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What happens when two alpinists have kids? Patagonia releases new short film series 'Parenting: Disaster Style' but nervous moms and dads might want to skip this one...
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Patagonia has launched a new short film series: Parenting: Disaster Style and the first episode has just dropped. The series follows the adventures of alpinists Zoe Hart and her husband, Maxime Turgeon, as they introduce their children, Mathias and Mika, to the great outdoors and all things adventure. The series sees the young family go backcountry skiing in Italy, dirtbag along the French coast and cultivate food at their Chamonix home, beneath the watchful Mont Blanc. Hart and Turgeon hope to engender the same love of the natural world and mountain adventure that they enjoy to their kids, while also increasing their resilience and self-belief. Hart says: "if you push your kids past what they think is possible, whether it's being cold or tired or wet, they'll learn they have the capacity to do way more than they thought they could.' Before having kids, in their search for mountain adventure on some of the world's most technical peaks, Hart and Turgeon had endured their fair share of epics and freezing cold nights on some far-flung wall or other. Tongue firmly in cheek, they called their style 'Disaster Alpinism', which is how the series got its name. "Go at it, throw everything into it, it's usually epic and afterwards it's really awesome," says Hart about both alpinism and parenting. Zoe Hart is a Chamonix-based International Mountain Guide originally from the East Coast of the US. A passionate adventurer and mother, she is determined to live life to the limits and strives for never-ending growth. Episode one went live on June 18, introducing the family and their ethos, as they set off on family adventures to climb and enjoy the tranquility of the great outdoors. Watch it here and keep one eye on Patagonia's YouTube channel for future epsidoes. The best family tents: spacious shelters for the whole tribe The best winter hiking boots: for unbeatable performance in the cold
The Guardian
03-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘The walk is shot through with melancholy and romance': a new trail to the north face of the Eiger
A few years ago, my dad told me of a mountain where I could easily sense another world. 'There is a special air and light,' he had said, vaguely. 'You just have to walk close to it to feel and see it. Stand in one place and just look up.' The mountain on my dad's mind that day was the Eiger, Switzerland's 3,970-metre ogre of limestone and ice. Like few others, the peak exerts a gravitational pull on climbers and it remains the chief symbol of the Bernese Oberland; its most notable feature, the 1,800-metre north face, is the largest in the Alps. This gigantic slab looms over the village of Grindelwald, to the south-east of the town of Interlaken, appearing at sunrise as an immense black spectre in a valley of green. As well as being a promised land for daredevil mountaineers and other adventurers (bungee jumpers dive into the void from a 90-metre-high platform), Grindelwald is a happy hunting ground for hikers, and last June a themed trail opened on an existing path at the foot of the north face – the Eiger Walk of Fame. It was established by Jungfrau Region Tourism to honour the stories of many who pioneered routes up its near-vertical face. So, as Zurich pushes close to 35C (95F), the cooler air of the mountains beckons and I head to the Jungfrau Region for a few days to measure my own experience of this new hiking path against that of the pioneers of Alpinism. It's easy for me to feel a personal resonance here. My dad, Ian, successfully tackled a hitherto untried route on the north face in August 1970, before I was born, with companions Kenny Spence and Alasdair 'Bugs' McKeith. At the time, the expedition by the unemployed, hard-drinking trio from Edinburgh was dubbed reckless. After all, the German nickname for the rock face is Mordwand, meaning 'murder wall', and over the decades it has claimed the lives of 72 mountaineers. Now, I'm in Grindelwald, tilting my head towards the sun. Standing in one place as he'd told me to. Just looking up. On my first afternoon, I seek out the Walk of Fame, its 1½-mile (2½km) loop leading from the Eiger Express cable car top station, at 2,328metre, to Kleine Scheidegg, meaning 'small watershed' in Swiss-German, a low mountain plateau crossed by rail lines and framed by the summits of Jungfrau and Mönch. On the trail, I am completely – wonderfully – alone. The Walk of Fame is shot through with melancholy and romance, bookended by both gravestone-like slabs that recount the mountain's most pivotal moments at the start of the approximately 2½-hour trail and a memorial overlooking Lake Fallboden. In a valley of many high-altitude, straggling hikes, the view from this trail is the most extraordinary, giving a closer look at 1,000-foot rock pillars, ice fields and snow-filled cracks resembling enormous spider's webs. Some of the mountains look almost unreal, as if AI-generated, while the stories told along the trail evoke awe and offer new perspectives on the bewildering achievements of the past. I learn about the variety of challenging routes to the summit, an average steepness of 64 degrees, and the trailblazers and unsung heroes who have gone before. There are grim examples too, of those who weren't as lucky as my dad. The north face was first conquered in July 1938 by a German–Austrian party, including Heinrich Harrer, the author of Seven Years in Tibet. But until 1957, when the first rescue was carried out, bodies were merely retrieved at the base of the face. The light beginning to fade, I descend to Lake Fallboden and to Chilchli, once a transformer station for the Jungfrau Railway, but now home to an exhibition. Inside, Eiger stories play out in a sepia photo gallery, and a hand-carved wooden replica of the north face embedded with LEDs lights up with more than 30 seemingly impossible routes. Outside, the summits are mirrored in the still, blue-green water of the lake. Long a Swiss Shangri-la, Grindelwald has hostels and hotels to suit all budgets, yet doesn't teeter on overdevelopment like so many other Alpine realms. You can bring your own tent, as my dad did in his wilder days, or stay somewhere ritzier such as Bergwelt Grindelwald, my base for three nights. The Eiger and shoulder-to-shoulder peaks Mettenberg and Wetterhorn give a lovely geometry to the valley, particularly when seen at twilight, beer in hand, from one of the resort's south-facing balconies. Sign up to The Traveller Get travel inspiration, featured trips and local tips for your next break, as well as the latest deals from Guardian Holidays after newsletter promotion There's another highly recommended walk, one that involves going down from Grindelwald, not up. The Gletscherschlucht is a 250m-year-old glacier gorge reached by a half-hour amble from the town. The 1¼-mile out-and-back walk rings with the sounds of cascades rushing down the ravine's sides and the roar of water from the lower Grindelwald glacier as it drains into the Lütschine River. It feels a lot like a wind tunnel, with blasts of glacial air. I have another purpose in being in Grindelwald, and on my last day I retrace my steps up to the north face, this time to hike the long-established 4-mile Eiger Trail towards the Alpiglen farm and guesthouse. My dad passed away last February in the palliative care unit of his local hospital after a battle with vascular dementia, and in his last few days his fingers would tighten when I reminded him of his exploits in the Alps. It was as if he was teasing out pinch grips and holds in his mind. In a small way, I want to pay tribute to his memory. I take the lonely path from the Eiger Express top station once more, but this time hike directly east, up and over a saddle to a place where the wind drops and the sheer vertical of the north face really begins. By the end, my dad was non-verbal, his wisdom stripped away, yet on one of my last visits I could sense he was trying to reorganise his brain scaffolding amid the chaos, to grasp a word – any word – to describe the mountain that had meant so much to him. To me, there was never any logic to what he did; but now, up close, I can really sense his achievement for the first time. I am filled with admiration and pride. Out of my rucksack, I pull a biscuit tin containing some of his ashes, searching for a suitable place to scatter them. Perhaps hoping for some form of neat conclusion, I came in the hope of finding a fragment of him up here. I've found so much more – a reminder that even when somebody leaves us, there is always something beautiful left behind. Then, I lay his ashes on the rocks, take one last lingering look back, and head down the mountain. The trip was provided by Jungfrau Region Tourism and Jungfrau Railways. Rooms at Bergwelt Grindelwald cost from CHF180 (£161), B&B. Tickets for the Eiger Express cost CHF49 (£44) one way. More information at
