Talk:Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner

Film with extensive interviews with Gerlinde

I just finished watching the film "K2 Siren of the Himalayas" about an expedition in 2009 in which Gerlinde participated and she was interviewed many times in the film. She has many fine things to say about mountaineering, and about her own passion for being up in the high mountains. One thing came across very clearly, and that is the fact that she is extraordinarily fit. An exceptionally fit person, and that must be the reason for her world record of 8000 meter climbs without supplementary oxygen tanks. She is also very charming. Anyway, the movie is worth seeing (on Netflix at this time, no endorsement implied, just saying).

Gerlinde's book "Mountains in My Heart — a Passion for Climbing"

This book, completed in German in 2013 with a final chapter 16 on her successful attempt on K2 (August 23, 2011) was translated into English in 2014, published by Mountaineers Book.
It is a skimpily produced book on a strict budget and cheapo paper, supplying a very sketchy barebones description of each expedition and summit attempt. 51 mostly undated pictures illustrate the 16 chapters. One picture of Gerlinde rock climbing in Thailand by 98º F (p.122) shows her remarkably lean, wiry and taut physique, similar to the picture of her face in the article, looking much more gaunt than in the plum-cheeked picture on the book's cover . She mentions her weight of 123 lbs at some point in her expeditions, still able to move up and down with a 45 lbs pack. Another time, she has to move some equipment with an unbelievable 80 lbs load on her back, forced to advance bent over like an old woman.
The text does not go much into background information or explanation of technical details such as specialized equipment, personalities of the climbers involved, already familiar to devotees of high-altitude climbing. Even the ages of the climbers are never mentioned, leaving us wondering, but how old are all those climbers? There's no lexicon of the mountaineering lingo, immediately meaningful to confirmed mountaineers, for whom this book seems to have been written. But an ordinary reader may wonder what on earth is a "bergschrund", a "serac", or even "spindrift snow".
It is more a journal of her feelings, her attitudes, decisions, and reflections on herself and her expeditions, and the meaning of her life. Still, in spite of its brevity and the laconic treatment of her breath-taking expeditions, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner has delivered a remarkable personal document, fully concentrating on herself, a frank insight into the personality of a top female achiever, and what it takes to be a superior efficient climber.

In a Spartan conversation style, interspersed with some random brooding on her past, she touches on the key factors for success in her professional pursuit of high-altitude climbing:
- a lifelong development and maintenance of top fitness and top strength, this immense strength being the very foundation of her life,
- a complete knowledge of the technical environment—climbing methods and various skills required, the psychological discipline required for absolute concentration on each step, when any minute mistake can entail fall and instant death;
- the lengthy process of learning through experience the various dangers lurking on the mountain—avalanches, rock falls, crevasses, deceptive snow, too deep snow, unstable ice, changing weather;
- always keeping in mind to give oneself time for the dangerous challenge of climbing down and reaching a lower camp;
- the differences between expedition style in a large team—slow and cumbersome—vs alpine style—with extra-light packing allowing skipping some camp for a higher bivouac and saving energy and time through faster climbing in a small team of 2 or 3;
- how to select an harmonious team of co-climbers, working together and getting along in facing the unexpected challenges,
- picking the right husband as a partner able to provide a critical contribution to her successful summit attempts—wide expertise, specific advice, invaluable contacts in all areas of the wide mountaineering world, satellite communications, indispensable weather forecasts, and financial, mental and physical support, both on the trail and off the trail when he can act as a long-distance guide and adviser,
- the vital importance of sustaining motivation and enthusiasm in herself and her team,
- the balance of mental and physical factors to evaluate the risks of continuing a climb against abandoning it—a tension always present between a show of courage and the tempting wisdom of descending to a lower camp—including the special psychological problems between her and her husband caused by their different decisions during a climb;
- the special fortitude of spirit enabling her to banish the constant specter of death while climbing, and to surmount the tragic despair following the accidental death of a team member in front of her very eyes, or learning of the death of a close friend in another expedition;
- the underlying drive of a burning passion for just being on the mountain and reaching the summit,
- and last, the immense luck that allowed her to survive all catastrophes and the unavoidable string of deaths encountered on the way, and gave her the final opportunity to tell her tale to the world.

It would be wrong, because she opens up her heart, and exposes her innermost feelings, to describe her as "a sweet, soft hearted lady", as this is totally missing her character. Her determination, her will, her audacity in taking reasoned risks where the penalty of misjudgment and failure is death, not just to her, but those in her team who are following her, mark her as an immensely strong, willful, woman. She is young and successful, entirely focused on her climb, and so, yes, she appears "sweet", in the sense that she is womanly sensitive, but to call her "soft-hearted" is a misrepresentation, a distortion of her will power. Often she comes through as steely-hearted, stronger than the men climbing with her, when for instance, her husband, Ralf, a much more experienced mountaineer than she was, decides to turn back to base camp, whereas she decides to go on, because being younger, her endurance is even greater than Ralf's, and she follows her "gut instinct", telling her she has the energy and the resources to go on in a fleeting weather window that will allow her to reach the summit. This decision might be misinterpreted as lacking the prudence Ralf has acquired over a much longer life as a mountaineer, while in fact he's lost his motivation because he is already satisfied with having reached the summit in a previous expedition, and is no longer driven by her formidable determination and willpower.

The rather bizarre titles of the chapters, all abstract terms of basic feelings, betray her formidable willpower: Curiosity, Desire, Closeness, Willpower, Courage, Hope, Determination, Serenity, Joy, Perseverance, Fulfillment. But assuredly nothing soft-hearted there. The negative titles don't show any soft-heartedness either: Shock, Fear, Distress, Desperation. She sounds more like a female Ulysses, or Achilles, not a social drawing-room "lady". The drawback of such inspirational titles is that they may sound dramatic to the writer, but they tell us nothing about the contents of the chapter. We would much prefer adding to those dramatic-sounding terms a more: illuminating announcement of the episodes we're about to encounter: "Annapurna I, Nepal, May 2004 — Fear in the No.10 highest mountain, 8091m".
Gerlinde's motivation is not that of a male warrior, though, she is not obsessed with male bravado for the pure temptation of showing off and bragging, climbing mostly to later boast about her heroic deeds to mountaineering clubs. Neither is she engaging in a race with her friend, the other famous female climber, the Spaniard Edurne Pasaban, for claiming to be the first female to have climbed all the 14 8000ers, all Himalayans peaks higher than 8,000 meters. In fact, Pasaban beats her, but Gerlinde is the one who bagged her 14 peaks without the use of supplementary oxygen. However the competitive spirit involved in such implicit racing between the two female climbers (if it ever existed) is never mentioned by Gerlinde in her book.

A pure child of the Austrian Alps, to whom the hectic, high-pressure environment of large urban centers remains fundamentally alien, she is moved by an irresistible love of life in the mountains, being right there among them, feeling an intimate attraction to the majestic peaks and the challenging "faces" of their summits, intoxicated by the extraordinary colors of Himalayan sunrises and sunsets, the unlimited views of the skies and the vast horizons, looking over the forests of anonymous peaks spreading in Nepal, Bhutan, China, Pakistan, or the Alps and Dolomites in Europe. She is eager each time to relive the unique feeling, renewed every time she is embarking once again in a new expedition, of returning home to her natural environment—of being united over rocks, ice, and snow, gazing into the blue sky and its constellation of millions of stars, with the whole of nature and the world. She says it loud and clear in her title: "Mountains in My Heart". Her driving energy stems from her "Passion for Climbing". That cannot be labeled either sweet or soft, but enraptured and driven by overpowering passion.

It's a dry read, which requires patient and focused attention to her sketchy account. Sometimes you have to piece scattered details from different pages to reconstruct a coherent narrative, and figure out exactly where the mountaineers are in their climb, as they keep navigating many times up and down between high-altitude camps (Camp IV, Camp III) and bivouacs, Deposit Camps (DCs), and lower-based Camp II, Camp I, ABC (Advanced Base Camp), and BC (Base Camp). We easily lose track of the days, and dates are only very sparingly mentioned.

This book would have gained depth, impact, and interest from going into more tangential reflections and insights, amplifying her explanations, and being a book twice as long, with an expanded appendix, an informative index of names, and a lexicon of essential technical terms. As is, if read too rapidly (and it can be a page-turner in many spots), the reader is left with a pretty blurred general impression, into which all the climbs seem to fuse and combine in his/her memory.
Frustratingly, there's no sketchy map of the Himalayas chain pinpointing the location of the 14 peaks, concentrated in two groups, one to the East (Nepal, Bhutan), usually approached in the spring, and the other in Pakistan, attempted next later in the summer, both groups bordered by the immense Tibetan plateau to the North-East. The border line between China and its neighbors like Nepal or Pakistan follows the top peaks of the Himalayas, so that Gerlinde straddling the ridge leading to a given summit, may find herself with one leg on the Nepal or Pakistan side, and the other on the Chinese side. A summit may often be reached along different routes on the mountain following different sides or faces of the peak. In some cases there may be different accesses to the base of the mountain, including Chinese ones, each with its own problems, challenges and national permits, approaching different initial base camps (BCs).
The table of contents is nothing more than a list of the 16 non-descript chapter titles, giving no hint of the contents, and the absence of sub-headings for parts within each chapter does not help at all. Even the title of the book and its front cover are silent about it being the heroic conquest of the 14 8,000ers by a female who used no oxygen.
The photographs are exciting, but there's no listing anywhere of all the photos provided. And, as she rhapsodizes so much about each great mountain before each expedition, nearly like a paean to a Himalayan divinity or a love object, it would have been instructive to have a good picture of each 8,000er at the start of each dedicated chapter recounting the summit attempt. Without them, the reader has no way to share her deep sense of attraction to and communion with each distinct monumental peak. Again, we are left with but a very vague idea of the striking or formidable profile of those 14 legendary mountains. How does K2 differ from Everest, Annapurna I, Dhaulagiri, Broad Peak, or Lhotse?
Amazingly, the timeline of expeditions presented at the end of the book (following the European habit of showing table of contents at the end of a book) is incomplete, lacking a couple of attempts effectively described in the body of the text. We would have preferred the American way of seeing this list of expeditions at the start of the book, possibly merged with the list of chapters, each presenting a condensed summary of the events recounted in each chapter.

For all its limitations, and the general impression of a too-quick publishing job on a tight budget, this book delivers a mini-encyclopedia of the key problems involved in high-altitude mountaineering. Gerlinde's own text remains, on the whole, an exciting document on the life and magnificent achievements of a doughty female star of 8,000+ climibing, both determined and wise, incredibly strong and fit, immensely lucky—from which emerges an authentic, sincere, unpretentious, and engaging personality. --ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 22:00, 30 May 2016 (UTC)--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 13:10, 31 May 2016 (UTC)