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“Since we don’t have mountainous terrain in Malta adding the fact that we live at sea level – it becomes very hard to become physically conditioned for the mountains. However we did the best we could with whatever we had locally,” Andrew explained.

“We came up with a project and the aim was to try and do three alpine climbs in five days,” Matthew continued.

“The first two climbs were done on Mount Gran Paradiso (4061M)  and the Aiguille d’Entreves Traverse. Those climbs helped us to acclimatise to the altitude and also get training and using equipment on very exposed ridges of rock and snow, same as we would encounter all the way during the Matterhorn climb.”

“We did very well on the first two climbs and our morale was high and so we made our way to the village of Zermatt in Switzerland.  We had decided that we would take the Hornli Ridge route to the summit of the Matterhorn.”

The final climb started with an early wake up call at 3am and within a few minutes of having a quick breakfast, they found themselves waiting in line with other prospective summiteers and alpine guides, moving anxiously towards the first vertical pitches of this beautiful beast.

“After an hour or so and pitch after pitch  of climbing in the dark, the first rays of sunlight hit us.”

“Then you realise everything from about how exposed the climbing really is and how much more there is left to do! One slight mistake and it’s all over,” Andrew said.

The weather in the region during the previous two days was not very favourable with some snowfall and thunderstorms. This made all other climbers move their summit day towards their projected summit date, which then resulted with 42 climbers and their guides all pushing up a single route to the summit of this mountain on the morning of 14th July!

“This makes the ascent much more difficult as more people on the mountain usually means more bottlenecks at certain point and also the risk of rockfall is heavily amplified.”

“Both of us were lucky not to be hit by falling rocks at various sections of the mountain! We also both had to wait at different bottlenecks. At one point my morale went really low when my Alpine guide told me that we might have to abort the climb due to the bottlenecks up ahead on the upper Mosley Slabs!” Andrew said.

“However we continued to push on and both of us made it to the summit of the Mattherhorn! Our dreams had just become a reality!” Matthew continued. 

“Once at the summit, a few moments of savouring the views, a couple of photos and then it has to be full-on concentration again, in order to get off the mountain safely. Climbing down the mountain is much harder that climbing it up!” they both said.

Coincidentally the first summit of the Matterhorn had also been made on the same date, 14th July 1865. On that day a team of seven people led by Edward Whymper made it to the summit however four of the climbers tragically lost their lives on their way down.

“Alas we made it down safely and not very long after we were already discussing the next prospective adventures that we might attempt together as a team!”

“We are not sure on which challenge we will work on next!  It might be an 8000er in the Himalayas or any other fabulous challenge.  We are looking for sponsors to help us financially achieve our goals together!” Matthew concluded.

“We are ready for new and bigger challenges!” Andrew expressed.

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