It sounds crazy because it is. The plan for the team of seven was to cross the entire main Alpine ridge from Vienna in the far east to Nice at the opposing Western end in less than 40 days. Inspired by the first successful crossing of the route in 1971, by four Austrian athletes, the name of the project said it all: Der Lange Weg, The Long Way.
Along the 2000 km route lay in wait some of Europe's fiercest peaks: from Grossglockner in Austria, to the Dufourspitze in Switzerland, all the way to the Mont Blanc in France, over 90.000m of vertical gain stood between the mountaineers and their final destination. We sat down with two members of the team, Philipp Reiter and David Wallmann, to hear about their experience.