He Climbed All 14 Eight-Thousanders. But Never Came Back From a Tourist Mountain

Erhard Loretan was one of only three people in history to climb all fourteen eight-thousanders on the planet — without oxygen, traveling light, slipping through the death zone by night. He crossed Everest in forty hours and survived where his closest friends died. Yet he was killed on a simple four-thousander in his native Alps, on his own birthday, just a few meters from the safe ridge. What happened in that fatal instant on an easy slope back home, and why the rope that always saves a climber killed him this time.