HERMANN GEIGER

For landing his ski-equipped Piper Super Cub on "impossible" snow fields and glaciers of the Swiss Alps and rescuing more than 150 trapped and injured mountaineers and skiers (including 20 in the past year), Hermann Geiger, a handsome, 42-year-old flight instructor of Sion, Switzerland, was awarded the Alpine Solidarity medal. On one occasion Geiger juggled his small craft up 13,000 feet through the sweeping air currents and narrow passes around Pointe Dufour, Switzerland's highest mountain, to come down near the rocky summit, an unofficial record high-altitude landing. Currently the "Flying Saint Bernard" is preparing himself for his annual air drops of food and fodder to snowbound settlements, as well as bread-and-butter ferrying of well-heeled skiers to choice and lofty Alpine slopes.

PHOTO

WALTER STUDER