Ulrich Inderbinen: The legendary Swiss mountain guide Ulrich Inderbinen, who climbed the 14,690-foot Matterhorn more than 370 times, battling avalanches, ice storms and deadly glacial crevasses, has died at his Zermatt home. He was 103 years old.
Known as "King of the Alps", Inderbinen ascended 13,000-foot peaks four days a week for 70 years, bothered by little except clients who couldn't keep up with his pace.
He took up competitive skiing at 80 and always won - he was the only contestant in his category. He gave up guiding in his mid-90s - the only time he took off work was for 10 days 30 years ago after a slip on the ice.
A lifelong resident of Zermatt, Inderbinen spent his childhood tending animals in the mountains. At 21, he decided guiding was a better career, but needed climbing experience to enter the training class. So he set off on the Matterhorn with his younger sister, a male friend and the friend's sister. His only gear was his hobnailed boots and a tweed jacket.
That initial climb was exceedingly perilous, he admitted later. The band carried flickering candle lanterns and found their way by peering at scratches left on rocks by previous climbers. But they reached the summit and descended safely, and he was up and down so many times after that that he eventually lost count of his ascents.
Five years later, on his first trip as a qualified guide, he wound rope around the skis for the 10-hour ascent of the Breithorn. On the way down, his seven-foot skis slipped on a patch of ice, and he broke his leg. He survived by sitting on the skis and dragging himself down the mountain.
In 1990, the London Independent described a hike with the man tourism officials called the oldest active guide in the world. "We set off on foot for the cable-car station at the top of the village; soon after 8 a.m. we stepped out at the Schwarzsee, some 8,000 feet above sea level, and started to walk. For the next six hours, unless I asked him to, my guide never stopped. Up, up, up he went, moving relentlessly at a slow but perfect pace. That deliberate, regular tread - the product of a lifetime's experience - ate up ground at an extraordinary rate, and soon I was positively glad that he was not 30 or 40 years younger."
Inderbinen claimed to be the only person in Zermatt without a phone; people knew that they would find the devout Catholic each evening in Zermatt's church square.
His only regret in life, he told journalists, was when his family vetoed his plans to climb Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 92. "I've really no idea why they were all against it," he sighed.
Ulrich Inderbinen: born 1901; died June 14th, 2004.