Oswald “Bulle” Oelz (born February 6, 1943 in Rankweil, Vorarlberg) is an Austrian-Swiss physician and mountaineer. From 1991 to 2006, he was chief physician at the Triemli City Hospital in Zurich. In addition to his medical work, the internist and high-altitude physician practiced extreme mountaineering, participated in numerous expeditions in the Himalayas, and gave slide presentations about his climbing tours. He breeds sheep.
As an expedition doctor, Oswald Oelz accompanied numerous expeditions in the Himalayas, including mountaineers such as Reinhold Messner, Peter Habeler, and Hans Kammerlander. In 1972, Oelz traveled to the Himalayas to climb Manaslu (8,163 m), but was unsuccessful.
In 1978, he was one of two doctors on the controversial expedition to Mount Everest (8,848 m), during which Messner and Habeler climbed the mountain for the first time without supplemental oxygen. Oelz and six other expedition members successfully completed the ascent using oxygen cylinders. He was thus the first Vorarlberg native to successfully climb Mount Everest.
During an expedition in 1979, he attempted to climb the Ama Dablam Northeast Ridge (6,856 m). He was unable to reach the summit due to a rescue operation. In 1981, he accompanied an expedition to Shishapangma (8,027 m), but in 1982, he failed to climb Cho Oyu (8,188 m) due to cerebral edema. In 1983, he survived an avalanche on Glacier Dome (7,193 m) in the Annapurna massif. In 1985, Oelz climbed Shishapangma, his second eight-thousander. A further attempt to climb Makalu (8,485 m) failed in 1986.
In 1990, Oswald Oelz became the third person to reach all of the Seven Summits according to the Carstensz version: Aconcagua (6,961 m, 1974 & 1986), Mount McKinley (6,190 m, 1976), Mount Everest (1978), Mount Vinson (4,892 m, 1986), Kibo (5,895 m, 1987), Mount Kosciuszko (2,228 m, 1989), Elbrus (5,642 m, 1989), and the Carstensz Pyramid (4,884 m, 1990).[3]
He reached the summit of Ama Dablam in 1995. In the Alps he climbed the three great north faces of the Alps: the Matterhorn North Face, the Eiger North Face (1995) and the Walker Pillar of the Grandes Jorasses.
In the documentary Höhenrausch: Die Entwicklung der Höhenmedizin (2022), Oelz states that he “lost a total of 29 friends with whom he climbed high peaks.” In 1978, in a personal experiment on Mount Everest, he reduced his hematocrit from 58 to 52% to reduce viscosity, but subsequently became seriously ill. After a week, he recovered and climbed the summit with oxygen. In 1986, he suffered high-altitude pulmonary edema on Aconcagua and was treated with nifedipine, with rapid improvement after 10 minutes.
Dokumentarfilm ServusTV https://www.servustv.com/natur/v/aa8178k0h5ydbviqch56/
https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/ich-will-klettern-bis-ich-tot-bin-853567372558
https://www.facebook.com/OswaldOelzSchweiz?locale=de_DE