Frauen im Bergsport

Who hasn't experienced it? It's cold, the wind is whistling - and just when you've had enough to drink for once, you urgently need to pee. For all female outdoor enthusiasts, this means a cold bottom and lots of balancing acrobatics. Fortunately, there is a solution: Urinella.

Level Up is a freeride event for women, created by Marion Hearty, four-time winner of the Freeride World Tour and winner of Natural Selection 2024. At the end of January, I had the honor of taking part in the Freeride Girls event. This is my report on the first edition of Level Up.

Think back to when you were learning about the mountains, to your last group outings, to the film festivals that thrilled you so much, to the expedition stories you devoured. Did you find women there? Were there many of them? How many women wrote these books, directed these films? How many are the protagonists? And in your practice groups, what place do they really occupy? In the male-dominated world of the mountains, where notions of physical strength, risk and danger predominate, women are poorly represented and have difficulty finding their place. A striking example is the professionalization of French mountain guides : only 2% of them are women (i.e. 30 out of 1,500 professionals) ! It's time to shine the spotlight on women's mountain activities, right up to the summits!

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.

Martin is a member of "Protect our Winters Austria", in his last two guest posts he explained why he is involved with "POW" and how the NGO is organised. The content of today's guest article is an interview with POW athlete Rosina Friedel:

We three ladies don't know each other from the barbecue, but from Davos. We've lived there for many years. Why we have to go to Andermatt of all places, even though we have the Davos mountains on our doorstep, is easy to explain: firstly, we fancy something new and secondly, at home we rarely take the time to really ski for 4 days in a row. Especially since two of us have children.

Freerider and filmmaker Sandra Lahnsteiner is hosting the first Shades of Winter FilmFest in five cities from November 27 to December 13, 2018, showing her two latest films alongside films by Nadine Wallner, Arianna Tricomi, Lorraine Huber, Evelina Nilsson and Janina Kuzma, among others.

State-certified ski instructor. Mental trainer. Freerider. And filmmaker. Hardly any other female skier has as many professional facets as Sandra Lahnsteiner. She has made freeskiing more feminine with Shades of Winter and tells us in an interview why it's worth just doing something, why it's brave to say "no" sometimes and why her films also inspire men to ski.

Skis, snowboards and clothing, far removed from the motto "Shrink it and pink it": Coalition Snow is shaking up the ski industry and producing skis - by female skiers for female skiers.

The 1st European Women's Outdoor Summit took place in Flims/Laax from October 27 to 29, 2017. It was three days, 62 female outdoor athletes, lots of discussions, plenty of inspiration and the question: are women in outdoor sports really different to men? Lisa is a copywriter in the outdoor industry and blogs on wildrecreation.com about sustainability in outdoor sports, among other things. She reports from Flims for PG.

On Sunday in the week before the camp in Sölden, I receive an email from Dani from risk'n'fun asking if I am spontaneous? The winner of today's competition had had to cancel at short notice and I was in second place. Oops - that's really spontaneous, but of course I'm in. I frantically start to gather my ski equipment. The winter season hasn't really started yet and I'm still sitting on my bike more than I know where my gloves, ski helmet and goggles are. And do the skis still need waxing?

There was hardly a freeride qualifier podium last winter that Manuela Mandl, 28, wasn't on. With first places in Jasna, Nendaz, at the X-Override and in Roldal, among others, it's no surprise that she will be competing in the women's snowboard Freeride World Tour in 2017. We had a chat with Manu in the run-up to the event.