The daredevil who skied down Everest

For Davo Karnicar, summiting Mount Everest was just the starting point. After climbing the world’s highest peak on Oct. 7, 2000, the Slovenian daredevil set off on his real mission: becoming the first person to ski nonstop to base camp, some 11,500 feet below. He navigated the Hillary Step, a nearly vertical rock face; the Khumbu Icefall, where massive ice blocks can suddenly break off; and narrow ridges with 10,000-foot drops on either side. At one point, he saw two legs in the snow—they belonged to one of the eight climbers killed in a 1996 storm, during which Karnicar himself had lost two fingers to frostbite. He completed his descent in a mere 4 hours and 40 minutes, and over the next six years skied down the highest peaks on the six other continents. Karnicar, who died in a treecutting accident on his property last week, had little time for people who critiqued his lust for danger. “Usually,” he said, “these people do not venture very far from the safety of their couch.” Karnicar was born in the village of Zgornje Jezersko in what is now northern Slovenia, to parents who “were keen climbers and skiers,” said The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Eager to follow in their footsteps, the young Karnicar would wake at 4 a.m. to train before school. By age 13, he was a member of Yugoslavia’s national alpine skiing team. He “understood the dangers that his adventures presented,” said The New York Times. His brother Andrej joined him in 1995 for the world’s first ski descent of Annapurna and lost eight toes to frostbite in the process. Two years later, Karnicar’s brother Luka and four other members of his rescue team died when a safety line broke during a training exercise. Still, Karnicar was undeterred.

After completing the last of his ski descents of the Seven Summits in 2006, Karnicar focused on his final goal, said OutsideOnline.com: skiing down K2, the world’s second-highest mountain. His first attempt to conquer the dangerous Himalayan peak, in 1993, “ended when his skis blew away in a storm.” In 2017, at age 55, he climbed to K2’s base camp but again had to abandon his mission after suffering back strain. He was driven to take such immense risks with his life, he said, by his seven children: “It’s nice to hear when they say, ‘Davo is unstoppable.’”