Davo Karnicar was a soft-spoken hero. Best identified for snowboarding nonstop from the summit of Everest in 2000, alongside the knife-edged summit ridge, over the Hillary Step, down the precipitous Lhotse Face, and thru the Khumbu Icefall, he descended 12,000 vertical ft in 4 hours and forty minutes, with out ever eradicating his skis.
The exploit was streamed reside on-line, with 4 million folks watching all over the world. Karnicar would somewhat have carried out with out the cameras and hype, however the allow alone price $70,000. How else was a ski tuner and father of 4 from Slovenia presupposed to pay for a groundbreaking expedition to the highest of the world?
“Skiing on ridges is like being on a knife’s edge. Many times, part of my skis were hanging over into Tibet, and sometimes into Nepal”
“I tried to raise the money for two years but failed,” he mentioned in a 2002 interview with Planet Mountain’s Emilio Previtali. Then a pal got here up with the concept of transmitting the whole expedition reside on the web. Sponsors lined up, and Karnicar had his allow and his crew, who climbed with him and positioned cameras at strategic areas alongside the route.
“If I’ve stood on the summit of Everest with my skis, then it’s only thanks to the internet,” Karnicar mentioned.
The reside feed is now buried past the attain of Google and even the Wayback Machine, which saved the web site however not the video. The first full ski descent of Everest, like Karnicar himself, grew to become a type of underground legend.
“His motivations are in the right place,” American ski mountaineer Dave Watson mentioned in 2017, when Karnicar made his second try and ski from the summit of K2, utilizing folding skis of his personal design. “He’s doing it for the beauty of the mountain and his desire to go and have fun.”
Karnicar continued to notch noteworthy ski descents, turning into the second individual to ski from the Seven Summits in 2006, ending simply weeks after American Kit DesLauriers accomplished the identical mission. He might have contested her declare— DesLauriers took two days to descend Everest, arguably making her line incomplete—however he didn’t hassle. The summits had been a private quest and a solution to help his household whereas persevering with to ski and climb. His household had expanded to seven kids and two grandchildren, and since 1980 he’d made an estimated 1,700 climbs and descents within the Alps and all over the world. What extra might he need?
BORN TO THE MOUNTAINS
Davorin “Davo” Karnicar was born in 1962 in Slovenia, then a mountain enclave of Yugoslavia. His father was a mountain information and long-time caretaker of the Češka hut, a rugged lodge perched on a limestone cirque close to the Austrian border. Karnicar spent each spare second exploring the mountains together with his sister and three brothers, all of whom grew to become formidable skiers and alpinists.
He earned a spot on the Yugoslavian ski crew and spent a few years on the World Cup circuit, although most of that point he labored as a technician, removed from the limelight. He skied the Northeast Face of the Eiger and the East Face of the Matterhorn. He climbed and skied the toughest strains in Slovenia and located an unlikely route down a frozen waterfall close to his childhood house, snowboarding it seven occasions over time. And once in a while he gathered sufficient time and cash for a high-mountain expedition.
Karnicar at house within the Slovenian Alps. Photo courtesy Karnicar archive
In 1989 he climbed Nanga Parbat, the ninth-highest mountain on this planet. In 1993 he went to K2 for the primary time, intent on snowboarding from the world’s second-highest summit, however a gust blew his skis away and he walked down like everybody else. In 1995, Karnicar and his brother Andrej climbed to the highest of the Annapurna massif and skied all the best way to the underside. That modified every part.
“I realized I’d be capable of skiing down Everest and the idea soon began to transform into an obsession,” mentioned Karnicar, who took his first shot at Everest the very subsequent 12 months.
Time was of the essence. Another formidable alpinist was climbing on the North Col route that season with skis strapped to his pack. Hans Kammerlander made the summit and commenced a descent he likened to “skiing down a bell tower,” however a very steep and rocky part compelled the Italian to commerce his skis for crampons. The first steady ski descent was nonetheless in play, however Karnicar’s personal expertise on Everest that season confirmed him simply how difficult it might be. Climbing from the north facet, he was pinned down in a storm that claimed eight lives. He circled at 27,200 ft and misplaced two fingers for his hassle.
Rather than discourage him, the trial renewed his willpower and his focus. “I realized then that I’d need a team of people to back me up, specially designed gear, and, above all, I would try from the other side, from the south,” he informed Previtali. The funding and web equipment in place, Karnicar spent a month acclimating and climbing, reaching the summit with three teammates at about 7 a.m. on October 7, 2000, utilizing supplemental oxygen.
He rested for a couple of minutes, then stepped into his skis and commenced his descent, sideslipping precariously alongside the summit ridge. “Skiing on ridges is like being on a knife’s edge. Many times, part of my skis were hanging over into Tibet, and sometimes into Nepal,” he informed The Independent. The Hillary Step was simple by comparability. Karnicar merely skied round it, traversing a type of gully to the left of the rocky precipice, his edges clinging to a curtain of snow above an 8,000-foot drop.
Pick your line: Everest’s Hillary Step in 2010. Wikimedia Commons.
At the South Summit, he took off his oxygen equipment and on the South Col he stopped for a drink and to mount a digital digital camera to his helmet. He handed the physique of a climber who died months or years earlier than, however paid little discover. “I was concentrating so hard, that I can’t say I felt anything at seeing it. I was lucky that the mountains had allowed me this adventure; that poor guy didn’t have the luck of good weather.”
Karnicar knew effectively the indiscriminate nature of dying within the mountains. He misplaced his brother Luka when the rope suspending him and three different members of the Slovenian Mountain Rescue Team beneath a helicopter snapped. He’d watched as falling ice killed his good pal Franc Oderlap on Manaslu.
“It is a fact that if you take big risks you put yourself in a position where it is not all up to you,” mentioned Karnicar, a religious Catholic, “In the mountains, about 50 percent of the time, we need to have luck.” In the maze of shifting seracs above Everest Base Camp, luck is required 100% of the time.
“There’s only one way to avoid the ice fall,” he mentioned. “I had to keep a diagonal line high to the right, immediately beneath the South Face. It’s exactly the kind of place you’d never want to be in: steep and exposed to the serac falls from above. What’s more, if you fall you’d certainly finish off right in the middle of the ice fall. They wouldn’t even get you out in little pieces.”
Karnicar didn’t fall and he didn’t take off his skis till he reached Base Camp at 12:40 that afternoon. He lived to climb many extra peaks. He skied the Seven Summits and tried K2 a second time in 2017, nevertheless it was to not be. Twenty-four years after a freak windstorm had ended his first try, an earthly again harm halted his second. Fate is humorous that manner.
Karnicar died Sept. 16, 2019, when a tree he minimize down fell on him. He was 56. An announcement on the web site of Elan skis, his sponsor for the reason that age of 12, tried in addition to any to make sense of the tragedy. “Davo Karnicar flirted with challenges in some of the most dangerous parts of our planet, and he always found his way back safe and sound. It seems unreal that he met his destiny a stone’s throw from his doorstep.”
Top Photo: Elan