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Personal details
Name: Fritz Wintersteller
Date of birth: 21 October 1927 - Innsbruck (Austria)
Died: 15 September 2018 - Salzburg (Austria)
Nationality: Austrian
Affiliation: Austrian Alpine Club, Salzburg section (member since 1943); Edelweißclub Salzburg (since 1950)
Biography
Fritz Wintersteller was born in Innsbruck on 21 October 1927, to a Tyrolean mother and a father originally from Guggenthal, at the foot of the Nockstein, on the outskirts of Salzburg. He grew up in the Salzburg area: he attended school in Gnigl and St. Andrä, then the Staatsgewerbeschule – now the technical college – specialising in electrical engineering. It was his father who took him on his first mountain climb: at the age of six, he climbed the Untersberg with him, the massif situated to the south-west of the city.
A member of theAlpenverein in 1943; in the 1940s, he opened new Grade 5 routes on the Salzburg mountains, often with his three brothers, Erich, Alfred and Otto, and with his companions from the Jungmannschaft, the section’s youth group, with whom he also built the Roßberghütte. Alongside climbing, he devoted himself to mountain rescue: in 1947, he took over as head of the Salzburg station of the Bergrettungsdienst. From 1950, he was a member of the Edelweißclub Salzburg, which owned a small mountain hut in the Tennengebirge; he was in charge of it and was made an honorary member.
Hisfriendship with Marcus Schmuck took him to Svalbard in 1955 and, two years later, on theÖsterreichischer Alpenverein to Broad Peak in the Karakoram, led by Schmuck himself and completed by Hermann Buhl and Kurt Diemberger. The four, without supplementary oxygen or high-altitude porters, had divided the preparatory work between them: Schmuck handled the financing, Buhl the equipment, Wintersteller the provisions, whilst Diemberger was trained to act as the expedition’s doctor. On 9 June 1957, Wintersteller and Schmuck were the first to reach the summit together, followed later that day by Diemberger and Buhl.
Ten days later, the same Wintersteller-Schmuck rope team climbed a previously unnamed peak over 7,000 metres high, later named Skil Brum. The two carried all their equipment on their backs, made no caches along the ascent and were back at base camp after just over two days. The Salzburg Alpenverein recalls this ascent as the first ascent of a mountain of that height in the Western Alpine style, an achievement that remained in the shadows because, on 27 June, Buhl died on Chogolisa, falling when a snow cornice collapsed.
A poorly healed leg fracture subsequently forced him to give up climbing at the highest levels. He then turned his attention to the activities of the Salzburg section of theAlpenverein: for around forty years he was in charge of the Carl-von-Stahl-Haus, one of the section’s mountain huts. He was awarded the Republic offor his mountaineering achievements and, in 2006, a civic honour from the city of Salzburg, referred to as a ‘Bürgerbrief’ or ‘honorary citizenship’ depending on the source.
He died on 15 September 2018, a month before his 91st birthday, at the Hellbrunn care home in Salzburg, and was buried in the cemetery in Gnigl, the neighbourhood where he grew up.
Mountaineering achievements
Kleines Fieberhorn, south-east pillar (V) – 1943 – first ascent of the route
Großes Fieberhorn, south dihedral (V-) – 1943 – first ascent of the route
Bratschenkopf, direct south face (V) – 1943 – first ascent of the route
Zahringkogel, direct west face (V+) – 1944 – first ascent of the route
Hochkogel, north-west pillar (V) – 1945 – first ascent of the route
Wiesspitze, direct west face (V+) – 1948 – Tennengebirge
expedition to Svalbard – 1955 - Norway, with Marcus Schmuck, Hanns Tollner and Walter Frauenberger
Broad Peak, secondary summit - 1957 – 29 May, with Kurt Diemberger
Broad Peak (8,051 m) - 1957 – first ascent on 9 June, with Marcus Schmuck, Kurt Diemberger and Hermann Buhl, without supplementary oxygen or high-altitude porters; Karakorum, Pakistan–China border
Skil Brum - 1957 – first ascent on 19 June, with Marcus Schmuck, as a free-climbing expedition and without intermediate depots; Karakorum, Pakistan
Bibliography
As an author: no documented works of his own
As a significant reference
Marcus Schmuck, Broad Peak 8,047 m. Meine Bergfahrten mit Hermann Buhl, Das Bergland-Buch, 1958
Richard Sale, Broad Peak, Carreg, 2007