Erik posted a few weeks ago about the death of explorer
Heinrich Harrer—an adventurer who was unknown to most until 1997 when his book, "Seven
Years in Tibet" was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt (which incidentally, meant that all subsequent
book printings have pasted Pitt’s mug on the front cover, making a classic adventure book look more like a cheesy
Harlequin romance).
What I didn’t realize at the time, was that Harrer was actually an accomplished explorer who did much more
than just wait out World War II with the Dalai Lama in Lhasa. An article by John Flinn (who
apologizes for having just learned that Harrer had died) recounts some of the other adventures the Austrian Alpinist
was involved in—such as being the first to summit Carstensz Pyramid, a 16,000-foot mountain deep in the
jungles of New Guinea.
Harrer was a stud and Flinn laments his passing as the world’s last true explorer—a tribute I’m
inclined to believe.