Hansjörg Auer

Hansjörg Auer (* 18 February 1984 in Zams; † 16 April 2019 in Banff National Park, Canada) was an Austrian climber and mountaineer. He caused a sensation in particular with his free solo ascent of the route "Weg durch den Fisch" (difficulty level IX-) on the south face of the Marmolada in the Dolomites.

Details of the accident by David Lama, Hansjörg Auer and Jess Roskelley

On 16 April 2019, Hansjörg Auer, David Lama and Jess Roskelley died on Howse Peak in Canada. John Roskelley, Jess's father, reconstructed the accident in detail using photos and GPS data from their mobile phones and cameras.

By John Roskelley/Translation Jochen Hemmleb - First published in the specialist magazine bergundsteigen

At 5:51 am on 16 April 2019, the three climbers were ascending the steep slopes below "M16", a difficult mixed route by Steve House, Barry Blanchard and Scott Backes, in cold but clear weather. The route had only had one ascent.

Hansjörg was on foot, David and Jess used touring skis. A little later, David and Jess left their skis on a long traverse in the snow to catch up with Hansjörg. All three reached the start of the first difficulty shortly before 7:00 a.m., a waterfall with difficulty level WI6 around 340 metres above their camp.

Hansjörg took over the first lead and mastered the pitch in 15 minutes after waiting for an avalanche of spindrift to sweep over him. Another 15 minutes later, all three were at the belay above the pitch. Because he was either looking for a new variation or the conditions on the two routes above him - "M16" and "Howse of Cards" - were no longer good this late in the season, David traversed left along a snow band to a difficult ramp that sloped from right to left.

Jess followed, using a Petzl Micro Traxion, while David belayed Hansjörg at the same time. They climbed about 80 metres up the ramp until David traversed left again at 8:36 via another horizontal snow band to look for the upper waterfall pitches of the "King Line". This is the name given to a mixed line to the left of the "M16" route that has not yet been climbed. David led the waterfall (WI6+), Jess and Hansjörg quickly followed.

At the exit of the waterfall after the main difficulties, the three of them untied themselves and stowed the ropes in their rucksacks. 50 minutes later, at 9.42am, Hansjörg photographed David and Jess as they approached the end of a long snow gully above the King Line waterfall.

As there were 450 metres of open and avalanche-prone snow flanks and short mixed passages above them, the three of them crossed to the left again at 9:57 am to reach a snow rib at 2832 metres. This led them to a 30 metre wide snow gully, the right-hand branch of a larger, moderately inclined snow trough and a gully system above the "Life by the Drop" route.

Jess, standing ankle-deep in the sun-soaked snow, climbed up the gully that led to the south-west ridge. At 11:02, Jess, who was now belayed on a single line, led a difficult mixed pitch on the ridge. After more than 300 metres of mixed climbing, the three-rope team reached the 3295-metre summit.

A little later, Hansjörg took the first summit photo. It was 12.41 pm. The sun was shining, but the first clouds were gathering. Shortly after Jess had taken his summit photo with all three climbers at 12.44 pm, they began their descent.

Now the three of them took up the ropes in loops in order to quickly reach the traverse via the already softened snow flank, which leads out of the funnel-shaped hollow above the exit of the "Life by the Drop" route. They had already climbed these moderately steep snow flanks unroped on the ascent. From the south-west ridge, it was 165 metres down to the lower end of the snow gully and the traverse over to another gully above the "King Line", which would be followed by further abseils.

Pulling off the two ropes, which were connected with two overlapping sack stitch knots, Jess tied another sack stitch at the centre mark of both strands, so that he had two loops about 50 centimetres long. He pushed his arm through the loops, threw them over his neck and shot up the four rope strands.

He took one loop of the green and one loop of the blue rope from the rope that had shot up and was now hanging in front of his chest, tied a normal-sized sack stitch in them and hung this loop with a carabiner in the shaft end of one of his ice tools. The knot was around 6.5 metres away from the central double loop around his shoulders.

According to a former climbing partner, Jess used this technique to have a movable fixed point when walking unroped with an open rope. Hansjörg, David and Jess continued their unsecured descent down the snow flank.

All indications were that the three intended to descend via their ascent route - they knew where possible abseil points were; David and Jess had left their skis on the route, and Jess was convinced after a phone call with me two days before their departure that a descent via the ascent route was the safest alternative (Jess' father had climbed the north-east buttress of Howse Peak several years ago and knew the various descent options; note).

As they descended in the early afternoon sun, a snow slab broke loose before they could leave the gully towards the King Line. Most likely they heard the slope crack, turned round and prepared themselves for the inevitable violence that would befall them. The broken end of the shaft of one of his ice tools and the bent carabiner that I found later show that Jess was still able to smash his ice tool into the ice under the snow with considerable force before the full force of the avalanche hit him.

She overpowered him and he lost his grip. After six metres of falling, the rope between the ice axe and the loops around Jess's shoulders tightened and the full force of the avalanche now acted on the knots, causing the shaft end of the ice axe to break off. The knots were later pulled together as tightly as if they had been welded.

here's no doubt that David and Hansjörg also hammered their ice tools into the ice. But they were probably not connected to their ice tools. In fact, neither David nor Hansjörg used hand straps on this climb. I found both of Jess's ice tools, but none of David's and only one of Hansjörg's, which was undamaged. When Jess was rescued, his torso and both legs were wrapped several times by the two ropes.

Hansjörg didn't seem to have a rope on his body, while David was wrapped up in some slings. All three climbers were washed down into the snow hollow and via the "Life by the Drop" route. On the same day, 16 April 2019 just before 2pm, Quentin Roberts, an experienced climber from Canmore, parked his car on the Icefield Highway to inspect the routes on Howse Peak. As he and his partner were looking at the east face, an avalanche swept through the hollow above the "Life by the Drop" route and atomised on the glacier at the base of the wall.

They didn't realise that Hansjörg, David and Jess were in the wall at the time. Roberts ran back to his car, grabbed his camera and took a photo of the huge snow cloud forming at the foot of the wall. It was 13:58. 31 minutes after Hansjörg had photographed David walking away from the ropes after abseiling down the top of the snow gully.

The sky had clouded over overnight and only the lower half of the east face was visible. During the second search flight, the helicopter crew spotted one or two bodies halfway up the avalanche cone under "Life by the Drop", partially buried by the snow. Due to the high avalanche danger and temporary deterioration in the weather, it was not possible to drop a mountain rescue team on the avalanche cone until 21 April. In the meantime, the bodies had been buried by other avalanches and could only be localised with the help of an avalanche dog.

The bodies were then flown by longline to the base of the wall. Mountain rescuer Grant Statham said that during a reconnaissance flight on 20 April, he was unable to make out the edge of an avalanche in the descent gully or the hollow below, although such an edge could have been covered by the snowfall in the meantime.

As the bodies were close to the surface when first sighted on the avalanche cone on 17 April, a comparatively small snow slab seems plausible as the cause of the accident (the break-off of a cornice from the ridge above was also discussed; note).

The accident is likely to have occurred in the time window between the climbers' descent into the snow gully after 13:27 and the avalanche photographed by Quentin Roberts at 13:58. Hansjörg, David and Jess had climbed the east face of Howse Peak from their camp at the base of the wall to the summit - a height difference of 1,340 metres - in less than seven hours.

This is the result of her strength, talent and perseverance. The death, however, proves once again that the mountain makes the final decision on success or failure.