A great day, challenging mountains and perfect weather, what more can you ask for...

I recently had the pleasure of joining the Swiss 4000 Metre Peaks trip; we had some interesting weather and some great clients. The best day of the trip for me was the ascent of the Weissmies via its south east ridge.

We awoke in our overnight mountain hut to clear skies. The wind was still strong but the group were feeling positive that we would reach the top as planned. We left the hut at dawn and made our way up the rocky mountain path to the col from where we could see great views to Italy and some of its largest lakes. Once on the col we could see our planned route a little clearer. We would follow the ridge for a few hundred metres, head up a snow slope, back on to the ridge where it steepens and hopefully to the summit!

Once we arrived at the bottom of the snow slope, we kitted up with our harnesses, crampons, ice axe and helmets, split in to our 2 rope teams with a guide at the front of each. The snow slope soon steepened making us feel the altitude that we had already climbed to. The snow was hard which helped us move quickly in our crampons and we soon traversed back on to the ridge where the scrambling would begin! We put away our ice axes and used our hands to pull on the positive holds the