Jenny Staiger

Stephan Harvey, a natural scientist and mountain guide, has been working at the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research, SLF, in Davos for over 20 years. In addition to publishing several books on avalanche awareness, he is the man behind the well-known avalanche prevention platform, White Risk. In this interview, the avalanche expert talks to us about innovations at White Risk.

Hundreds of people bustle along the streets, selling home-made DVDs, second-hand clothes, fresh fruit and vegetables. Women in thick velvet skirts, their waist-length black hair braided into two plaits, stroll between smelly buses, honking cabs and crashing motorcycles. We make our way through the crowd with one large and one small backpack and two additional ski bags. We are constantly bumped into and hardly believe that we will ever make it to the cab rank in front of the bus station with our 65 kg of luggage! Finally we make it. "Hola chicititas, que es?" The cab driver looks at us somewhat incredulously as he ties the ski bags to his roof. Skiing in the huge city of La Paz seems to be a rarity – but our mission is working: in the next two weeks we want to climb two peaks and go down in history with two "female first descents".