Martin Feistl perishes on Scharnitzspitze

German alpinist Martin Feistl perished on Saturday 18 May on Scharnitzspitze in Austria. The 27-year-old was climbing the Spitzenstätter route (VII, 270m) unroped when, for reasons unknown, shortly after midday he fell 40m. According to reports a member of the mountain rescue service who happened to be in the area raised the alarm and abseiled immediately to reach him, but all help arrived too late. Feistl was renowned for his purist style and no-compromise approach to his cutting-edge mountaineering.

Between 2016 and 2018 Feistl was a promising member of the German Mountaineering Club Youth Expedition Team. This project culminated in an illuminating ascent of Shivling (6543m) in India after which he focused his attention on finding the same sense of adventure in the Alps, right on his doorstep. He moved to Innsbruck in Austria and his backyard mountains, literally a stone's throw from his doorstep, became those on which many of the world's best have honed their skills.

Repeats and first ascents came in thick and fast. In November 2020 he teamed up with David Bruder and trugged into the Valsertal to make the first repeat and first free ascent of Sagzahnverschneidung, the difficult mixed climb established four years earlier by none other than David Lama and Peter Mühlberger. Sensing conditions were prime he returned a few days later, this time with Sven Brand, to make the first ascent of 24 hours of freedom, a route he described as the kingline on this wild peak.

These two routes paved the way for one of his masterpieces, the highly committing Stalingrad established with Bruder up the distinctive couloir located between Grubenkarspitze (2663m) and Plattenspitze (2492m) on 20 and 21 December 2020. The climb was mentioned in the Piolet d'Or list of significant ascents and, writing to planetmountain after the climb, Feistl explained that on the crux he had "never been so completely absorbed in the moment on a 50-metre pitch, with the constant thought that this could and perhaps should be my last pitch of this sort." His thoughts always indicated his willingness to accept risk and his complete awareness of the dire consequences, while trying to strike the balance with the immense rewards his mountaineering gave him.

After establishing new routes in Baffin in summer 2023, last winter Feistl seemed unstoppable. In January he added a highly committing mixed climb to the Pinnistal with Martin Sieberer called Männer mit Moral, while in early February he teamed up with Simon Gietl to make the first ascent of the huge Aura (M6 AI5, 1200m) on the northeast face of Langkofel / Sassolungo in the Dolomites. His standout climb came about a few days earlier though, on 24 January, when he ventured into the Pinnistal once again. This time he was completely on his own and on Hammerspitze he went on to establish a 400m mixed climb solo and without a rope to self-belay. The difficulties, WI 5, M4, do little to indicate the magnitude of this ascent. Feistl, conscious of having pushed things to the extreme, prophetically called his climb Daily Dose of Luck.

While Feistl was a vocal advocate for traditional mountaineering - in the mountains he preferred pegs to bolts by a long way and abhorred witnessing classic climbs being retrobolted - he was equally passionate about the environment. He often used the train and other forms of public transport to get to and from his climbs, and he fully embraced this ecopoint style. Feistl's purist, almost radical approach to alpinism may have been considered extreme by some, but it was in this extreme that he was most happy.