Tormod Granheim (born September 17, 1974, in

Trondheim Trondheim ( , , ; ), historically Kaupangen, Nidaros, and Trondhjem (), is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2022, it had a population of 212,660. Trondheim is the third most populous municipality in Norway, and is ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

) is a Norwegian adventurer and motivational speaker involved in expeditions and

extreme skiing Extreme skiing is a form of skiing performed on long, steep (typically from 45 to 60+ degrees, or grades of 100 to 170 percent) slopes in mountainous terrain. The French coined the term 'Le Ski Extreme' in the 1970s. The first practitioners incl ...

. On May 16, 2006, he made the first ski descent of

Mount Everest Mount Everest (), known locally as Sagarmatha in Nepal and Qomolangma in Tibet, is Earth's highest mountain above sea level. It lies in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas and marks part of the China–Nepal border at it ...

's North Face by the

Norton Couloir The Norton Couloir or Great Couloir is a steep gully high on the north face of Mount Everest in Tibet which lies east of the pyramidal peak and extends to within 150 m below the summit. Its companion to the west of the summit is the Hornb ...

Skiing Mount Everest

Tormod Granheim, his Swedish partner

Tomas Olsson Tomas Kenneth Olsson (18 March 1976 – 16 May 2006) was a Swedish adventurer and ski mountaineer. He was born in Kristinehamn but grew up in Borås. He took an engineering degree at Linköping University in 2001, after which he moved to Chamo ...

and photographer Fredrik Schenholm approached Everest from the Tibetan side in Spring 2006. Granheim climbed the mountain from Advanced Base Camp (6400 meters above sea level) to the summit (8848 m) in a continuous 24‑hour effort, meeting Olsson en route, who spent two days covering the same ground. The route they followed, known as the Mallory route normally takes climbers five days to complete. The pair then skied into the North Face by the Norton Couloir, a 55 degree steep and nearly 3000 meter high mountain face. Near the top Olsson's ski broke, adding extra tension to the already complex task. A cliff intersecting the couloir forced the two to make an

abseil Abseiling ( ; ), also known as rappelling ( ; ), is the controlled descent of a steep slope, such as a rock face, by moving down a rope. When abseiling, the person descending controls their own movement down a static or fixed rope, in cont ...

. A snow anchor failed and Olsson fell an estimated 2500 meters to his death. Granheim skied alone to the North Col. The accident led the team to arrange the first helicopter rescue on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest.

North-Atlantic reed boat crossing

On July 11, 2007, Tormod Granheim set out from New York City on the

reed boat Reed boats and rafts, along with dugout canoes and other rafts, are among the oldest known types of boats. Often used as traditional fishing boats, they are still used in a few places around the world, though they have generally been replaced wit ...

'' Abora3'', captained by German scientist Dominique Görlitz. The mission was to prove inter-continental sea-journeys were possible with technology available even before the ice-age. He and his crew were met and transferred to another boat on August 25 after the stern of their raft was damaged.

All 82 4000 Meter Summits in the Alps

Tormod Granheim is the first climber from the

nordic countries The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; ) are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe, as well as the Arctic Ocean, Arctic and Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic oceans. It includes the sovereign states of Denm ...

to summit all summits higher than 4000 meters in the Alps according to the

UIAA The International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation, commonly known by its French name Union internationale des associations d'alpinisme (UIAA; ), was founded in August 1932 in Chamonix, France when 20 mountaineering associations met for ...

List of Alpine four-thousanders A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but ...

. The final summit was

Weisshorn The Weisshorn (German language, German, lit. ''white peak/mountain'') is a major mountain, peak of Switzerland and the Alps, culminating at above sea level. It is part of the Pennine Alps and is located between the valleys of Anniviers and Mat ...

climbed August 29. 2016. This achievement won him the Adventurer of the Year award in Norway.

Works by Granheim

* ''På ski fra EVEREST'', 2006 * ''SPOR'', 2009 * ''Alpenes 4000-metere'', 2017

References

External links

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* :no:Tormod Granheim {{DEFAULTSORT:Granheim, Tormod Living people 1974 births Norwegian explorers