[edit] Biography

Pretorius was born in Johannesburg, the youngest of 3 daughters of Johan & Alet Pretorius. She started her schooling in Plettenberg Bay and matriculated in 1994 from Florida High School in Johannesburg. From there she enrolled in a course of fashion design at the Witwatersrand Technikon, but soon changed to Fine Art. She started climbing in 1996 with the Witwatersrand Technikon Mountain Club, where Alard Hufner and Matthew Murison became her mentors and climbing companions. When they finished their studies in 1998 they set off for Europe. Pretorius and Hufner worked in the UK for 6 months and then left for the States with Mike Mason and Dermot Brogan. Here they climbed in 9 different states over a period of 5 months including Yosemite, where they started on the "Leaning Tower" and then went on to climb "The Nose" and "The Zodiac" on El Capitan in August 1999 - their first experience of big walls. Pretorius returned briefly to South Africa at the end of 1999 before returning to the UK to resume work. While there she explored climbing areas in England, France and Spain. Her interest in photography grew to the extent that she decided to study photography in South Africa, joined the National college of Photography in 2001 and finished her diploma by the end of that year.

In 2002 she worked briefly at the Sowetan newspaper before joining the Sunday Times. At the end of 2003, she, Alard Hufner, Mark Seuring, Mike Mason, Dermot Brogan and Voytek Modrevski set out to do a second ascent of the Torres del Paine route, which the South African team led by Paul Fatti had climbed 30 years ago and had never been repeated. She became the first woman to ever climb the east face of the central tower. In early 2005 she returned to Patagonia and climbed the "Compressor Route" on Cerro Torre with Douard le Roux. In August of the same year she climbed the Nameless Tower in Pakistan with Peter Lazarus, James Pitman and Andreas Kiefer. June 2006 saw her embarking on her first adventure documentary film with James Pitman and microlight pilot Mike Blyth. They set out to climb the 3 biggest faces in Southern Africa, with all approaches via microlight. It took 2 weeks to cover more than 5 000km and 3 big walls being Blouberg, Spitzkoppe, and "Oceans of Fear", a route on the Klein Winterhoek Mountains of the Western Cape. Their movie is currently at the Banff Mountain Festivals 2007 judging panel.

In April 2007 she moved from the Sunday Times to The Times. She is planning to get to Antarctica to climb the last unclimbed big walls in Dronning Maud Land, failing which she will return to Torres del Paine and attempt all three towers in one season.

In November 2006 Pretorius married snowboarder and alpine skiing coach Oliver Schwankhart whom she had first met in 2004. They are currently living in Johannesburg.