Wilhelm 'Willo' Welzenbach (10 November 1900 – 12 or 13 July 1934) was a German mountaineer and alpinist who died on Nanga Parbat while attempting the first ascent of the eight-thousander mountain. When he and Fritz Rigele made the first ascent of the north-west face of the Großes Wiesbachhorn in Austria, they were the first mountaineers to use ice-pegs for protection on an ice face. He went on to make the first ascent of several extreme ice faces in the Alps, and his career total exceeded one thousand successful summits in the region, including fifty peaks where he achieved the first ascent.
The American alpinist Jeff Lowe wrote in 1996 that "between the two world-wars Welzenbach distinguished himself as the best of a bold new generation of ice enthusiasts", over fifty years after his death, he was called the "father of modern ice climbing". Welzenbach also made important contributions to the development of grading systems in alpine climbing including the development of the "Welzenbach scale", which would become the important UIAA Scale (grades I–VI) that is still used today.
Early and professional life Welzenbach was born on 10 November 1900 in Munich. Whilst he was at secondary school his father was posted to Salzburg and from there he was soon making regular visits to the nearby Berchtesgaden Alps. He was conscripted in 1918 but the November armistice meant that he didn't see military action. He went on to study civil engineering at the Technische Hochschule Munich between 1920-1924. After a period working for the Deutsche Reichsbahn he was employed by Munich City Council as an engineer specialising in drainage works, an occupation which allowed him to afford a DKW sports-car and regular weekend trips to climb in Austria and Switzerland at a time when the German economy was struggling with post-war recovery.
Welzenbach later studied for a doctoral degree at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology under the supervision of , the pioneer of avalanche science. His research involved "major fundamental work on cornices", and he was awarded his doctorate in 1930 for a dissertation entitled "Untersuchungen über die Stratigraphie der Schneeablagerungen und die Mechanik der Schneebewegungen nebst Schlußfolgerungen auf die Methoden der Verbauung". Welzenbach's research had direct relevance to the challenges of protecting and securing alpine rail and road routes in winter. His dissertation continues to be cited into the 21st century and his work has been described as one of the "milestones in the field of snow and avalanches". Welzenbach and Paulcke followed this up by making one of the first films on avalanche awareness.
Alpine mountaineering Welzenbach began climbing in the Northern Limestone Alps in the 1920s and soon became an excellent rock climber and alpinist. He joined the in 1921 (within just a few years he became the club's president, for 1925–1926) and climbed with a number of club members who were much older, one in particular was , 27 years his senior. In 1923, Pfann and Welzenbach made an early enchainment when over two days, with Eleonore Noll-Hasenclever, they climbed the Matterhorn's Zmutt Ridge, descended to the Savoia Hut (which has since been replaced by the Refuge Jean-Antoine Carrel) and then traversed the complete Frontier Ridge over the Dent d'Hérens before descending down the west ridge.
After the excursion on the Dent d'Hérens, Pfann introduced Welzenbach to Friedrich 'Fritz' Rigele (1878–1937), another experienced mountaineer who was a lawyer working near Salzburg and was also twice Welzenbach's age when they met. Within a few days of being introduced Welzenbach and Rigele traversed both the Pointe de Zinal and the Zinalrothorn in quick succession, over a 40 hour period, and it was whilst descending from the Zinalrothorn that Rigele told Welzenbach about the 'eishaken' he had developed and his ambition to make the first ascent of the north-west face of the Großes Wiesbachhorn. The 'eishaken' (translating literally as 'ice-hook'), were an adaptation of rock pitons which could be used on ice. They were made by a locksmith to Rigele's specification, c. 7.5-8inches (19-20cm) long with a rectangular cross-section and were the fore-runner to the modern ice screw. At that time there were few options for protection when ice-climbing and Rigele's 'eishaken' provided a solution.
Welzenbach later wrote to Rigele about the Wiesbachhorn and the following summer they teamed up to make the first ascent on 15 July 1924, with Rigele leading some of the crucial pitches. They were the first to use Rigele's new invention in earnest it was Welzenbach's first big success, and at the time "this was the most difficult ice course in the Eastern Alps".
The Wiesbachhorn climb "initiated a series of monumental north face climbs which carried his name far beyond the borders of Germany and established his alpine fame". He abandoned the traditional long handled ice axe in favour of a shorter ice-pick and made full use of Rigele's ice-pegs. Although the crampons that he was using had the traditional 8 point design, without front points (more modern 10 point crampons were not developed until 1932), with his state-of-the-art equipment he made the first-ascent of a series of important alpine climbing routes that involved large north faces across the Alps which previous generations of mountaineers had considered unjustifiable or unclimbable. Particularly significant successes included:
Dent d'Hérens north wall The first ascent of the north wall of the Dent d'Hérens in the Valais Alps, together with in August 1925, opened "a new chapter in the history of mountaineering". Following their ascent, which took less than 16 hours, the climb "soon became a prestigious objective" for the most capable ice-climbers of their generation and was at the time "acknowledged as one of the most difficult ice faces in the Alps".
1926 north faces in the Hohe Tauern A series of first ascents in 1926 of north faces in the Hohe Tauern of the Eastern Alps with Karl Wien (who would later die on the same mountain as Welzenbach). These included the north-west face of the Glockerin on 1 September 1926, the north face of the Eiskogele on 3 September 1926 and the north face of the Grossglockner on 19 September 1926.
North face of the Grands Charmoz In the Western Alps the first ascent of the north face of the Aiguille des Grands Charmoz in 1931 with Willy Merkl (who later died with Welzenbach on Nanga Parbat) was "a long and sustained epic in atrocious weather". The two climbers started on June 30, but after a night on the face they were caught out by bad weather and had to endure a second night out before they were able to descend. On 5 July, they returned to their previous high point and again became storm-bound high on the face, after enduring four days and nights in the storm they managed to reach the summit and then return to Montenvers, above Chamonix, where no one had expected them to survive the ordeal. By 1994, the Welzenbach route on the Charmoz was unclimbable in summer, having "been reduced to a sliver of ice high up on the face", little more than "a grotesque and suicidal heap of rubble".
North faces in the Bernese Oberland In the 1930s Welzenbach and his parties "took the lion's share of almost all the high North face climbs" in the Bernese Alps. The campaign started in 1929 on the Grosses Fiescherhorn, Welzenbach and Heinz Tillmann climbed the north ridge in only 8.5 hours. When they returned the following year they started to ascend the mountain's north face, the Fiescherwand, on the morning of 5 September 1930, taking a line that ran directly to the summit. They reached the top that evening, after a 12-hour ascent.
He returned to the area in 1932 and tackled a "series of unsolved mountaineering challenges". The campaign started with the first ascent of the high north wall. of the Grosshorn which was climbed over the period 25-27 July with Alfred Drexel (who was to die on Nanga Parbat, on the same expedition that Welzenbach lost his own life), Hermann Rudy and Erich Schulze. The lower part of the Grosshorn north face is now seriously threatened by serac fall.
Then, towards the end of that summer, "in eight days of poor weather, he managed the first ascents of three dangerous and extremely difficult north walls" The first, on 7 September 1932 and again accompanied by Drexel and Schulze, was the north-east face of the Gspaltenhorn, one of the greatest faces in the Bernese Alps, with the summit above the valley floor and the vertical height of the face amounting to . A few days later, over 9-10 September, the same party of Welzenbach, Drexel, Rudy and Schulze, made the first ascent of the north face of the Gletscherhorn. Soon after, on 14 September, he and Schulze made the first ascent of the north face of the Lauterbrunnen Breithorn.
Injury His record is more remarkable by the fact that he was largely incapacitated for the period from the autumn of 1926, after his ascents in the Hohe Tauern, through to the summer of 1927 by a medical condition which primarily affected his right arm and which required a lengthy period of hospitalisation and surgery. Although he hadn't made a full recovery, and was restricted by a rigid right elbow which kept him away from long or difficult expeditions, he attempted to climb again in the summer of 1927. Despite his illness, and even with a stiffened elbow-joint, amongst his ascents in 1927 were the Gross Glockner by the Pallavicinirinne, and Mont Blanc by the Brenva Spur (with Karl Wien, and Erwin Schneider). By 1930, however, thanks to surgical skill, he had recovered much of his former power and the American alpinist Jeff Lowe wrote in 1996 that the "climbs that he undertook, such as the north faces of the Gross Fiescherhorn, the Aiguille des Grands Charmoz, the Gletscherhorn and the Lauterbrunnen Breithorn, remained, even into the 1960s, some of the most difficult in the Alps", all of the ascents listed by Lowe took place after Welzenbach's surgery.
Death on Nanga Parbat
Welzenbach's first opportunity to climb in Asia arose when invited him to join the German-Soviet Alay-Pamir Expedition which he was leading in 1928. He was unable to take part because of the problems with his arm.
Very soon after that invitation he threw himself into planning a climbing expedition to attempt the first ascent of the eight-thousanders, Nanga Parbat, in Pakistan. In 1930, the central committee of the DuOeAV had given their backing (and financial support) to the detailed plans he presented to them, he had obtained permission from the British Government who then administered the area and had obtained leave from his employers but his plans were blocked by the German Foreign Office in favour of the 1930 International Himalaya Expedition to Kangchenjunga led by Günter Dyhrenfurth. Two more attempts were also thwarted before they left Germany and it was not until 1934 that Welzenbach went to attempt Nanga Parbat and he was then not the expedition leader but the deputy-leader to Willy Merkl, one of his alpine climbing rope-partners. Germany's newly-established Nazi government provided significant financial support for the 1934 expedition as part of its drive to promote the supremacy of Germany over other countries.