Jakob and Matthias Weger wandering through thin, whispering snow and shaky layers, no real plan but the pulse of the mountain guiding them, until suddenly a shadowed couloir yawns out of a remote face, a jagged mystery carved in ice and rock, steep corridors above, a cliff splitting the middle, another hidden slide waiting below, and suddenly it’s all they can see, all they can chase.

They move through fog that drifts like ghosts, light shifting like jazz notes on a cool morning, threading ridges and gullies where vision is a rumor, stitching together the route in fragments, inching along, the mountain moving them, telling them to stop, to wait, to push forward, tiny gains in a colossal world.

A narrow ribbon of snow finally opens the door, and they step into the face, and then the mountain gets serious, tests of snow that could crack, traverses that hang on nothing, anchors that must hold, rappels that stretch into eternity, and only then does the full vastness of it all hit, the committed descent, the raw, reckless poetry of exposure and gravity.

Extreme Drop