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19. 06. 09. - 17:00

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19. 06. 09. - 17:00

Mountaineer almost dies in jeep accident

Upper Austrian extreme-climber Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner narrowly avoided being the victim of a jeep accident in Pakistan last Monday.

Kaltenbrunner, who wants to make K2 (8,611 metres) her next conquest among peaks at least 8,000 metres high, was en route by jeep with her team from Skardu to Askole when her party had to stop where a waterfall had blocked the road.

Everyone got out of the jeep, one of the rear wheels of which had been blocked by a rock to prevent it from rolling backwards, except Kaltenbrunner. She finally did so to take a photo of the vehicle. No sooner had she left the jeep than it started rolling backwards, plunging 15 metres and rolling over twice before coming to a rest.

When she looked at the wreckage of the jeep, Kaltenbrunner said, "I was horrified, and my knees started shaking."

Kaltenbrunner hitched a ride in another jeep, and her party finally reached Askole. They proceeded from there on foot with porters, arriving at Paju (3,400 metres) yesterday (Thurs). After a short period of acclimatisation to the altitude, the party will head for their base camp, which they hope to reach by 22 June.

After doing reconnaissance of different routes to the summit, Kaltenbrunner will head for the top of K2.

The Austrian mountaineer is tackling K2, the world’s second-highest mountain and considered the most-difficult climb of mountains above 8,000 metres, only a few weeks after having reached the summit of Lhotse (8,516 metres) on 20 May.

K2 will be the 13th of the world’s 14 mountains higher than 8,000 metres that Kaltenbrunner will have climbed if she makes it to the summit.

Kaltenbrunner tried unsuccessfully to conquer K2 in 2007 but had to give up at 8,200 metres on her second try for the summit. An ice avalanche killed 11 climbers on the mountain last August.

Mount Everest will be the last unconquered eight-thousander for Kaltenbrunner if she makes it to the summit of K2. Spaniard Edurne Pasaban and she are the only women to have climbed 12 of the world’s 14 mountains higher than 8,000 metres.

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