LOWA ACTIVE Team Martin Feistl

The passion of climbing

Martin Feistl is a dyed-in-the-wool moun­taineer. The geography student was raised in the Ammersee lake region southwest of Munich. But it wasn’t water sports that got his juices flowing. Rather, it was wide world of climbing that caught his eye. It really didn’t matter what type of climbing was involved: ice climbing or sports climbing, moun­tain­eering or exped­itions involving climbing.

It all began for the Augsburg resident in a climbing garden that he regularly visited with his parents. Step by step, he added more alpine-like routes and tours. On his 14th birthday in 2010, he climbed an unknown six-thou­sander in Ladakh. He has partic­ularly strong memories of climbing Petit Dru by taking the Allain- Leininger” route. “We had to deal with winter weather here, ” he says. “Things were so bad we had to climb everything wearing crampons until we were four pitches below the summit – plus we had an unplanned sitting bivouac – and we did it all without using a cable car, ” he explains.

Another highlight in his already huge moun­tain­eering portfolio is his reaching the summit of the Indian Matterhorn, the Shivling (6,543 metres), in autumn 2018. During this climb, he and his companions even stopped by a cloister in Dehra Dun to present the chil­dren’s aid organ­isation KENIAL with warm clothing and shoes for the children who live in the cloister – it was a very special experience for him.