Expedition

*UPDATE: Due to the lockdown in Austria, the film tour and competition have had to be postponed! Most people will be familiar with Swiss freeskier Jérémie Heitz thanks to his spectacular runs in the first part of "La Liste". Back then, he set out in search of the steepest 4,000-meter descents in the Alps.

As far as I know, we haven't had any fatal accidents involving professional freeriders since last year's tribute edition. That's nice, but it doesn't matter, because unfortunately people without celebrity status also die in the mountains, without a fan community to mourn them. Nevertheless, we remember Andreas and JP once again. There's also a re-make of Mount Ushba and Jeremie's diaries. We are longing for a comeback of winter with lots of snow and new movie material.

When the ski resort runs out of snow, you have to look elsewhere: Our roving Skibum reporter and South America correspondent Zach Paley reports on a multi-day tour with a tent and the challenges that come with it.

Our travel reporter Zach Paley, a.k.a. Mr. Worldwide Skibum, spent the spring in Kyrgyzstan taking in the mountain air, drinking vodka, freezing in his tent, carrying his skis over scree for hours on end and experiencing so much more. Here he reports on a special kind of ski adventure: ski mountaineering near Bishkek, in Karakol and on Lenin Peak.

Börm Bruckmeier Verlag, which specializes in medical literature in a "compact format", presents a detailed guidebook to take with you into the mountains, subtitled: From day trip to Himalayan expedition.

Uka, the normally relaxed, always grinning cook at base camp, exchanged worried glances with Tsogo, our Mongolian translator. The kitchen tent was about to give in to the strong wind. The girls' tent had already given up a few hours ago. Now it was up to us to secure the other tents as quickly as possible with additional ropes and stones hastily dug out of the freshly fallen snow.

Even at a time when smartphones and Wi-Fi seem to be ubiquitous, there are still plenty of areas where contact with the rest of the world is severely limited. There, a satellite phone is not only useful in an emergency.

Alaska ... Spines, steep slopes, endless glaciers, all covered in a thick layer of powder snow. The holy land of freeriders. The land of heliskiing. The ultimate dream for many powder addicts. Last winter, we tried to turn this dream into reality. Without heliskiing, but with all the other ingredients. An adventure report with diary entries by Lukas, at 21 the youngster in our group of four.

Small, light, ultra-compact and yet highly insulating: the Neoair XTherm from Therm-A-Rest

Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner and her husband and rope partner Ralf Dujmovits have been known to the general public at least since their summit success on K2, the world's most difficult eight-thousander. By climbing the second highest mountain in the world in 2011, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner became the first woman ever to climb all 14 eight-thousanders without the aid of bottled oxygen. Ralf Dujmovits was the first German to complete the series back in 2009 with his ascent of Lhotse. In the book 2 x 14 eight-thousanders, recently published by Bruckmann Verlag, many of the experiences of the two top mountaineers on the world's highest mountains are recounted in words and pictures.

Fabian Lentsch, up-and-coming freerider from Austria, spent his summer in the winter of South America. In the second part of his rider blog, read about his days in Bariloche with Eric Zeller, Leo Rauch and photographer Jonas Blum and an attempt to climb 6,000 m.

Stefan's muffled voice reaches me: "Martin, you have to get up! I can't get the snow off the tent!" Oh dear, but if we don't want to fall asleep under a mountain of snow forever, we have to get out. In the middle of the night, far away from civilization and in arctic conditions, this is anything but pleasant. A snowstorm is raging around our small dome tent and the temperatures are in the region of the freezer at home.