Historical Badass

Story by Michael Frank

Polartec is proud to be a partner of Adventure Journal, a magazine devoted to outdoor adventure in all its form.

Maybe you know that Goran Kropp departed his hometown of Jonkoping, Sweden, one October day in 1995 on a bicycle. That on that bicycle he carried 285 pounds of gear and he was bound for a place on earth 6,000 miles away: Mount Everest. Maybe you also know that he got there the following May, and happened to be at Everest base camp the day the mountain saw tragedy unfold in a way it never had in the history of alpine climbing.

If you know that much then you likely also know that Goran Kropp, a 6’3″, 240-pound man who earned the nickname “Crazy Swede” that May at Everest, almost summited twice that year. He soloed to within a hundred yards of the top of the world on May 3, then turned around in the waist-deep snow (he refused the use of the fixed ropes) because it was too late in the day and he feared getting stranded in the dark. He was resting in base camp during the disaster made famous in Into Thin Air. And in the wake of all of that death, spooked as hell but not daunted, Goran Kropp climbed to the top of the world alone on May 23, 1996.  Continue reading the full article on Adventure Journal here.