Just came back from a whicked week and a half in Champery with slowmotion. Amazing snow, food and whine has left me a few pounds heavier. We also met up with some of slowmotions friends, true alpine goats, who were kind enough to babysit some city foaks. And that was precisely what they did. For a good part of the first week i had been staring at a mountain which i wanted to climb however never deared to. One morning after a beautiful sleep and peacefull breakfast we got a phonecall from Julien, the master goat. He told us that we were going to climb it... On hearing the news i had to run to the toilet and releave myself of some heavies... nervosity started to kick in.

Next thing i know, i find myself on a 60° slope klinging on to some loose snow and slipping each step i take on the icy surface of the mountain slope. Slomo, Julien and his girl Sofie are 15m in front racing to the top. I am shitting myself. Worse turns to terrible as we enter a rocky part. Stones come loose as soon as you touch them and the sight of the boulders underneath doesn't really confort the mind. We make another ten meters progress and the semi-snow turns to ice. At this point Slomo can start to feal something wrong in her stomach and decides she needs to go back down. I struggle further and finally get to the pyramid shaped cresent (picture).

Julien takes a look at me and decides he will carry my skis to the top. I thought it a good idea to crawl to the top. And so we progress: me on all fours with my ass in the air but julien with snowboard and skis as well as sofie hopping up the the mountain as if it were their living room. At this point Slomo has decided she's not feeling too well and has, to the amazement of some british turists, laid a pizza right next to a restaurant down below. Meanwhile i am at the "zigzag" (where the dude is on the picture), slip and get my skiboots stuck in some rocks, in other words nearly fell down the cliffs on the top left picture. I'm thinking "thank god i got the panic shits before we left". Another 15 minutes of utter panic and we get to the top.

The best thing was the ride down... it would have been amazing had it not been so windy the night before. Cardboard snow met us as we skiid down the face.

How long was the climb?