Luis' Last Journey

Incoming Editorial Team·Verified May 29, 2026

On May 30, 2023, the German mountaineer Luis Stitzinger was found dead at an altitude of 8,400 meters on Kangchenjunga, just five days after he reached the summit. It was his tenth eight-thousander. He had climbed seven of them with his wife, Alix von Melle. More than a year later, Alix travels to Nepal again to fulfill her husband’s last wish: scatter his ashes on one of the high peaks in the land of his dreams. The chosen mountain is the 7,246-meter peak Dhaulagiri VII in the Nepalese Himalayas.