Last week the King Albert I Memorial Foundation honoured seven mountain experts with golden awards. One of the Awards went to Germany's Werner Bätzing as a "leading expert on problems of the Alps as a whole". The same Award was also conferred to Swiss authors Ursula Bauer and Jürg Frischknecht for their hiking books, and to the Swiss-Vorarlberg mountaineer, author and expert in high-altitude medicine Oswald Oelz. Gold Medals were also awarded to Indian Himalaya explorer Harish Kapadia and to mountain guides Bernadette McDonald and Leslie Taylor of the Mountain Culture at the Banff Centre in Canada.
The King Albert I Memorial Foundation is a foundation registered in Zurich/CH and was founded in 1993 by the former Director of the Tourist Office of St. Moritz, Walter Amstutz, in honour of King Albert I of Belgium (1875-1934), himself a keen and accomplished mountaineer. The Foundation honours accomplishments of lasting value achieved by individuals and institutions in fields linked to the mountain world. The King Albert Mountain Award is conferred every two years in the Engadine.
Source: www.king-albert.ch (en)