Ljubljana (AFP)
Slovenian mountaineer Davo Karnicar, the first skier to ski down Everest, died at the age of 56 by shooting down a tree near his home, Slovenian media reported on Tuesday.
The exact circumstances of the accident on Monday in the region of origin of this extreme sportsman, near Jezersko (north), have not been specified.
In 2000, Davo Karnicar had written his name in the history of mountaineering, achieving in 4h30 a complete descent of Everest.
Over the next six years, he descended the other six highest peaks on each continent, from Kilimanjaro (Africa) in 2001 to Mount Vinson, the highest point in the Antarctic, in 2006.
In 1995, he was the first athlete to make the descent of Annapurna in the Himalayas with his brother Andrej. Before turning to mountaineering and the steep slope at the age of 18, he had raced under the banner of the Yugoslav National Ski Team.
In 2017, he had to give up a new feat, the descent of the second world summit, the K2 on the Sino-Pakistan border, because of back pain and poor weather conditions.
Davo Karnicar lived in the mountainous region of Jezersko, on the border between Austria and Slovenia, a country of two million people from the break-up of Yugoslavia.
A discreet personality, he was the father of seven children from two marriages.
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