December 24, 2025, 5:04 pm | Read time: 3 minutes
I once promised my teddy bear: Never hike in the mountains again. Today, I love tackling strenuous, rocky paths in the high mountains. Where does this magic come from?
I Promised My Teddy Bear: Never Hike Again
On a long glacier hike in the early ’90s, when I was six or seven years old, I picked up every mountain crystal that glittered in the sun at my feet. Because I couldn’t part with my treasures and my mother understandably refused to carry my backpack full of stones along with her own luggage, I lugged it around for an entire day and down into the valley, slept for two days straight, and promised my teddy bear: Never hike again.
Today I Seek Physical Exhaustion and Peace in the Mountains
I believe that experience left a strong impression on me. On one hand, it kept my aversion to mountain tours alive for a long time. On the other hand, as a child, I proved to myself that I could endure intense physical exertion and that it would pass. Today, it’s precisely this feeling that regularly drives me to the mountains: physical exhaustion as a source of peace. The more barren the landscape, the more rocks and scree, the better.
Energy for the Final Ascent Has to Come from Somewhere
In exposed areas, every step must be deliberate. Fog sometimes obscures the view of the next step. Occasionally, scree suddenly shifts underfoot. When your strength wanes because you’ve been on the move for hours and the descent is still nowhere in sight, you still have to find the energy for one last ascent. Hiking in the mountains is not like a gym workout that you can quit or adjust the intensity of. It has to be completed up there.
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Sobbing into the Scree Landscape from Exhaustion
Sometimes it’s so exhausting that I cry from fatigue. These aren’t sad tears. They come when the body can finally shed everything it usually carries. The barren landscape amplifies my feeling that everything can come out because it offers no distractions. I sob into the scree landscape. It’s big enough for that, so what?
During the ascent, my heart pounds hard. I try to control it with calm breathing. The combination dictates the rhythm with which I place one foot in front of the other. Pebbles crunch underfoot, and I let the calls of golden eagles wash over me. Above 2,000 meters, the acoustics are quite bare. No vegetation and no soft ground absorb the sound. Every noise seems oversized.
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Everyday Responsibilities Shrink in the Mountains
Where in my daily life I’m constantly responsible for something, have to coordinate or plan, my responsibilities shrink to a manageable size when hiking in the mountains. One step, then another: When “only” my body has to function, it relaxes me.
Like Back Then with the Backpack Full of Stones
Additionally, mountains exude power because they are large and steep, formidable, impassable, and they don’t judge. Their sight makes me feel small, which is also relieving for me. When hiking in the mountains, I like to imagine that civilization is light-years away. (It’s not; there are mountain huts, and I always have my phone for safety reasons, of course). In any case, I imagine being on my own. Like back then with the backpack full of stones. If I hadn’t carried them down to the valley, I might not know to this day that I can do it.