A little carelessness - and a whole project that has been planned for a long time is on the brink.

Over the past few days, Benedikt Böhm has experienced first-hand how quickly something like this can happen.

With several large abrasions on his face, the 44-year-old ski mountaineer speaks up via Instagram.

Sebastian Reuter

Editor-in-Chief on duty.

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"I had a minor sports accident.

But the doctors in Austria patched me up again.

So don't worry, everything's fine," says Böhm, smiling into the camera and doesn't say another word about the painful-looking wounds on his cheek and nose.

At least now nothing should be able to help you lose focus on your big goal.

Böhm has been in Nepal since this week.

Depending on the weather, he wants to run up the Himlung Himal, which is more than 7,000 meters high, within eight hours at the end of August or the beginning of September and then ski down again at full speed.

The wounds on his face show how dangerous that can sometimes be.

A wrong step or a careless look and the painful fall on stone, scree or ice follows.

But before he and his three companions go to the summit, Benedikt Böhm first traveled into the forest.

Only a few hours after his arrival in Kathmandu, the extreme athlete flew to the Chitwan National Park on the border with India.

There, as an ambassador for the environmental organization WWF and founder of the "Helping Hands" brand, he primarily informed himself about the protection and population of tigers, bears, elephants and rhinos.

The fight to preserve the tiger is particularly important to Böhm.

According to the WWF, there were only a little more than 3,000 free-living tigers left in the world in 2009, and the population had declined drastically, especially in Asia.

In Nepal in particular, however, local conservationists have again been successful in cooperation with the WWF in recent years.

According to the WWF, the tiger population in Nepal has tripled thanks to the effective fight against poaching, the use of professional game wardens and the targeted use of ecotourism projects.

Instead of 121 tigers, more than 350 of the endangered big cats now live in the country's forests.

During his expedition, Böhm does not want to point the finger at certain natural and climate sins of the people, nor press on the tear duct or generally create a bad conscience about the lack of nature and animal protection in the world.

On the contrary: "It's about saying: 'Look, our nature is so great.

Let's preserve that and work on preserving this diversity for our generations,'" says Böhm in an interview with the FAZ. "The world has so much to offer that you can't absorb everything with a hundred lives."

However, a visit to the national park is not without risks for Böhm.

Because in addition to an accident during training, external influences could also destroy his dream of speed climbing the Himlung Himal in the short term.

"The most fatal thing would be to be bitten by a mosquito and get malaria or dengue fever," says the father of three.

Because then, in case of doubt, not only would the Himalayan expedition have to be postponed, but Böhm could be so weakened that it would sometimes take months to regain the necessary fitness.

Why did he nevertheless embark on the strenuous detour to see the tigers?

"You can see that as a bit of personal development," says Böhm.

In the past, he was exclusively focused on the mountain and the associated experience.

But now he sees speed mountaineering and downhill skiing much more as "the great icing on the cake and no more than the be-all and end-all."

At the latest when his three children were born, he realized that life consists of a million doors.

"And for us it's about the question of which and how many we open, or whether we just walk past them with blinders on." Benedikt Böhm decided to open.