Jaan Künnap

Jaan Künnap (born 9 February 1948, in Kõue)

Biography

Künnap went to school in Kose, as well as in Tallinn, where he has lived since 1969. He completed Tallinn's adult evening gymnasium in 1978, a school for mountaineering instructors in 1984, and a school for mountain rescuers in 1985.

From 1971 to 1994 he worked as a deep-sea diver on a rescue ship. During this time he logged over 3,000 hours of diving time and recorded depths of up to 80 m. At 80 meters underwater, the pressure is around eight atmospheres; at the roughly seven-kilometre mountain altitudes he has climbed to, it is about a third of sea-level pressure. Künnap has said he used to boast to friends about his 80-meter dives, until a friend who had worked in a Siberian mine 1.5 kilometres underground mentioned his own depth.

Mountaineering He has climbed to the peak of over 150 mountains. Künnap received the Snow Leopard award in 1987. In 1999, a film was made about him with the same name (Lumeleopard; 1999).

First ascent of 6,000 meters In 1982, he took part in an expedition to the Tanõmas mountain range in central Pamiri to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the University of Tartu. In the course of this, the highest unconquered mountain of the Soviet Union at that time was first conquered − Tartu Ülikool 350 (the name of the University of Tartu and the height of the peak was thought to be 6350 m). The expedition was led by Kalev Muru and six climbers reached the top, including Jaan Künnap (ascension leader).

In 1984, the Estonians again visited the Pamiri to conquer the peaks. At an altitude of 6047 meters, the top was climbed by three groups on different routes. The ascension group, led by Jaan Künnap, reached its peak on August 18 (the day before, the group led by Ilmar Priimetsa reached the top). The peak was called the Tallinn Peak.

He has climbed to the top of several seven-thousanders (and in the case of some of them, like Ismoil Somoni Peak, he has successfully summited several times). He has technically climbed over 8,000 m; however, he has not successfully reached the summit of an eight-thousander. During his climb of Cho Oyu, the eight-thousander he has climbed, he went above 8,000 m, but started coming down before reaching the top.

Photography Künnap began working in photography in 1972, around the same time he took up mountaineering. He has participated in over 50 photography exhibitions and has reached the podium in numerous photography competitions. He has held 53 solo exhibitions since 1982, including "People's Land" (1984), "Mountains and People" (1986), "Color Photographs from the Mountains" (1995), and "Panoramas" (2010), and has taken part in joint exhibitions in 18 countries, including Spain, Germany, and Denmark. He won a bronze medal at the "Fotosport" exhibition in Spain in 1986 and a certificate of honor at "Venus '88" in Kraków. Since 1998, he has worked as a photographer for the Tallinn City Museum. He has also added thousands of photos to Wikimedia Commons and was selected as the best Wikiphotograper of the Year 2019 & 2020 & 2023 in Estonia.

In July 2025, Künnap published an autobiography, Mitu elu on parem kui üks ("Several Lives Are Better Than One"), written with Sirje Presnal and containing more than 500 photographs drawn from his career. Künnap said the book focuses mainly on extreme situations he has survived rather than on family life: "it isn't a very easy book — there's too much talk of corpses in it, but that's what my life has been like."

Awards In 1987, he received the Snow Leopard award together with Kalev Muru and Alfred Lõhmus.

In 2001, he was honored with the 3rd class of the Order of the Estonian Red Cross, the first Estonian alpinist to receive it; as of 2025 only three alpinists have.

Works

Photos

Books Matkaspordi käsiraamat, Jaan Künnapi Alpinismiklubi, 2004. Fotograafia minu elus = Photography in my life, Jaan Künnapi Alpinismiklubi, 2013. Sõlmed ja pleisid, 2016. Jaan Künnap. Mitu elu on parem kui üks, 2025.