Skylight Dream

End of April; Lechtal; Häselgehr. 4 o'clock in the morning. It's warm outside; so mild that it feels utterly absurd that we want to set out on a ski tour. If it wasn't for this guy. A man who's clearly crazy for skiing; he never seems to get enough. He's the one who called me a few days earlier, asking me to join him on this adventure. He said it's going to be a very special one. Special to him, because the couloir he wants to ski is visible from his skylight window. That's why he calls it his "skylight dream". A slope that is always visible, always there, that keeps tempting him every single day – until this dream would finally become a reality.

At this time of year, other people are already heading to the lakes to play in the sun and get rid of the noble pallor that has taken them all winter to attain. Or they pull their bikes out (we'll get to that a bit later). Not me. I am sitting here in the dark, at 4 in the morning, and I don't have the slightest idea where this ski tour will take me. But I feel confident about it. Where in the world does this blind trust come from? As a professional ski guide, I should be anxious about not knowing where I am going, but there is that particular type of person whose decisions I would never question. "You don't need to know everything beforehand. You'll find out on the way," he says. Look who's talking!

After all, he knows every single one of the peaks between his chosen home here at the German-Austrian border and the Allgaeu region. I don't know too many – if any – people like him, spending every free minute in summer and winter scouting and exploring every – and I mean every – little corner of their backyard. But that's him: Martin "Martl" Fiala. I don't know how he does it because he spends half of the year traveling the world, being the FIS racing director for Ski Cross. After collecting our equipment and unplugging the e-bikes, I can at least guess the direction of where we are going. Being a total e-bike greenhorn, I am surprised how easy it is to pedal uphill. "This is really not bad," I say as I try to keep up with Martl.

My goal is to go with the flow and sweat as little as possible. The higher we get, the better it works. While I am still wondering about our final destination, I hear a loud curse. Martl's chain has torn. This doesn't come as a surprise considering the weight he is carrying: His camera gear, the safety equipment and 100 kilograms of bodyweight, mostly muscle. With his former World Cup downhill legs, he is surely pushing that poor bike to its limits. I can't help laughing. "Yeah, great, you got it easy with your little gym bag," Martl says. And now? After hiding his bike in the forest Martin continues on foot, I end up carrying his backpack on my e-bike. Here it goes, my plan to avoid sweating.

At the end of the forest road I park my bike, and we shoulder the skis to climb a steep, side-sloping trail towards the snow line. Well, it's not what you would call "snow" but rather "avalanche deposit." Bringing our ski crampons turns out to be the best idea so far. It's no fun to skin up through the rubble and bushes the size of small cars, but we manage to make altitude and finally reach a smooth, snow-covered slope. Considering the temperature, we are surprised to find such a solid snow cover. Apparently, the cold spring nights are still doing a good job up here. After a three-hour kick turn massacre, I finally recognize the mountain in front of me.

It's actually a quite familiar one: the Kreuzkarspitze, one of the most striking, rugged peaks of the Hornbach mountain range. From here, it's obvious where we would go, and there's no need to check the map or discuss our route because there's really only one way to the summit. We continue with our kick turns and fight our way up. Meanwhile, it's getting steeper and steeper. At some point, we need to swap the skis for our crampons. We pass a 200-meter wide balcony with an edge petering out into abyss, but the steps are good and stable, and we decide to continue without a rope until we finally reach the final 55-degree couloir leaning against the summit like a funnel. "Ok, let's do it!!!", I think out loud, and Martl bursts out laughing.

In January, the volume of his laughter would have caused avalanches throughout the entire Lech Valley, but around this time of the year, we are safe. After crossing one last steep gravel slope, we finally reach the summit. The entrance to descent is only accessible via a 30-meter, vertically sloping chimney. We find good grips and steps and safely downclimb this section, only carrying an ultralight axe. In front of us, a 500-meter band runs through the jagged cliffs of the Kreuzkarspitze. Martl is the first to drop in. He wants to shoot pictures from an exposed position. The snow seems perfect; spring corn. Before I drop into the slope, I remember the technical advice Martin keeps teasing me with despite me being a ski instructor.

At the very same moment, I hear him yelling with a smirk on his face: "Keep that inside hand up!". A group of ibex seems interested in him as he climbs a rocky cliff to find the right spot for his pictures. Being nimble and light-footed, they probably think he's one of their kind. As I drop into the couloir, I yell: "Skylight dream – CHECK !!" Reaching the Noppenkar, we look back at the exposed line and I realize that Martl's house has a lot more windows with views of wonderful mountains that are still waiting to be skied.