Fly, Hike, Climb, Repeat…

Chrigel Maurer and Peter von Känel set the worlds of alpinism and paragliding on fire by climbing-and-flying all 82 4,000m mountains in the Alps in less than eight weeks. They share their remarkable X-Peaks story

June 10 did not begin with promise. There was strong north föhn and cloudbase was at 1,500m. Then it started to rain. They were hardly the conditions to excite any pilot and even Chrigel and Peter were pessimistic about their chances of beginning their project to hike, climb and fly to every 4,000m peak in the Alps. After the wet spring, the high mountains were also still covered by an unusually deep layer of snow, which didn’t bode well.

But still, it was always worth seeing what the sky had to offer. So they decided to do a little hike-and-fly to test their new set-up with skis, telling a Swiss TV reporter who wanted to film their start to stay at home.

After lunch they set off on foot from Frutigen and hiked 200m above town to launch. The lift was weak, and it took a while to reach cloudbase. 

“Somehow we managed to fly,” recalls Chrigel. 

This will come as less of a surprise to Chrigel’s legion of followers who have grown accustomed to...