Since July I’d been wanting to ski, but despite everything I still hadn’t managed to. It had been a long time since I’d heard the alarm go off in the middle of the night. It’s 3:20 a.m., and I wake up without quite understanding. A quick breakfast, then off to pick up Edo. We reach the Simplon Pass and it’s completely covered. A thick blanket of clouds wraps around the road, and our worries grow: “Is it really possible that the Swiss forecast is wrong?” Alpe Rossboden, 7 a.m. The Fletschhorn is shrouded in fog. We start up the scree on foot, carrying two pairs of skis that add up to 200 mm underfoot between them. A glance back: we’re above a sea of clouds, in a magical forest coated in frost. The climb goes well, even though I’ve got the Mercurys on and Edo is using a pair of my skis that weigh a full 5 kg. Once out of the couloir, to avoid skiing heavy, slushy snow, we skip the summit and start the descent right away. A great way to start again… 4.2, they say. The skiing is good all the way down to the scree. Not a soul around — just a graveyard of exploded missile debris scattered everywhere.