Göran Kropp
Göran Kropp
Göran Kropp
Göran Kropp
Göran Kropp
Göran Kropp
Göran Kropp
Göran Kropp
Göran Kropp
Göran Kropp
Göran Kropp
Göran Kropp
Göran Kropp
https://www.amazon.com/Allein-auf-Everest-G%C3%B6ran-Kropp/dp/3442150191/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=G%C3%B6ran+Kropp&qid=1579851983&sr=8-2
1998
adventurer lecturer writer mountain climber
Goran Kropp was born on November 12, 1966, at Jonkoping, Sweden, and grew up in Italy, where his father worked for the United Nations. His dad Gerard had been a climber and as a kid, Göran would watch him through binoculars on the Italian Dolomites.
Kropp's passion for mountains started early. Through binoculars, he would watch his father, a human rights lawyer, climbing on the steep limestone cliffs of the Italian Dolomites. At the age of six, he was led by his dad up Galdhøppigen, the highest peak in Norway. But after his parents divorced, his mother returned to Sweden and climbing lost its appeal.
Instead, Kropp spent his teenage years in extravagant rebellion, combining a musical passion for reggae, prog-rock and punk. By 16, he had his own apartment, which he painted in Rasta colours, and spent his high school years going to gigs, forming an unlikely friendship with the Swedish singer Eva Dahlgren after he cadged a lift home from her after one of her concerts. Once his appetite for partying burned out, he joined the Swedish paratroopers, where his reputation for eccentric behaviour and outrageous trials of strength was established.
Kropp met Mats Dahlin, a young soldier passionate about climbing, and, bored by military discipline, felt his old enthusiasm returning. The travel, hardship, joy, and lack of regulation that mountaineering encapsulated was the natural environment for Kropp's rebellious streak.
The difficulty was cash. Earning a pittance in the army, he abandoned his apartment and moved into a tent pitched in a gravel pit close to the barracks. He dreamt up surreal tests of endurance to train for the mountains. Setting his alarm clock randomly, he would rise at 3 am and march 30km in full kit; if it was 6 am, he would march 60km. "I wanted to get used to living with the unexpected," he said.
Kropp made his first successful high-altitude climb in 1988, reaching the summit of Pic Lenin (7,134m) in the Soviet Union. The next year, on a trip to Ecuador and Bolivia, he climbed two mountains above 5,000m and three above 6,000m, including Illamni (6,300m) and Cotopaxi (5,897m).
In 1990 he completed the technically very difficult climb of Muztagh Tower (7,273m). In 1993 he became the second person to reach the summit of K2 (8,616m) in Pakistan, the world's second-highest mountain, alone and without bottled oxygen. On the way up he survived high-altitude storms, avalanches and falling into a crevasse. On his return to Sweden, he left the army.
Kropp's other climbs - he reckoned to have climbed 16 out of the world's 22 "ultimate" mountains - included Broad Peak (8,047m) in 1994, and the for summit of Shishipangma (8,006m) in 1997.
Goran Kropp reached the pinnacle of his career as an adventurer by cycling 7,000 miles from Sweden to Nepal, climbing Everest without porters or bottled oxygen, then cycling back to Sweden.
Kropp set out from Stockholm on October 16, 1995, riding a custom-built, 18lb bicycle and towing 240lb of climbing and camping gear in a trailer. His route took him through eastern Europe, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India and finally Nepal.
By the time he arrived in Kathmandu, he had been pelted with rocks, assaulted with a baseball bat, run off the road, and offered a madam's daughter - free of charge - in a Hungarian brothel. He repaired 132 flat tires.
When he left the staging ground in Kathmandu in April 1996, he became the first climber to carry all his equipment (weighing 143lbs) to Everest Base Camp, at 17,100ft. From there he made his way up the South Pillar, doing his best to steer clear of other climbers, doing his own route-finding, eschewing the fixed ropes and carrying all his own food.
His first attempt ended in frustration when he was forced to turn back, having run out of steam 350ft below the summit. Despite this blow to his morale, and in the face of rapidly deteriorating weather that would result in the deadliest season in Everest's history, he steeled himself for another try. That failed too, due to dangerous snow conditions.
Then, on May 9-10, the great storm arrived, the worst in living memory, catching 40 climbers from eight expeditions high on the mountain; eight died in the disaster, which was later vividly described in Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air, published in 1997.
A few days after the storm subsided, Kropp set off for his third and final attempt, still without Sherpas and without bottled oxygen. On reaching the summit he lingered for just four minutes, deeming it prudent to get his blue, oxygen-deprived fingers to a lower altitude as soon as possible.
He spent a few weeks in Katmandhu recuperating before beginning the 7,000-mile ride back home.
In 1999 he climbed Everest again, this time with his girlfriend Renata Chumskla, who became the first Swedish woman to climb Everest; their expedition was part of a clean-up project to remove rubbish from the South Col, and they dragged 25 used oxygen cylinders off the mountain.
In his book Ultimate High (1999), about his first Everest adventure, Kropp expressed his disdain for climbers who used extra oxygen and "see Everest and other high peaks reduced to trophies kept in a china cabinet". But the next year he had to pay out substantial libel damages to a fellow mountaineer whom he had labeled a "wild, unkempt and slovenly drunk."
In 2000 Kropp attempted to ski unsupported to the North Pole but he abandoned the expedition halfway, due to frostbite suffered after being stalked by two polar bears, one of which he was forced to shoot dead.
His next big expedition, planned for 2004, was to have been to attempt to sail single-handedly from Seattle through the treacherous waters of the Southern Hemisphere to Antarctica, ski 1,490 miles solo to the South Pole - and make the return trip.
Kropp aimed to tackle each expedition "in harmony with nature", without the support and leaving no trace of his passing. "It is important for me to leave nothing behind me on a mountain," he said.
He gave freely of his time to benefit the poorer regions he visited, and over the past few years, he had built a school, a hospital and a power plant for a small Nepalese village in the Himalayas and established a charitable organization in Sweden.
He made his living meanwhile by lecturing - he had delivered more than 1,000 talks since 1996 - and through his company Kropp & Aventyr (Kropp & Adventure), which runs courses on team building and motivation, as well as trekking and climbing on peaks up to 7,000m.
Kropp drove a couple of seasons in the Swedish and Nordic Formula Three series. His last race was in 2000. Kropp loved fast sports cars and drove Ferraris and Maseratis privately on the road. Together with von Braun Sports Cars, he developed an advanced Ferrari F355 GT car for endurance racing. Only a few test races were made before he died.
Quotations:
"I've been to so many lectures that are boring. I want the audience to feel that I really have fun in the mountains. That's what I want to give. That it's life to go to the mountains, not just hardship and death."
"To do the same thing that someone else has done before, You already know from the start that it's possible to do. But when people tell me that it's impossible, than I feel the strength to do it even more."
Behind the stage performances and booming laughter, Kropp was a sensitive soul, deeply affected by the death of his climbing partner Dahlin while training in the Alps. He was also a highly intelligent organizer with an appetite for the latest technology. But while some of his competitors used these advances to repeat old challenges more easily, Kropp wanted to push limits.
"Larger than life" did not do Göran justice. He had, for example, gunned down a polar bear during an expedition to the North Pole. As anecdotes go, taking on a thousand pounds of teeth, claws and furry muscle is a show-stealer. And he loved to entertain. Before our climb up Kilimanjaro, his group lounged around a hotel room listening to Göran while he transported us to the High Arctic.
That was the other strand woven into the fabric of Göran's life of adventure: ambition. And not just to be accepted by other climbers. He loved that life, of being unlimited, beyond the conventional. Göran seems to have been a magnet for extreme experiences - such as the time he contracted typhoid in Ecuador and lay delirious in a doss-house next to a paranoid who claimed to be Bruce Lee's brother and kept a handgun under his pillow. They were good yarns, but Göran wanted to do something exceptional, something unprecedented. Something that would count in the 'real' world.
Physical Characteristics: Göran Kropp was a 6’3″, 240-pound (190cm, 190kg) man known by his nickname “Crazy Swede.”
Quotes from others about the person
“He was, thanks to his positive attitude and his radiant warmth, an immensely popular lecturer. His never-ending enthusiasm was highly contagious... To Goran, freedom was the guiding star and he showed that with enthusiasm, coupled with meticulous preparation, will make almost anything possible. His death is a great loss, not only to his family and friends but to all mankind.”
Kropp was never married and had no children.
