Even i don't know how to pronounce it correctly after all these years of idolizing him.His complete name is Jerzy Kukuczka. To me he is the greatest high altitude mountaineer of all time,no second thoughts.The god of climbing in Himalayas.In my eyes he is far superior than Reinhold messner who is generally considered to be the greatest high altitude climber of all time being the first to climb all the 14 8000 meter peaks.
Jerzy Kukuczka was the second to do it.Sadly the world never remember's second placers,not in any sport or any sort of competition.
He climbed the 14 8000 ers in 8 years compared to Reinhold messner's 14 years and i believe holds the record for climbing all of them in the shortest duration. In the process, Kukuczka established ten new routes and climbed four summits in winter.
Out of the 14 mountains only 9 had been climbed in winter before 2010 and none in the Karakorum range, until last year when G2 was knocked off making it ten.
Of the 9 climbed before 2010,4 were done by Jerzy kuckzka.
To give an idea about how winter climbing compares,here is a write up i found on the web.
Winter is a whole different story with base camp having a average temperature of -20 and that gives the frostbite time in around 30 minutes. The average summit temperature is around -90 which gives a average frostbite time in just 5 minutes or less. Usually 3 out of 4 days the summit is blown with hurricane force winds. It's dry, very windy, cold , and dark. There is low humidity which is about the only plus of winter climbing.
For me the bench mark is his climb of K2 via the south face.
South Face or “Polish Line”- In 1986, Jerzy Kukuczka and Tadeusz Piotrowski summited on this route. This dangerous avalanche route is also called “Suicidal Route” as no one else even attempted it.
In my mind he is the greatest ever!
Why am i suddenly writing about him? Because,they are going to release a documentary about him. Read it here - http://www.explorersweb.com/everest_k2/news.php?id=20476.
I am really excited and looking forward to see this documentary on one of my climbing heroes.
Infact he has written an autobiography My Vertical World: Climbing the 8000-Metre Peaks which i have been trying to lay my hands upon for a long time. Its out of publication and the used ones sell at 149$ on Amazon,yikes!!I am still looking for a benefactor who has it and would lend it to me or even better present it to me. :)
7 comments:
Wow! what an impressive guy ... got goosebumps reading about him.
Good luck with the book ;-)
His names is pronounced Koo-Koosh-kuh, accent on the middle sylable I think
It's pronounced Koo-Koosh-Kuh
Hey Mike,Thanks for the pronunciation.Appreciate you stopping by my blog and leaving a comment.
it is pronounced koo koo ch ka. cz has a hard ch sound. I know this because my husband's last name is Kukuchka and WAS Kukuczka when his grandparents came over from Silesia.
It is pronounced Koo- Koo- ch- ka. Hard ch sound. My husband's grandparents came from Silesia to the US and their name was Kukuczka. It was then changed during naturalization to Kukuchka.
Jen is absolutely right in pronuncing Kukuczka's name correctly. I was born in Poland and happen to know the rules of proper pronunciation. The set of letters CZ makes almost the same sound as CH (chicken) in English. Chicken by the way is on the opposite end of a spectrum of how you would describe enormous courage this man possessed. I remember reading his interview in a Polish newspaper PANORAMA in late 70 ies where he recalled a thunderstorm late at night at a base camp I believe 5000 m above see level on one of his Himalayan trips. During that storm he said ,and he had already been an accomplished climber by then, that he thought the earth was splitting apart as the echo effect so high in the mountains would make many "to run for cover" and ear plugs were of no use as the sound was excruciatingly powerful and would penetrate deep into your ears . He admitted this was the hardest to take more than any climbing he had ever done prior or after. If you can maintain composure when the acoustic sounds make you think that the ground around you is breaking through then you have what it takes along with the other necessary skills to be a "professional high mountain climber" This I am convinced he had.
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