The plan was to get Alpnachstad as early as possible, catch the first lift up the mountain, get dropped off at Mattalp and then climb all four towers of the Galtigernturme. Of course there was the Mattalpplatte just underneath it, a sheet of 100 metres of eminently climbable limestone ... if time was no problem of course.

By leaving Zurich a few minutes after 7am we did get the very first cogwheel train at 8.20am. But we found out that they haven't been dropping climbers off at Mattalp for some years, and despite Guilia trying to sweet-talk the driver they weren't going to be doing it today either, so we had to walk down from the top. Despite arriving a little later than we had hoped, it was 9.45am by the time we got down to Mattalp, Guilia and Jorge were very keen to do the Mattalpplatte in addition to the towers. I thought to myself there were enough walk-offs that if we ran out of time we wouldn't have to do all of the towers today.

I tried to do Fadegrad (5b), right in the middle, but wimped out towards the end and used bolts on the neighbouring 4b. So when I was finished I had pretty severly zigged and zagged my way up the cliff, no wonder the ropedrag was heavy duty.

Had stopped about 15 m above the end of the pitch, Guilia was telling me that I had run out of rope, my plan was to try and turn a three pitch lead into two and maybe save a bit of time in the bargain. I brought them up after me and had everyone almost hanging on the wall. This made Guilia a bit nervous, Jorge on the other hand knows no fear. At least no right then anyway.

I did the second pitch (4c, lots of greenery) and managed to stretch the ropes a bit and just barely to reach a tree right where it was safe to unrope and wander up to the first tower. On both of these pitches I was trying to save a bit more time by simultaneously belaying for both Guilia and Jorge with the gigi. But that was burning my shoulders out too fast and even though it saved a bit of time I didn't do any simul-belaying after that.

It was nearly 11am when we got to the base of the first tower. I was trying to work out the timing, we had to link as many pitches together if we wanted to have a chance to do everything and still make the last cogwheel down at 5.30pm. Guilia got the first two pitches and I gave her a few directions before she left. She had to stop after the first pitch because a couple got up there before us, probably snuck up using the goat path while we thrashed our way up the Mattalpplate. So she got herself set and prepared to bring us up.

Suddenly she was yelling "Rock" pretty urgently and sure enough it looked like most of the mountain was leaping down on us. One biggish boulder bounced down over us and I was standing absolutely still and watching for ones that might hit me. When the large one sailed by I bellowed out "STEIN" as loudly as I possibly good. Poor Jorge had never been in this situation and sort of tried to actively dodge them, I think he got hit by a smaller piece. My camera bag took a hit too and started rolling down the hill. Uhoh, I thought that maybe I'm going to have to buy myself a new camera pretty soon. With all the rocks falling, and Guilia and me yelling and screaming, I think Jorge got a bit freaked out by events. The camera bag had stopped rolling and Jorge was mostly ok. He had this aggressive look on his face and there was a suggestion that we might have been attacked by that couple up ahead of us. I tried to tell him that this wasn't terribly unusual in the mountains. The camera, a big old Olympus C2100, wouldn't switch back on. Hmm, maybe that new Canon I had my eye on a while back finally came into focus. I put it back into the bag and resigned myself to having a bit of dead weight for the rest of the day. Guilia brought me up and then Jorge, there was a lot of loose rock around so it wasn't much of a surprise when she explained what happened. We were on an angled ledge with a few small trees around so it was pretty relaxed. That couple seemed pretty close to moving on from the belay above, so we sent Guilia up again.

She brought us up there with her and we looked ahead up the spine of the first tower. That other couple seemed to be moving along, so Jorge took the lead and pretty quickly linked up the next two pitches. While he climbed I fiddled with my busted camera for a bit and found that if I just changed the batteries it wasn't busted at all. Awesome, it was back in business and I was shooting everything in sight. About 55 meters away Jorge stood there chatting with the girl as she belayed for her boyfriend, and was hopefully giving them a healthy dose of hurry-up. Guilia took the last two pitches, linking them into one and coming close to overtaking that couple. It was the end of the first tower and when Jorge and I reached her it was about 1pm.

Taking a lunch break we lounged about in the grass of the little alpine meadow that lay at the end of the tower. The second set of batteries died in my camera but I would find another set soon afterwards. I spoke to the couple we had chased up the tower, they were nearby also taking a breather. It turned out that they wouldn't be doing any more climbing, their plan was to walk back to up to the top and call it a day. Which left the rest free and clear for us. Awesome. At 1.30pm I got my lazy bum compadres moving again and we headed off to tower number two. This was teeny, but it was also irritating. We had to climb around to the other side at first, which snafued my plan of linking up it's first itty bitty two pitches into one because the resultant rope-drag would be heinious. I climbed up about eight metres to the other side and then bring up Guilia so she could belay me up the next bit. I ended up linking pitches two and three, again having to stretch the rope a tiny bit in order to acheive this. Guila brought up Jorge to the perch I left her on and then the both of them came up one after the other to where I was sitting at the end of the tower. Tower number three was an easy thirty metre stroll away.

While the others came up to my belay I could see that we were being followed by a group who were just finishing the first tower. Looked like four or five people. Even if they were fast, they would have to wait for us anyway. I was getting a little spooked by the time. It was about 2.30pm when we set up for tower three. I wasn't sure that we could squeeze in the fourth tower as well. Guilia and Jorge were not so concerned though.

Jorge shot up the first pitch of tower three like there was no tomorrow, or gravity. It was a 4a so it was the first which had an actual vertical element to the climbing. Of course it was no problem for Jorge and he had it done in about 15 minutes. We joined him up there and then fired Guilia up the rest to finish it off, linking the last two pitches together. They knew I was thinking about pulling the pin on the last tower because of the time issue. We got everyone to the top of tower three by about 3.20pm and had an emergency conference. We still needed to do a short pitch to get down off the back. After a bit of back and forth I finally relented and said that if we could get to the bottom of pitch four inside 20 minutes then that would satisfy me, otherwise I was closing the shop down. I did not want to miss that last cogwheel down! Not when the car was about a four hour hike down the mountain under climbing packs. I was pretty sure that doing that would kill me for sure.

Guilia raced along the final ridge down the other side of tower three, I think there was one single bolt in about thirty meters of fairly easy scrambling. I think she did the whole thing in about three minutes flat. I went second and got there pretty quickly too. I took over the belaying for Jorge, and then Guilia grabbed a rope and literally took off at a run to set things up under tower four. By the time Jorge and I were ready to follow she was already fifty metres ahead and untangling a rope under it's first pitch. When we were all there I check my watch, only fifteen minutes had passed. Okay, you guys win, we do tower four.

I was a little bit worried because tower four contains a pitch of 4c, then one of 4b and then one of 3b at the end. I anticipated that we might do these pitches slower because they were harder than the others we had been running along previously. I figured that perhaps I should do those first two pitches myself and see if I could link them together into one. When I got on with it I found that first pitch was a little thought-provoking, but not too bad. With my watch ticking away the minutes I really didn't dawdle around to enjoy the view or anything. Those pitches linked together just in time and I started bringing Jorge up and then Guilia. The view was undeniably good, we were pretty close to the top of the mountain and about one and a half kilometres above the lakes to the east. Fluffy clouds, shining sun, not too hot, not too cold. Perfect weather. Guilia did the last pitch quickly too. Were up and over just as the clock was ticking around to 4.30pm.

We had one hour to get back to the top of the mountain, which was mostly a traverse to the south with a bit of up and down and then one last long up. We made it in about 50 minutes. Once again I ran out of juice in the last 20 minutes. Even when Guilia took my pack and rope I still found it impossible to keep up. Ack! Didn't this happen last time?

I collapsed near death at the top while Jorge and Guilia organized beer, sprite and sausages. With these comestibles ingested I was able to stagger as far as that last damn cogwheel train. Made it again. By the skin of our teeth. Again.