Biography

Heinz Zak (born March 23, 1958 in Wörgl) is an Austrian climber, photographer, and slackliner.

Zak initially worked as a teacher but later turned climbing and mountain photography into his profession. As one of the pioneers of free climbing, he brought sport climbing from America to Austria by helping to develop sport climbing areas and routes of high and extremely difficult difficulty. His mountain home is the Karwendel Mountains and the Stubai Alps. He now works worldwide as a mountaineer and climbing photographer.

He has completed many extremely difficult and long routes down to the lower tenth grade. Not only in the Karwendel and Wetterstein regions, he has opened new routes and made previously unimaginable first ascents, such as the traverse of the Karwendel main ridge in winter and without a rope, a strenuous undertaking that included 36 peaks with 10,000 meters of elevation gain in just three days.

Zak has also climbed and photographed challenging routes and peaks in many other mountain ranges around the world, including in the USA in Yosemite National Park on the famous 1,000 m vertical granite face of El Capitan and in southern South America in Patagonia. One route there took him to Cerro Torre, and on the spectacular 1,300 m vertical rock face of Fitz Roy, he climbed the "Royal Flush" route with Peter Janschek in extreme weather conditions.

In May 2005, Heinz Zak was the second person, 19 years after Wolfgang Güllich, to free solo the "Separate Reality" route, a challenging crack and roof climb in Yosemite National Park.

Together with Bernd Ritschel, Heinz Zak is one of the most well-known mountain, climbing, and landscape photographers in German-speaking countries. Heinz Zak works for various mountaineering magazines, publishes books, and also presents his images in multivision shows. For the feature documentary "At the Limit" featuring world-renowned speed climbers Alexander and Thomas Huber, Zak shot stills from extreme positions on the 1,000-meter wall of El Capitan, among other places.

In November 2016, Heinz Zak accompanied top climber Adam Ondra on his second ascent of the world's hardest multi-pitch route, the "Dawn Wall" on El Capitan. Adam completed the climb in just eight days. The resulting documentary, "The Art of Climbing," also features Adam Ondra on some of the world's hardest sport climbing routes, such as "Silence" 9c in Flatanger, Norway.

Another of Heinz Zak's passions is slacklining. Heinz Zak is considered a pioneer in Europe in this sport as well. In 2005 and 2006, he organized the world's first slackline meetings in Scharnitz. Heinz Zak was also the first European to cross the Lost Arrow highline in Yosemite, still the most famous today, in 2003.

Heinz Zak lives in Scharnitz, Tyrol. He is married and has one son.