Ueli Steck is a Swiss mountaineer born October 4 1976 in Langnau im Emmental Switzerland and died April 30 2017 in Nepal Nicknamed the Swiss Machine it is known for its solo ascents and speed records As a child Ueli Steck played ice hockey At 12 he discovered rock climbing and joined the Swiss Alpine Club At the age of 18 he climbed the north face of the Eiger and the Bonatti pillar in the MontBlanc massif In 1998 he soloed the Haston Couloir on the Mönch in 35 hours and in 1999 the Lauper route on the Eiger in 5 hours In 2001 he made the first ascent of the west face of Mount Pumori with Ueli Bühler From 2002 he made several ascents with Stephan Siegrist The Young Spider 2002 and La Vida es Silbar 2003 on the north face of the Eiger then they chained the 3 north faces of the Eiger Mönch and Jungfrau in 25 hours 2004 In 2005 he made the first solo ascent of the north face of Cholatse 6440 m and the west face of Tawoche 6505 m Ueli Steck is regularly talked about thanks to his speed records In 2007 he set a new Eiger north face record of 354 then in February of the following year he broke his own record with a time of 24733 In May 2008 in full preparation for their excursion to the south face of Annapurna Ueli Steck and Simon Anthamatten set off to rescue mountaineer Iñaki Ochoa de Olza A rescue helicopter could not be used at such high altitudes Ochoa died on May 23 Steck will stay by his side until the end On January 13 2009 Ueli Steck completed a record trilogy Eiger Grande Jorasse Matterhorn on the north face in 1 hour 56 minutes to reach the summit of the Matterhorn via the Schmid route He received the Piolet dOr 2009 in technical difficulty for the first ascent of the north face of Tengkampoche 6500 m with Simon Anthamatten On July 9 he managed his first 8000 the Gasherbrum II 8035 m solo In 2011 on April 17 he climbed the south face of Shisha Pangma 8013 m in a record time of 1030 am and 18 days later on May 5 he climbed Cho Oyu 8201m with Don Bowie On November 18 2011 he presented Ueli Steck Speed his film in Martigny Switzerland In August 2012 Ueli Steck created the EigerMönchJungfrau triptych in less than 12 hours On October 9 2013 Ueli Steck added to his list of achievements a solo ascent of the south face of Annapurna During the summer of 2015 Ueli Steck carried out with Michael Wohlleben the 82summits project of more than 4000 m in the Alps without the use of motorized means Ueli reached the end of the project in 62 days On November 11 2015 Ueli Steck and Nicolas Hojac climbed the north face of the Eiger via the Heckmair route in 3 hours 46 minutes thus beating the roped ascent record On November 16 2015 5 days later Ueli set a new Eiger record of 22250 On April 30 2017 Ueli Steck is training for a combined ascent of Everest then Lhotse in less than 48 hours and without oxygen via the West Ridge route never repeated He was discovered dead by rescuers after slipping on a patch of ice and falling 1000 meters from one of the faces of Nuptse during an acclimatization ascent
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