Remembering the climber Ueli Steck

The famed, extremely fast Swiss mountaineer Ueli Steck died yesterday while training on Everest.

As a climber, he set several records, including the fastest ascents of the north face of the Matterhorn and the Eiger; he was generally considered all-around amazing. As his New York Times obit notes, "In 2015, he reached the summit of all 82 of the 13,123-plus-foot peaks in the Alps in 62 days."

Here are what other climbers are saying about him, and also the New Yorker's Nick Paumgarten, who'd covered him before (for the Sherpa/Westerner brawl incident).

Steck’s demise is a reminder, as though another one were ever necessary, that mountain climbing is an extremely perilous endeavor, and that even its strongest and most talented practitioners, experts by necessity in the art of risk assessment, need a great deal of luck to make it to old age.