Big Plans and good alternatives or how to chicken-out

From all the people I have been climbing with, Stefan is the most chaotic one. Maybe that's why I like hanging out with him so much, we make a great team. The two of us are pretty much alike in many ways, but the main thing is that the both of us enjoy making fools out of ourselves. It just gives me the best laugh when I make fun of myself. I will never forget our first big holiday together. 4 weeks in the alps. We had everything with us. We wanted to go sports-climbing, mountaineering, wanted to hang around in the sun and freeze our butts off. But of course we wanted to do something really hard, 'cause we are tough guys! We had a good plan that was carefully developed with the support of a lot of beer when we were laying in the Woerder Wiese, Nurembergs coolest beergarden. We wanted to stay one week on the Furka-Pass, Switzerland to do some hard alpine-climbing and to adjust to the height. After being trained it would be no prob to climb east-face of the Finsteraarhorn (4420m), the east-side of Grossgruenhorn (4100m) and the Aletschhorn (4100m) in the Berner Oberland. Each of these climbs is pretty hard and steep, except the last one, that's only very long and hard. But man, with some training… Well, we were pretty optimistic when we hit switzerland and we were only little less motivated when we drove into the shittiest weather ever. Even when our little car climbed up the pass turn by turn into the clouds we were still singing and full of spirit. But that was in the car! With the stereo blasting. With the warmth of the heater, and a roof. On the top of the pass, when we left the car the situation was different. It was much colder than in the car, more wet and just fucking disgusting. Just warm enough to be rain, just not enough wind that you could say that its too dangerous. Back in Nurembergs sunny beergarden, sitting in a relaxing chair, a nice blond beer in our hands we decided to climb at all weather conditions, as long as it is not too dangerous. We would climb easy stuff, short and easy, it would be a perfect training, and man, it would be so cool to be up there, with the wind blowing the snow in your face. We would feel like the old mountain heroes… Now that's how we manuvriert us into that situation… So we were standing up there, best training conditions, and it just did not feel like you wanna be a hero. It felt much more like where-is-the-next-bathtub. After standing around and watching the clouds hang in the rocks above for 20 minutes we sat back into the car. It was hopeless, I didn't want to climb here. Too cold, too wet and just too fucking ugly. We didn't talk. We were just sitting there, listening to the sound of raintrops on the roof of the car. And then it came. I don't know who actually asked the magic question. who risked to say what the both of us were thinking since we left the car: How long do we have to drive to get to the sunny Tessin? We just jumped out of car a hopped and danced around the car. We had the solution for our problem: run away! We had a great time climbing in the sunny and warm Tessin.