Ueli Steck

Ueli Steck (1976 to 2017) was a Swiss rock climber and alpinist who set speed records on the North Face trilogy in the Alps. He won two Piolet d'Or awards, in 2009 and 2014, including one for a solo ascent of the south face of Annapurna. At 17 he reached the ninth difficulty grade on the UIAA scale, and at 18 he climbed the north face of the Eiger and the Bonatti Pillar on the Mont Blanc massif. In 2004 he and Stephan Siegrist climbed the Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau within 25 hours, and in 2005 the Khumbu-Express expedition, with solo climbs of the north wall of Cholatse and the east wall of Taboche, led the magazine Climb to name him one of the three best alpinists in Europe. He set his first Eiger speed record in 2007, at 3 hours 54 minutes, and died after a fall while acclimatizing on the north face of Nuptse in 2017.