Dr. Heinrich Pfannl

Born: 1870.

Died: 1929.

Dr. Heinrich Pfannl was at age thirty-one the best rock climber in Austria, having climbed extensively on the Swiss, Ennstal, and Julian Alps. Indeed, he would in later years become the president of the Austrian Alpine Club. Born in Trumau, Lower Austria, he studied law in Vienna, received his Doctor of Laws in 1894, and in 1896 passed the exam to become an Austrian judge.

In 1894, at age twenty-four, he began hiking and climbing as a spiritual retreat from the covetous, acquisitive world of law and lawyers; for him, climbing was a way to fulfill his will, of playing on death’s own border, where the only laws were those of nature. Thus in March 1896, when his brother Josef, also a climber, was one of three killed in an avalanche on Lower Austria’s Rax mountain over the Reistalersteig, it did not dissuade Heinrich from climbing: the same year, he made the first ascent of the Hochtor (7,772 feet) from the north, considered at that time impossible. He developed a reputation for his systematic approach and guideless climbs, giving him much in common with Oscar Eckenstein methodical and antiestablishment ways.

Pfannl made a guideless ascent of Mont Blanc (15,404 feet), the highest Alpine mountain, in 1899. In 1900, he recorded an ascent of Aiguille de Triolet and the first free climb of Dent du Géant (or Dent del Gigante, the Giant’s Tooth, 13,165 feet), and in 1901 conquered the northern face of the Reichstein in Austria’s Ennstal Alps. “Superb climber as he was,” Crowley noted, “he was totally incapable of realizing the magnitude of the task we had set out to perform.”

In the summer of 1902, Oscar Eckenstein and Crowley undertook the first attempt to scale Chogo Ri (known in the west as K2), located in Pakistan. The Eckenstein-Crowley Expedition consisted of Eckenstein, Crowley, Guy Knowles, Heinrich Pfannl, Victor Wessely, and Dr. Jules Jacot Guillarmod.

The K2 Expedition.

From left to right

Victor Wessely,

Oscar Eckenstein,

Jules Jacot-Guillarmod,

Aleister Crowley,

Heinrich Pfannl and

Guy Knowles.

The K2 Expedition.

Heinrich Pfannl being

evacuated in a sleigh

after being diagnosed

with pulmonary edema.

23 July 1902.