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So - you want to be a Ski-Mountaineer? Ski-mountaineering combines the very best of skiing with mountaineering. Armed with a knowledge of mountaineering, a pair of skis and an ability to use them, you can enter a 'Winter Wonderland'. It is a land of the few. It is a land of hard work, but it is one of exquisite beauty and, at times, one of unparalleled exhilaration. If you were passing through an airport during April you may have seen me; I was with that scruffy group carrying skis with odd looking bindings and wearing rucsacs. On one occasion Pete was even wearing his ski boots to keep within his weight allowance. Unlike the boots that most skiers use, ours have a rubber ‘Vibram’ sole so that we don’t fall down mountain cliffs or airport escalators. On the question of weight, if you were to look in our rucsacs you would find an ice axe and a pair of crampons, two pairs actually – one to fit our boots and another pair called harscheisen to fit onto our skis. You would also find a pair of velvet curtains – tall narrow ones (known as skins) that are sticky on the back so that we can attach them to the underside of our skis for travelling uphill. They slide forwards, but not backwards, at least most of the time. As the ground steepens and becomes icy, the skins no longer grip properly so we resort to fitting the harscheisen. Sometimes as we approach a mountain pass the ground becomes so steep that we have to take off our skis and fasten them to our packs and walk to the top. This is where the ice axe and crampons come in handy. If it was steep on the way up, as likely as not it will be steep on the way down, often too steep to ski. This is where we dip into our rucsacs again to pull out a rope and a harness. Yes, our rucsacs do tend to weigh quite heavy as they also hold most of the things we will need for two weeks. We sometimes have to carry food for two or three days but, where possible, we allow ourselves the luxury of being fed at the mountain refuges where we stay. People often say, "That sounds like hard work." I usually pause then answer, "Y…es". I cannot deny it can be hard work, sometimes very hard work. Some days we have been out for 12 hours or more. "Why then" you may ask "do you do it?" There is no simple answer. Is it "because the mountains are there"? Well, sort of, but, more importantly, it’s being there with good companions whom you can trust. Is it the promise of virgin powder snow on the other side? Unfortunately not, although we have had some magic moments. There was the day we floated down the Glacier des Grands and the time we glided over acres of spring snow in the Silvretta. We’ve stood on the summit of the Allalinhorn at over 4000m with views to the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc beyond. We’ve had the satisfaction of skiing to within 25 kilometres of the Mediterranean, above Nice. We skied and walked some 560 kilometres, travelling the length of the Alps. It took us 52 days, during which time we ascended well over 40,000 metres under our own steam. There can’t be many skiers who have dipped their ski boots in the Med, having skied all the way from Innsbruck 'Why not come and join me on the trip of a lifetime?' A Traverse of the Alps on Skis
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