Ludwig Purtscheller, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetLudwig Purtscheller
Austrian mountain climber
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria
About Ludwig Purtscheller
- Ludwig Purtscheller (October 6, 1849 – March 3, 1900) was an Austrian mountaineer and teacher. Purtscheller pioneered climbing without a mountain guide, who in the 19th century did all the route finding and lead climbing.
- By the end of his life he had recorded climbing over 1,700 mountains.
- A celebrated climb was the traverse of the Meije together with the Zsigmondy brothers in 1885, which to this date is considered a classic alpine route.
- He is best known as the first European to ascend Kilimanjaro in 1889, together with the German mountaineer Hans Meyer. After a descent of the Aiguille du Dru with G.
- Löwenbach and Jakob Oberhollenzer on August 25, 1899, an ice axe broke and the rope team fell into a bergschrund.
- Purtscheller was injured and he was transferred to a hospital in Geneva and later Bern.
- After several months of recovery, he contracted pneumonia and died on the approximate date of his planned return home.
- In a eulogy, the American climber and mountain historian W.A.B.
- Coolidge called him "the greatest mountaineer who had ever lived".
Read more at Wikipedia