Big Days before X-Mass

Hi everyone,

I have just returned back home for a family X-Mass after some epic days in the Swiss Alps. With Ronny and Patrick from www.unhooked.ch their Team- Lawyer and Schübi we climbed up with skins for about 1h. We wanted to score Piz Languard and started in Pontresina. As soon as we got over the tree line we felt a little breeze and we were able to use our biggest kites to climb further. It was a long valley about 5-7km long that we had to climb downwind but uphill. The wind was very light and tricky, there wasn’t much snow either which resulted in massive scratches in the skies. It was damn cold around -20°C and the wind dropped completely in the afternoon letting only Ronny enough to make it to a 3000m summit at the end of the valley. Props to him for that!

We all came back well from the mountain but tired as cause of the cold!

The next day didn’t look like it was going to be a big one. Northerly winds only in the morning then dropping down completely. Still super cold I made my way up to the Berninapass. The wind was still strong in the morning so I decided to climb the Lagalb mountain once again. Tacked down upwind to the bottom of the mountain from the pass first. My plan was to climb beside the gondola but I didn’t get any breeze down there. I walked back up near the road for a while and got into the wind again. Took out my 12m Manta M3 and started climbing but not from the north face but through the super rocky west side of the Lagalb. It was unreal… super steep and rock everywhere but I found a good line and ended up 50m below the summit 1h later. The people in the ski resort could belief what I was doing there! I packed the kite and rode down the west face as well. Had to get out my kite once again to go further up the road to reach the car and as soon as I got there the wind died out completely – Am I lucky or what?!

Another quick session was on Monday at Hochwang. The wind didn’t fully turned into south so it was kind of side on there and the visibility wasn’t perfect either so I just had a quick blast up there and 2 climbs to the top with a massive powder decent. There is so much powder it’s a great laugh anyway!
Ok, have a great X-Mass and see you soon…

Dom