Tomaž Humar

Tomaž Humar (1969 to 2009), nicknamed Gozdni Joža, was a Slovenian mountaineer from Kamnik who completed over 1,500 ascents and won the Piolet d'Or in 1997 for his Ama Dablam ascent. He began climbing at 18 with the Kamnik Mountain Club and became widely recognised after his unsuccessful 1999 attempt on the south face of Dhaulagiri, which Reinhold Messner called the most important ascent of the decade. In 2005 he was trapped by avalanches on a solo attempt on Nanga Parbat and was rescued by a Pakistan Army helicopter crew after six days in a snow cave, and in 2007 he reached the eastern summit of Annapurna. He died in November 2009 after an accident on a solo climb of the south face of Langtang Lirung.