Slovak mountaineer dies under Mt. Everest

On Sunday, Slovak mountaineer Vladimír Štrba lost his life in the Himalayas during his attempt to climb Mt. Everest. On Saturday, he managed to reach a pre-peak approximately 100 meters under the top and started to descend, which, however, turned out to be too late. A group of Sherpas came to help him, bringing him an oxygen bottle. His evacuation to the saddle approximately 950 meters under the top took too long. Štrba was in a condition which did not allow further evacuation even lower. Vladimír Štrba passed away at the age of 48. He was a geology and geophysics graduate. He climbed mountains in the High Tatras, Alps, Atlas Mountains and numerous 8000+ mountains in the Himalayas. The sad news came only six days after another climber, Peter Hámor, became the first Slovak to climb all 14 summits above 8,000 meters. On May 15, Hámor succeeded in scaling Dhaulagiri (8,167 m) in western Nepal, in the Himalayas.