The Terrifying Last Minutes of Göran Kropp -“The Crazy Swede"

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This guy, who once stood above 28,000 feet without bottled oxygen, is chalking his hands on a cliff forty minutes from his own front door.  This is Göran Kropp. And these are the terrifying last minutes of this legendary “Crazy Swede.” --------------------------------------------- Watch More:  The Legend Who Survived Everest Only To Die In His Backyard https://youtu.be/cojmczNVcVE?si=ntWkRHTC-LdKzEcp  The terrifying last minutes of climbing’s Michael Jordan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtWFowQIaRc&t=10s --------------------------------------------- More eXtreme Stories - Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@TheExtreme-Edge  Every month there's a story that never goes on YouTube. You'll find it here: patreon.com/c/TheeXtreme   For business inquiries only - extremeedgeinfo@gmail.com Voiceover: https://jessegvoiceactor.com/

Transcript

00:00It's September 30th, 2002. The Frenchman Cooley in Washington. This guy, who once stood above

00:0728,000 feet without bottled oxygen, is chalking his hands on a cliff 40 minutes from his own

00:14front door. This isn't Everest. This isn't the Arctic. This is a Tuesday afternoon hobby climb.

00:21But in less than two seconds, on a cliff barely taller than a six-story building,

00:27everything that mountains, storms, and even a polar bear never managed to do to him is about

00:35to happen anyway. This is Goran Kropp, and these are the terrifying last minutes of this legendary

00:43crazy Swede. Welcome to the extreme edge, where the stakes are high, but nobody's just a headline.

00:50In October of 1995, Goran called a press conference and said something so insane it would have even

00:59made the engineers behind the Apollo program flinch. He was going to ride a bicycle from Sweden to Mount

01:06Everest by land, climb it without bottled oxygen, and then come back home the same way again.

01:14To you and me, it sounds like madness. To Goran, it was simply 25 years of refusing to leave his

01:22fate

01:23in someone else's hands. Lars Olof Goran Kropp had spent his entire life turning himself into a man

01:31nothing could catch off guard. When he was about six years old, his father took him up to Galdopiggen,

01:38the highest mountain in Scandinavia. And while most fathers carried the pack on a trip like that,

01:44Goran's father made him carry his own. Right there and then, he learned before he could properly read

01:51that nobody was coming to haul his weight for him. As far as anyone can tell, he never asked anyone

01:57to

01:58ever since. So when people who actually knew Goran heard about this plan, well, they knew it was the

02:05same pattern Goran always had, which was to find every variable that could kill him and remove it

02:11until nothing is left to chance. Which is what makes what happened seven years later on a basalt

02:17cliff in Washington so unbelievable. But we're getting to that soon. On October 16, 1995, Goran Kropp

02:25peddled out of Stockholm with a trailer loaded with 238 pounds of ropes, tent, stove, ice axes, boots,

02:32everything a full Everest expedition needs, dragged behind him one custom-built Crescent bike.

02:40And then it rode 8,000 miles through Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Turkey in the winter. He went

02:47through Iran, Pakistan, India, alone for four months, through places where drivers ran him off the road

02:56and children through stones, and border guards couldn't process what they were looking at. When

03:02something broke, he fixed it. When he got sick, he recovered in the tent and kept going. Can you

03:08imagine the dedication to self-reliance this took? Four months and six days after leaving his front door

03:15in Sweden, Goran Kropp arrived in Nepal by late February 1996. He rested and then cycled all the way

03:23to Yeri, a small mountain town just before Everest, where the road finally ended in mid-March.

03:30Then he strapped roughly 140 pounds onto his back and began to walk the rest of the way to Everest

03:37base camp. It took him weeks of walking just to reach base camp in April 1996, and up to this

03:45point,

03:45everything had gone almost perfectly. You'd probably think the hardest part was over. It wasn't. Because

03:53showing up on Everest was just the start. He couldn't just trek up to the summit, because taking his body

04:00that high up without preparing it would literally crush his lungs. So Goran spent the next couple of

04:08weeks slowly climbing thousands of feet up and walking right back down, over and over until his body had

04:15adapted to the mountain. Finally, at the start of May 1996, after months of punishing himself, Goran set

04:23off for the summit. Higher and higher he climbed, past the camps on this mountain and into the death

04:30zone, where the human body is slowly dying no matter how strong you are. And at 1.30 pm on

04:37May

04:373rd 1996, Goran was at the south summit, somewhere above 28,000 feet, climbing alone and without

04:46bottled oxygen. The summit was finally in sight, roughly 200 feet above him on that day in fact.

04:54History was ready to be made. But then Goran did the math on how long the descent would take if

05:00he kept

05:00climbing and he saw a huge problem. He could reach up, sure, but he wouldn't have much daylight or

05:07strength left to come down. Now, if this isn't your first time watching our videos, you know that a lot

05:14of climbers push right through that turnaround time. And they didn't even cycle from their home all the

05:19way to Everest. So he had to make a huge decision. And I want you to really put yourself in

05:26his boots

05:26for a second. You've spent months getting here. You've crossed two continents. Everyone back home is

05:33waiting to hear whether you pulled it off. You can literally see the highest point on earth.

05:39What would you do? Goran Krop, 200 feet from what he had peddled across the planet for,

05:45turned around and went back down to base camp. The discipline to achieve this is almost impossible

05:51to believe. But as a young man, Goran jumped out of airplanes for the Swedish military. And if you know

05:58anything about paratroopers, you know the job teaches you to trust the system because every

06:03safety rule is written in blood. Maybe that mindset got into Goran's bones and stayed there.

06:10I don't know. What I do know is Goran obeyed a calculation almost no other climber would.

06:17Even Rob Hall, one of the most respected guides on the mountain that season, called Goran's decision

06:23an incredibly good judgment. One that is much more impressive than actually climbing.

06:29And one week later, the mountain proved why obeying his turnaround time was the right choice.

06:35On May 10th, a brutal storm slammed into the upper mountain. Dozens of climbers from commercial

06:42expeditions were trapped high in the death zone, right when many of them were descending hours past

06:49their own planned turnaround times. By the time the skies cleared, eight people were dead.

06:55One of those two guides was Rob Hall. Yes, the same Rob Hall who had praised Goran for turning around.

07:03He died high on the mountain, hours past his own turnaround time, having broken the exact rule

07:10he praised Goran for keeping. Goran was already back at base camp when the storm hit. He could have stayed

07:18there and nobody would have blamed him if he had. Instead, he turned around and walked straight back

07:25into the same death zone he'd just escaped, carrying supplies for climbers who were still trapped above

07:32him. And then, on May 23rd, days after that disaster, Goran Krop went back up alone with no oxygen or

07:42sherpas. And this time, he stood on the summit of Mount Everest alone, having moved himself and

07:49everything he owned there from his front door in Sweden. Then he came down, rested, got back on the

07:56bicycle and rode home. The Swedish press had a name for him by then for what he did and it

08:02stuck with him

08:03for the rest of his life. They called him the Crazy Swede. And while that's a catchy nickname, they got

08:10that

08:10completely wrong because crazy people gamble with their lives and Goran spent his life trying not to.

08:18But the name stuck because overnight, Goran became one of the most famous adventurers in Europe.

08:24He published books and had speaking tours over his trip. There's even TV footage of him from this era grinning

08:31through interviews. And you can see why people loved him, because he told the story of nearly dying on the

08:37world's tallest mountain, the way other men describe a fishing trip that got out of hand. From the outside,

08:43it looked like he'd already accomplished enough for one lifetime. But Goran was never interested in stopping.

08:50Because if you want to know who he actually was, look at what he did when he went back to

08:55Everest in 1999.

08:57Because along with climbing it, he and his expedition partner spent their time on the mountain, picking up trash,

09:04hauling 25 discarded oxygen cylinders off Everest. Other people's cylinders, by the way.

09:11His partner on that climb was Renata Krumska. She was a good enough mountaineer to stand on Everest.

09:17And she was also the woman Goran planned to spend his life with. Standing on the summit of Everest with

09:23the woman he loved, Goran had reached the absolute peak of his life, both literally and emotionally.

09:29From the outside, his life was exactly where he wanted it. But Goran wasn't wired to just settle down.

09:36The next year, he was lying in a tent on the frozen Arctic Ocean, listening for a bear. He and

09:44another

09:44Swede, Olishanarmu, were attempting to ski to the North Pole, unsupported, hauling everything behind them

09:52on sledges. And out on that ice, a polar bear found them and started following them. In a place like

09:59that,

09:59with no ranger station or helicopter, 20 minutes away. All the two men had was a rifle to stop an

10:06animal

10:06built by nature with the ability to kill. The bear kept coming. Goran had to shoot it in self-defense

10:13and to keep going. But a few days in, Goran's thumb froze with severe frostbite. A frostbitten

10:21thumb on day four is a warning. He listened to that warning. Except this time, Holm wasn't waiting to

10:29celebrate his judgment. Holm was waiting with headlines. A famous Swedish writer had seen the

10:35news about the bear and publicly branded Goran a criminal, a poacher. Goran took him to court over

10:42it. And Goran lost. Sweden's most famous adventurer sat in a courtroom in his own country and heard

10:49that the man who called him a criminal would face no consequences. And something in Goran was finished

10:56with Sweden after that. Within two years, he and Renata had packed their lives into boxes and moved,

11:02of all places, to the suburbs of Seattle, Washington. And there, in a new country, with the woman he

11:09loved, Goran started preparing for what he believed would be the greatest expedition of his life. Even

11:17though he lived in America, he wanted to recreate the formula that made him a legend. He planned to travel

11:23back to his roots, sail from Sweden all the way to Antarctica, ski to the South Pole and back, and

11:30then sail

11:30home again. There was just one problem. He didn't know how to sail. But by now, you could probably see

11:37that he was a methodical, self-reliant adventurer. So Goran started learning. During the week, one of the

11:45greatest expedition mountaineers on Earth could be found on Puget Sound in Washington taking sailing

11:51lessons. And on the weekends, he went climbing. The climbing was a hobby, so to speak. A way to stay

11:58in

11:58shape and clear his head. His favorite spot was a place called Frenchman Coulee, about two and a half

12:05hours east of Seattle, Washington. It's a canyon of dark volcanic rock, packed side by side like organ

12:12pipes, where local climbers go on a free Saturday because it's sunny, close, and casual. But rock climbing

12:19here wasn't the mountaineering Goran was famous for. It's not even really the same sport as summiting a peak.

12:25The mountaineering that made Goran a legend is a game of endurance played against weather, altitude,

12:32and time. Its dangers are storms, avalanches, thin air, and you survive them with planning,

12:40fitness, patience, and knowing when to walk away. In rock climbing, the danger lives in details measured

12:48in inches. Every few feet, a climber has to stop, reach to their harness, and place a small piece of

12:55protection into the crack of the rock. And whether each piece is good or worthless in the case of a

13:01fall,

13:02comes down to a judgment call in the fingertips earned by years of repetition. Knowledge that no

13:08amount of general fitness can supply. On September 30th, 2002, as he drove east of Seattle into the deserts of

13:15Washington, taking silly risks, was the last thing on his mind. It was Monday. The weather was warm and clear.

13:24Goran was with Arden Eruch, a Turkish climber with big dreams of his own, and one of the closest friends

13:31Goran had in his new American life. Moving to America had given Goran a quiet rhythm, and this day was

13:38supposed to be just another piece of it. The two friends had the canyon almost to themselves, so they

13:44spent that morning working through warm-ups on the easier routes along the wall. These early climbs were

13:51modern and pre-fitted, with permanent metal anchors bolted straight into the rock. So all the climber

13:56had to do was clip his rope in as he kept climbing up. Quick, safe, and routine. It was the

14:03climbing

14:03equivalent of swimming laps. And the morning went so well that sometime in the early afternoon,

14:09Goran decided to step it up. He looked over at a route called Air Guitar. It was a 65-foot

14:16crack split between two massive pillars of basalt rock. But unlike the morning climbs,

14:22there were no metal safety boats permanently drilled into the wall. On Air Guitar, you have to

14:28build your own safety net as you climb. To do that, climbers carry a bunch of specialized metal

14:34protection with them designed to fit into cracks of different shapes and sizes. As they inch their way up,

14:40they physically shove them into the crack by hand so they have something to clip their ropes into.

14:47Climbing this way is incredibly technical. It was harder than anything Goran had ever done in this

14:52specific style, but it sat right at the edge of what he believed he could do. So he racked his

14:58protection

14:59onto his harness, tied into the rope, checked his knots, and told Erdin what he had in mind.

15:05Erdin told him to go for it. He would stand at the base, holding the rope to catch him if

15:11he fell.

15:12And Goran started up. And for the first 50 feet, he climbed it beautifully. Hands and feet finding the

15:19crack, rising steadily up the wall. Every few feet, he would pause, shove one of those metal wedges into

15:25the rock, clip his rope into the rigid strap, and keep moving. Down below, Erdin fed out rope,

15:32watching his friend get smaller against the blue sky. Near the top, around 55 feet up,

15:39was the absolute hardest stretch of the entire route. Goran stopped just below it. He reached

15:45into his belt, found a solid-sized metal wedge, and fitted it deep into the crack right where he

15:52wanted it before committing to the difficult moves ahead. Erdin glanced up and saw him there. Near the top,

15:59safety gear securely placed just below his foot, with only a few feet of hard climbing between Goran

16:05crop and another routine afternoon. Erdin looked down at his own feet for a split second to adjust his

16:12stance. Then he heard a sudden noise above him. And what he saw up there was unbelievable. Goran, the man

16:20who

16:20had climbed mountains literally a thousand times higher than this rock, wasn't slipping or hanging on the

16:27rope. He was falling. Instinct took over. Erdin braced himself because when a climber falls,

16:34the person holding the rope on the ground is about to take the force of the drop. And I'm sure

16:39if you

16:39don't rock climb, this fall sounds like a terrifying emergency. But in this sport, falling is so common

16:47that climbers actually expect to do it. A single climber pushing their limits might take a dozen

16:54harmless falls onto a rope in one afternoon. What's supposed to happen next is that the rope snaps

17:00tight against that highest piece of gear, the metal wedge holds, and the climber drops a few feet.

17:06Maybe he swears and shakes out his arms, but that's pretty much it. So Erdin braced for the rope,

17:13expecting that. But that heavy, sudden pull never came. Instead, he heard a violent, metallic crack

17:22echo through the canyon. And instead of pulling tight, the rope just slipped through his hands like

17:28a loose string, like the man up there weighed nothing. And in that moment, before Erdin could

17:34even blink his eye or say anything, another sharp metallic crack echoed off the canyon walls. And

17:41another. Instead of stopping Goran from falling, each piece of protection ripped free in sequence,

17:48causing the next one to absorb even more force. Within a second, Goran fell 60 feet as though he

17:56were held up by nothing but air and slammed the flat rock shelf at the base of the climb Erdin

18:02was

18:03standing on. And then the canyon was silent. Erdin got to him within seconds, but Goran's helmet had

18:11shattered and come off in the fall. And the impact of hard rock on a human body after a 60

18:17-foot

18:17drop is genuinely nasty. Erdin started CPR, and he did not stop for a long, long time. But he

18:27understood on some level that this was it. His friend had died the instant he hit the shelf.

18:34The most prepared adventurer on the planet was gone on a 65-foot climb just like that. And the question

18:42Erdin was left asking was repeated across the climbing world within days. How? To answer that,

18:50investigators had to work backwards. From the gear still hanging on the wall, the gear on the rope,

18:56and the pieces they found scattered on the ground. First, they looked at the top metal wedge that ripped

19:03out of the rock. In climbing, this piece of gear is called a cam. You squeeze the trigger, the metal

19:10lobes fold in, and when you let go inside a crack, they spring open. It works exactly like a Chinese

19:17finger trap. The harder you pull down on it, the harder it presses outward into the rock. Done right,

19:24it can catch a falling human being thousands of times without complaint. The problem is the rock out

19:30there in air guitar is smooth. The crack subtly widens and narrows as it rises. So a spot that grips

19:37like

19:37a vice can sit three inches from a spot that grips like a wet bar of soap. And telling those

19:43apart

19:43through your fingertips is exactly the locksmith's craft Gorin never had years to learn. But the reason

19:51why it ripped out might have even been sneakier than a bad replacement. Because nobody actually has to make

19:58a mistake for a cam to fail. You've probably seen a heavy washing machine walk itself across a laundry

20:05room floor. Nobody pushed it. The vibration did it. One tiny rattle at a time. A cam can do the

20:12exact same

20:13thing inside a rock crack. If the rope wiggles it enough as the climber moves, it can shift and vibrate

20:20its way up or down a hill. Climbers literally call it walking. A cam can walk itself from a perfect

20:27vice grip placement into a slick worthless one and the climber above never feels a thing.

20:34So whether it was bad placement or simply random vibrations when Gorin fell, the cam piece holding

20:41him up at 50 feet simply ripped out. But the story should have ended here with nothing more than a

20:48bruised ego and a scare. Because climbers don't just climb a route like this with one cam. No,

20:55they built a chain of these things, spaced every few feet up the crack. Each one clipped into the

21:02rope as they climb. So that if any single piece fails, there's another one right below it to catch

21:07the fall instead. Gorin actually had a second cam a few feet under the one that ripped, sitting exactly

21:14where he'd placed it. And that piece held. It did everything it was supposed to do. It did not move,

21:22did not walk, did not budge an inch out of that crack. But in between that cam and Gorin's rope

21:30was one short strip of climbing equipment. And that tiny piece of gear changed everything.

21:37Quick detour. Every month there's a story that never goes to YouTube. It's there if you want it.

21:43Patreon link below. Now, where were we? See, the link connecting the wedge to the rope is a simple

21:50metal clip called a carabiner. And a carabiner is one of the most trusted pieces of equipment in the

21:56entire sport for a very good reason. Because a closed carabiner is rated to hold somewhere around

22:035,000 pounds. You could literally hang a small car off one. Climbers clip them, forget about them,

22:10trust them without a second thought for their entire lives. But that trust depends on one thing.

22:17Let me explain if you've never held one. A carabiner is basically a D-shaped ring of aluminum.

22:23One side of the D is a thick solid bar of metal called the spine. The other side has a

22:29spring-loaded

22:30metal door gate that you push inward with your thumb to clip the rope through. When you let go,

22:35that gate violently snaps shut, clicking into a little notch at the top to complete the circle.

22:41And as long as that circle is perfectly closed, that little aluminum clip is almost indestructible.

22:48So when a climber falls, the violent kinetic energy shoots straight down that solid metal spine,

22:54and nothing happens. But that mass of strength relies entirely on that springy little gate I just

23:01showed being completely snapped shut the exact millisecond the weight hits. If that gate gets

23:07wedged open even a fraction of an inch, or if the carabiner gets violently twisted sideways so the rope

23:13pulls across the weak gate instead of the solid spine, the physics change instantly. Think of it like a

23:19soda can. If you stand an empty can straight up on a table, top to bottom, it's remarkably strong. You

23:26can actually stand on it and it'll hold your weight. But turn that exact same can on its side and

23:32a child

23:32can crush it flat. So when the massive kinetic energy of his drop hit his backup wedge, the carabiner

23:39connecting it to the rope didn't catch him. It completely shattered. When investigators grabbed the

23:45actual broken carabiner and looked at it under a microscope, checking if the metal itself was

23:49bad or cracked or maybe it was a weak batch. The metal was perfect, too perfect, with no dents or

23:57scratches, which only means one thing. That gate was open when he fell. So how did the gate get pushed

24:05open?

24:06Experts narrowed it down to two possibilities and both traced back to one tiny detail. The way the clip

24:13was attached to the rock. Option one was that the rock itself pushed it open because instead of using a

24:19long floppy strap that lets the metal clip hang freely, Goran was using a short, rigid connection.

24:26And because it was so stiff, the clip was pulled tightly against the uneven rock wall. If the clip

24:34got shoved against the edge of the crack, the rock could physically press that little springy gate open.

24:39It's exactly like wedging a brick in front of a door. So when the weight of his fall hit it,

24:45the door

24:46physically couldn't swing shut because the stone was in the way. The second option was that the clip

24:53got twisted sideways. And because that connection was so rigid, when the rope suddenly snapped tight

24:59during the fall, it violently yanked the clip sideways. So instead of the weight pulling straight down,

25:06the strongest part of the metal, it pulled from an awkward angle. And when you pull a carabiner from

25:12a weird angle, the metal flex is just enough for that little gate to pop open entirely on its own.

25:20Experts could never prove for sure which of the two happened, but both theories point back to that same

25:26short, rigid piece of gear. And that one tiny detail sparked a massive debate in the climbing world.

25:32But did the gear fail Gorin? Or did he fail the gear? On one side, you have some climbers saying

25:39the carabiner is to blame. If a piece of life saving gear can pop open just by rubbing a wall,

25:45it's a bad design, period. But here is honestly what breaks my heart about this story. Those short,

25:52stiff connections Gorin used were perfect for the easy morning climbs, where the safety bolts were drilled

25:59directly into a flat, predictable wall. But in a jagged, natural rock crack,

26:05you need your gear to hang loose so it doesn't get tangled against the stone.

26:10So the climbers argue that a guy who cycled to Everest shouldn't be making a rookie mistake like

26:15using a stiff strap on a jagged cliff. In their eyes, Gorin didn't just have bad luck,

26:21he actively built his own death trap. The equipment that had worked perfectly hours ago became the

26:28wrong equipment for the one climb that mattered. And that tiny difference cost Gorin Krop his life.

26:36Sometime after the accident, Erdin Aruch drove back down to Frenchman Coulee. He brought Gorin's

26:42parents with him. They had flown from Sweden to see the place where their son's life ended.

26:48And at the base of air guitar, in that dark rock, Erdin left a memorial carrying three words.

26:55The thing Gorin said with two thumbs up every time the preparation paid off.

27:01Krop on top. Gordon Krop spent his entire life proving that preparation could overcome almost anything.

27:08But no amount of preparation can protect you from the risks you don't yet understand.

27:15This climber believed the same thing. He conquered the highest mountain in the world and felt silly

27:21at how easy it was. One sunny afternoon in the Alps, he made one simple mistake while climbing.

27:29This is what happened next.

27:31the peak of the next.

27:32Uh,

27:34maybe

27:34the

27:35the

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