Climbing - Reach for the summit

The narrow pathway snakes steeply among the rocks. The summit is in sight, defined sharply against the deep blue sky. Few plants and animals have adapted to the hostile elements in these high regions of barren rock and scree. Nevertheless certain flowers manage to take root here, the edelweiss, the daisy-like mountain chrysanthemum, chickweed with its tiny lily-like flowers, the Alpine androsace and certain saxifrages, while the record holder has to be the glacier buttercup, found among rocks protruding from the eternal ice.

In July areas of greensward beneath the rock faces are ablaze with the fire-red flowers of the Alpine rose rhododendron. The distant whistle of a marmot can be heard, perhaps warning its companions about a golden eagle circling overhead. Finally you reach the summit cross, and what a reward: the panorama takes in 14 glacier-clad ‘three-thousanders’, the world inhabited by humans so remote.