Heinz Mariacher wins the Paul Preuss Prize 2020
The manager of SCARPA, one of the greatest interpreters of free climbing, has received the prestigious award named after the father of free climbing.
Heinz Mariacher, climbing legend and today manager of SCARPA, a leading manufacturer of mountain and outdoor footwear, received the Paul Preuss Award 2020 at Castel Firmiano in Bolzano. The prestigious award was presented by the well-known mountaineer and writer Reinhold Messner and the Honorary President of the International Paul Preuss Society, Georg Bachler.
The award was established in 2013 to celebrate extreme mountaineers and climbers who during their career have distinguished themselves for their achievements and, above all, for embodying the philosophy of Paul Preuss, the father of free climbing, who at the beginning of the 20th century theorized and practiced a “loyal” approach to the mountain where artificial means are used only as an emergency resource.
In the ’70s and ’80s Mariacher established himself as a modern interpreter of Paul Preuss’s thought, solo climbing many of the most difficult routes of the time and becoming a prophet of a new way of climbing, lived as an experience of personal research and expression of freedom instead of a challenge and “conquest” of the mountain. A philosophy, that of the Tyrolean climber, perfectly symbolized by his first adventure on rock, when at only 11 years old he climbed, without equipment, a 5th grade route on Rofan of which he had no previous knowledge.
Mariacher also played a decisive role in the evolution of climbing shoes, and won prestigious awards as a creator of climbing films, including “Best Film” in 1993 at the Banff Mountain Film Festival with “Return to Silence” (shot in the Dolomites).
“It is an honor to be associated with the name of Paul Preuss,” he said during the award ceremony. “Climbing remains for me above all a spiritual experience, which should never be reduced to just a competition or a pure and simple sport”.
For more than 14 years, Mariacher has been working with SCARPA as Product Manager of the climbing line, which has established itself in recent years as one of the most popular in the market. One of the secrets of SCARPA’s success is in fact the close collaboration with the best interpreters of each discipline, whose intuitions are the driving force behind the innovations developed by the company.
