Mountaineering

Matterhorn view from Findeln, July 1970I first fell in love with the Alps as soon as I saw them during a family vacation trip in 1952. From 1968 until I got married in 1992, I visited them just about every summer. From 1977, when I picked up alpine skiing at a fairly advanced age, I started visiting the Alps in the winter as well.

My typical bachelor summer vacation in the Alps looked more or less like this: A two-day trip in my car to Switzerland followed by two weeks of hiking in the Valais district in the southwest corner of the country - mostly in Zermatt and Saas-Fee. During the years 1970 to 1974 I also engaged a professional mountain guide to drag me up one of the alpine peaks as a culmination of my mountain vacation. Before returning home I often made detours to Italy, Austria or France for more conventional tourism.

These yearly mountain vacations also served as a kind of carrot to help me follow a stringent program of running exercises in the spring (three 5-km runs in the forest every week, at maximum speed of course!). - It is no fun to walk in the mountains for many hours if you are not in good shape, and at altitude it can get downright dangerous!

These pages give some general background information and impressions on hiking and climbing in the Alps and describe some of my own "exploits". I should emphasize that I am by no means an expert climber, so do not expect any technical advice! But I would be glad if some of the photos bring back pleasant memories even to accomplished climbers!

  Last edited or checked June 23, 2006

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