Expedition

35 countries, 35 highest peaks, and a journey from Alaska to Patagonia. The young Swiss adventurer Tobias Renggli has set his sights on quite a challenge. The first leg of his journey took him by bike from the far north to the base of Denali. What does PowderGuide have to do with this? We’ll introduce you to the project and explain how a conversation at the EOFT led to a collaboration that took us all the way to the glaciers of Alaska.

In spring of 2026 PowderGuide partnered up with endurance athlete Tobias Renggli, who, together with our friend and mountain goat Heli Hoffmann and polar guide Laetitia Lam, intended to scale, as the first of many mountains in America, Denali (6190 m.a.s.l.) in Alaska, the tallest of the USA, by bike, ski and foot. This is the story about how I became their expedition's meteorologist and how they summited despite non-ideal weather conditions.

For 40 days in April and May 2023, I lived on the glaciers of Spitsbergen. My team and I covered 700 kilometers - once on skis from south to north across the Arctic island. In parts 1 and 2 of this series, I talked about the mental challenges that accompanied me during this expedition. But what would I have liked to have known beforehand that would have made my life easier during these 40 days? If you are about to embark on such a journey or simply want an insight into my thoughts: This one's for you. Here are ten things I learned directly or indirectly from our expedition through Spitsbergen.

The risk in your head is one thing - but how do you actually survive at -40 °C when even walking outside your tent becomes a mini-expedition? In the second part, find out why Alexandre Marchesseau sacrificed his beloved monoskis for this trip, how to immerse yourself in an almost animalistic state of instinct after weeks in the ice and why hardened alpinists put on karaoke glitter on summit days.

50 days, 500 kilometers and the highest peaks in Alaska: Alexandre Marchesseau and his team searched for more than just descents in the wilderness. In the first part of the interview, the mountain guide reports on how you learn to pray under huge ice towers, why a moral "hostage situation" on Mount Foraker almost blew up the group and how, after weeks in the ice, you enter an almost animalistic state of instinct. An in-depth look into the psychology of an extreme crossing of the Alaska Range.

PART I and PART II of this series of articles dealt with the mental challenges of a 40-day Arctic expedition, i.e.: What goes through the mind of someone who is traveling "off the grid" for such a long time for the first time, isolated from everything familiar and in the middle of an extreme situation for 1.5 months? In order to create a complete documentary film during such an expedition, however, there is a much more specific question - one that cost me sleepless nights before the trip: How do you even film in the eternal cold?

In the first week, it was not even clear whether the team would reach the southern tip at all. While storms raged outside, the battle against their own motivation began inside the tent. But the apparent routine that followed was a fallacy. In the second part of his article series, Moritz takes us further into the psychological depths of a 40-day expedition. He gives an unembellished account of the enormous pressure to meet the sponsors' expectations and deliver a documentary film without a script, when all you really want to do is lie in a warm sleeping bag. How do you turn doubt into routine? Why are sunsets a torture? And how do you prepare your mind for such extremes? Moritz shares his personal learnings and gives tangible tips for mental training - so that fear eventually turns into strength.

For his film project 'End to End Svalbard', Moritz spent 40 days on an expedition through Spitsbergen. Over the coming months, he will be reporting on his personal experiences and insights from this border crossing in a four-part series of articles and sharing his emotional life with us. One of the reasons for this is that he found hardly any reports at the time that provided open and honest information about the obstacles. The first part is about the mental challenges that such an expedition entails.

A group of young women are standing on the glacier. One of the women is carefully lowered into a crevasse. She practises crevasse rescue with her rope team and climbs out of the crevasse with ice axes and crampons. The glacier is then surveyed with scientific equipment before returning to the expedition camp. So many women on a glacier? Even in times of legal equality, this is a rather rare sight. However, the idea of Girls* on Ice Austria (GOI) is not to be intimidated by this, but to go on an all-female expedition for this very reason.

Ialakha is a remarkable ski adventure film that was recently released. It tells the story of a 60 km long and 4000 metre high traverse in the Caucasus in Georgia, on skis of course and with a few spine walls in mind. We are delighted to gain even deeper insights into the project in an interview with Heli Hoffmann, the author, and Sammy Theurer, the film maker. The two were accompanied by Eva Stribrna (photos), Yessica Kurock, Levi Seiferheld and local Zura Phaliani. They were also supported by other locals from Ghebi and their horses and were occasionally followed by dogs.

The two mountain guides Helias Millerioux and Alex Marchesseau, as well as snowboarder Thomas Delfino and river guide Gregory Douillard, report on their spectacular sea-to-sea expedition on Mount Logan. Over the Malaspina Glacier to Mount Logan and down the Copper River into the Pacific, they covered the following distances in 48 days in 2019: 60km on foot, 200km on skis, 330km by raft.

Jackie Paaso, FWT veteran who now lives in Sweden, takes us on an unusual adventure in the Swedish wilderness in "Arctic 12". Together with Reine Barkered and other pros from the Scott team, she has set herself the goal of skiing up all 12 mountains in Sweden that are over 2000 meters high.