LOWA ACTIVE Team Helmut Achatz

A different type of moun­tain­eering

Athletes, friends or parents as role models? Who hasn’t ever heard such stories? Nobody would actually think there was really anything special about them. But what about a role model that glides through the sky, like a golden eagle, for example? Hardly a typical hero, unless you are Helmut Achatz, that is. The 53-year-old chose Bruno as his role model. “A friendly, relaxed flying colleague with an unbe­lievable feel for thermal lift.” It is an area that Helmut knows like the back of his hand. After all, he is a paraglider. Besides getting a real kick from flying, both of them love the wide expanses of the mountains.

After eight years of working with Paul Klima and his eagles, collab­orating on a motion picture and a number of different tele­vision productions, Helmut has now joined forces with the inter­na­tionally respected photo­grapher Nomi Baumgartl to create a project called “Eaglewings Protecting the Alps”. A world-famous camera on the ground, an eagle in the air and satellites in outer space are supplying new, breath-taking images of Alpine glaciers. The team will spend four years working its way through the Alps from east to west, and will be supported by athletes from the LOWA PRO Team.

Helmut Achatz has been involved in nearly every type of Alpine sport since his childhood. He has been teaching paragliding since 1989, leads paragliding trips and makes multi­vision present­ations. He has this to say about his new project, “Eaglewings Protecting the Alps” “In addition to my work with golden eagles, I’m interested in them­at­ically linking various glacier regions with summit meetings. During our tour from east to west, we will continuously report on indi­vidual stages in global media. We will show the special features of every area. Hiking, moun­tain­eering, climbing, skiing, freeriding, paragliding, canyoning, ice climbing – we know just about every type of Alpine sport and can provide fascinating insights into them. We will also take a look, from a profes­sional perspective, at a wide range of local features in terms of geology, orni­thology, flora, fauna, weather phenomena and history. I want to show the Alps as a whole, as a system on which the glaciers have a direct impact.”