Last Sunday, 10/08/2006 my friend Adrian and I climbed the Jungfrau (4158m/13642ft) in the Bernese Oberland, carrying our paragliders in the backpack. We then managed to launch from just below the summit. With that, another dream came true.
The climb is very serious mountaineering and involves rock as well as ice climbing. As we are in autumn, conditions were not the best. There was already a good portion of snow, so that we had to rockclimb with crampons, cross several deep glacier crevasses, and most importantly, make our own trace in often knee deep powder snow. It was a very strenuous undertaking, but absolutely worthwile: we were the only ones on the mountain and the weather was beautiful.
Just below the summit, there is a flat piece of glacier that makes an ideal launch site. As we had expected from the forecast, the conditions were perfect, with a moderate westerly wind of 5-8mph blowing in. Like this, it was a piece of cake to get airborne: reverse inflation, turn around, take a few steps and fly. No need to run like hell despite being at > 13500ft.
Due to a very stable high pressure system and autumn conditions, there were absolutely no thermals. Still, the sledride took us more than 45 minutes. We passed the Jungfraujoch, and then flew along the Mönch and the famous North Face of Eiger, before traversing across Grindelwald and flying to Interlaken.
This was the absolutely perfect synthese of mountaineering and paragliding. Check out the pictures below!
Approaching the Jungfraujoch – Top of Europe as they say
That’s my new desktop background: with the Mamboo in front of the Eiger North Face. I climbed it in 2003, so it was fun to watch some of the climbing passages from close by again.
That’s the Jungfrau (4158m/13642ft) where we flew from. Gliding down in around 45 minutes, that’s much better than a long, dangerous and strenuous climb down!
Enjoy the autumn,
Marcel
)of my time rock climbing, i.e. alpine multipitch sport climbing. Switzerland offers some of the very best venues to do so, and it has been my favorite pasttime for the last 20 years, so these are not really news to those who know me for more than the last 3 years, where a major part of my time was dedicated to PGing. For me, the mental challenge in bold lead climbs is at least as big as in PGing (though from an objective perspective, climbing is safer), and the physical requirements are of course a lot higher in climbing, so I'm not missing anything at all.
