Jury

Babsi Vigl

“Climbing and storytelling have been entwined for a long time … To go on a tour – with or without success, in the local climbing garden or on a mighty peak – means creating your own story and tracing it with body and mind,” states High Camp Newsletter 2022, issued by US climbing magazine “The Alpinist”.

Babsi Vigl was born in Innsbruck in 1989 and raised in the mountains of the Montafon in Western Austria. Alpinism and storytelling have always been part of her life and over its course matured into passions. As an alpinist, Vigl has been questing around the planet for a good twenty years. As an author, she tries to capture the fascination of interactions with wild landscapes and walls, friendships, encounters with others and self in the context of alpinism. Her main focus is post-heroic storytelling that paints a comprehensive picture of the protagonists. In 2021, her text “Elysium” was published in “The Alpinist”, where she has been published since then as well as in “bergundsteigen”, “Climax” and on the online platform planetmountain.com. Vigl is currently writing her first book. She also works as a self-employed occupational therapist and state-certified mountain and ski guide. Since 2024, she has been in charge of the Women’s Alpine Division of “Naturfreunde Österreich” (Austrian Friends of Nature).

Josef “Sepp” Wörmann

Sepp Wörmann was born in 1953 in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps and undertook his first climbing tours at the age of 15 in the Ammergau and Tannheim Alps as well as in the Wetterstein Mountains. As was common at the time, he and his friends went mountaineering in leather shoes and chest straps and with single braid ropes: “We came, climbed and usually survived.” His first job as a telecommunications officer could have become a civil service position for life. Instead, Wörmann, at the age of 27, decided to train as a state-certified mountain and ski guide.

In 1980, Wörmann finally quit his bread-and-butter job to work for a large mountain film production by Gerhard Baur on the Eiger North Face. Originally hired to ensure the protagonists’ safety, Wörmann quickly became the sound engineer for “Der Weg ist das Ziel” (The Journey is the Reward). Eventually, Hermann Magerer, creator of the mountaineering TV show “Bergauf-Bergab”, recruited him to join his team and made a cameraman out of this “natural”. For more than 30 years, Wörmann defined the mountaineering show’s visual language with his equally poignant as sensitive camera work. It has always been important to him “to film human individuals in a respectful way, to inhabit their world for a while and to try to do them justice.” His favourite place to shoot is the world’s most beautiful set: the mountains.

Monica Dalmasso

 Born in 1970 near Nice in Southern France, Monica Dalmasso has lived in Chamonix for over 20 years. After being on the French national climbing team for several years, she decided to dedicate herself exclusively to photography. She was educated at the renowned École Nationale Supérieure Louis-Lumière in Paris.

In 1985, Dalmasso and her compatriot Catherine Destivelle shot the style-defining climbing film “È pericoloso sporgersi” (Leaning out is Dangerous) in the Verdon Gorge. As a photographer, she is constantly on the lookout for the perfect moment that is revelatory of the relationship between humans and nature. It helps that she is able to move quickly and efficiently on skis, on crampons, on rock or ice. Moreover, she is capable of reflecting her subject from a distance. This allows her to work in fields as diverse as reportage photography, advertising or corporate identity. Her clients range from non-governmental organisations to outdoor companies and art galleries. In 2023, Dalmasso’s illustrated book “Sauvage!” (Savage!) was published by Éditions Glénat. Her climbing photo “Monolithe” was awarded at the Paris Sport Photo competition in 2021; at Expo Dubai 2022, this image was exhibited in the French pavilion alongside two further images by her. Dalmasso is represented by the Paris gallery Jean-Denis Walter and the agencies Saatchi Art and Hémisphère.

Nicholas Hobley

He’s half English, half South Tyrolean, and was born in 1973. Nicholas Hobley started climbing in Wales at the age of 13. Despite the constant drizzle, it transpired that the mountains in all their forms would shape his life – although he admits that Scottish mixed climbing is not necessarily his cup of tea. After studying languages in Manchester, he moved to Padua, where, in 1996, together with friends, he founded the online platform planetmountain.com. At that time, the Internet was hardly a thing yet – not just in Italy. Google and social media did not yet exist. But over the years, the website established itself as one of the most important – and by now most senior – information exchanges in the mountain industry. Planetmountain.com has partnered with many important mountain festivals, from the Piolet d’Or to the Rock Master in Arco and the Trento Film Festival. Between things, Hobley translated various climbing books from Italian to English. Since 2022, he is self-employed and manages the website full-time. He lives in Trieste with three children and two dogs. Sport climbing and the mountains are still his great passion. Or obsession, depending on whether you ask him or his wife.

Richard Goedeke

Richard Goedeke was born in 1939 in Woschkow and raised near Braunschweig. He is what could be called a great elder of alpinism. He holds a doctorate in geography, but has by now retired from teaching. He taught himself climbing in 1955. A year later, he opened the first of a total of 1,100 new routes in the German Central Uplands, and another year later he gained his first alpine experience on Mount Großglockner’s Stüdlgrat Ridge and the east face of Mount Watzmann. Since then, he’s been filling his tour book with extreme mountaineering classics. In 1963, Goedeke succeeded with a repeat of the Trollryggen East Pillar in Romsdalen, and from 1966 onwards he also undertook large combined tours such as the Sentinelle Rouge on Mont Blanc’s Brenva Face, the Walker Spur on the Grandes-Jorasses North Face, the Bonatti Route on the Grand Capucin or the Couturier Couloir on the Aiguille Verte. Goedeke has completed 142 alpine first ascents in the Sesto Dolomites, in the Civetta and Brenta Groups, in Catinaccio, Schiara, Marmarole and on the Sassolungo as well as in the Mont Blanc Massif, in the Berchtesgaden Alps, on Corsica, Sardinia and Crete.

Goedeke wrote down his alpine experiences in the Alpine Club Guidebooks “Pelmo”, “Schiara”, “Sextener”, “Sella” and “Langkofel” (Sassolungo) as well as in the classic “Normalwege auf alle 4000er der Alpen” (Standard Routes onto all Alpine Fourthousanders”. His books “Luft unter den Sohlen” (Air Under my Feet), “Augenblicke oben” (Moments Above), “Nepalnotizen” (Nepal Notes), “4000er – Gipfel, Grate, große Wände” (Four-Thousanders – Peaks, Ridges, Great Walls) and the autobiography “Spagat – Ein Leben zwischen Berg und Engagement” (Split – A Life Between Mountains and Activism) are well worth reading. As an environmentalist, Goedeke has been involved with the Green Party since the days of its inception and active as an ambassador for Mountain Wilderness. Over time, he has taken on various functions at the German Alpine Club.