Hannelore Schmatz (14 February 1940 – 2 October 1979) was a German climber and the fourth woman to summit Mount Everest.

Her body was frozen in a sitting position, leaning against her backpack with eyes open and hair blowing in the wind, about 100 metres (330 ft) above Camp IV.

He had refused at first due to losing his fingers and toes during the 1979 expedition, but was paid extra by climber Chris Kopcjynski.

[8][9] British mountaineer Chris Bonington spotted Schmatz from a distance in 1985, and initially mistook her body for a tent until he got a closer look.

[5] Lene Gammelgaard, the first Scandinavian woman to reach the summit of Everest, quotes the Norwegian mountaineer and expedition leader Arne Næss Jr. describing his encounter with Schmatz's remains, in her book Climbing High: A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy (1999), which recounts her own 1996 expedition.