Mountain and Ski Guide Gudrun Weikert
“My Hobbies Are My Vacation”
test
Just before completing her studies in Sports at TUM, Gudrun Weikert is offered a position for training the future sports teachers in exactly those areas she loves most: rock climbing, mountaineering, skiing and snowboarding. “It was great! This was what most people with a diploma wished for! I hadn’t even applied myself because of the strong competition and had already booked a vacation. I immediately cancelled it again and started my position”, Gudrun Weikert recounts.
No day like another
Since then Gudrun Weikert is able to do at TUM what she had always wanted; to work with athletes, pass on the broad knowledge based on her own experience and by cooperating closely with the Mountain Guide Association and the Alpine Association, being able to take part in the theoretical decisions she benefits from herself in her sports practice. As the Deputy Chairperson of the Examination Committee she has been conducting the exams for internationally certified mountain and ski guides for ten years, hard and very serious tests, which in Germany can only be taken at TUM – and which Gudrun Weikert herself passed as the first woman in Germany.
Snow and ice, sun and wind: In her job, Gudrun Weikert braves the forces of nature every day (Picture: private).
On one day I am in fresh snow up to my hips, on another I am planning the next summer excursions at my desk.
Women in Germany are privileged
Even though she loves her ‘awesome job’ at TUM, which offers her so much variety, Gudrun Weikert wants to somewhat reduce her tasks there in the next years, in order to have more time for private endeavours and to once again stand on top of a mountain without any clients. Throughout her own life she has done exactly what she wanted anyway, even though these things were frequently seen as male-dominated: motorcycle license, mountain guide training, crossing Antarctica, ski touring in the Arctic and climbing the Eiger North Face and Matterhorn. And this is what Gudrun Weikert would like to pass on, not just to the female athletes but to all young women: “Do whatever you want and not what others expect from you. You can do anything – just do it!”
Sleeping on the precipice: Gudrun Weikert climbing the Eiger north face (Picture: private).
When rock climbing like here in Sardinia, TUM alumna Gudrun Weikert's heart beats fast (Picture: private).
Gudrun Weikert
Diploma in Teaching Physical Education 1987, Mountain and Ski Guide 1988
Gudrun Weikert has initially studied Physical Education at TUM (1981 until 1983) and then Sports as a diploma programme with an emphasis in Competitive Sports and Cross-Country Skiing. In 1987 she completed her training as a state-certified cross-country skiing instructor, followed by the state-certification as a mountain and ski guide in 1988.
Since 1987 she is a lecturer for mountaineering, cross-country skiing and ball sports (handball) at TUM’s Department of Sport and Health Sciences, since 2008 she is the Deputy Chairperson of the Examination Committee for the training to be a state-certified mountain and ski guide. In addition she is the Chairwoman of the Teaching Committee Mountain and Ski Guide, the EU’s Competent Authority for Professional Mobility (European Professional Card for Mountain Guides), Member of the sub-commission „Mobility“ in the International Federation of Mountain Guides Association (IFMGA) and a delegate of the Association of German Mountain and Ski Guides (VDBS). She has built up her own business Alpine Athletics, which offers specialized trainings with alpine contents to top athletes.
Gudrun Weikert furthermore manages to accommodate preventive work with juvenile offenders in her heavy schedule; here sport helps with trauma relief. Gudrun Weikert is mother to one adult daughter.
