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We’ve seen, and taken part in plenty of crazy sporting events here over the years. We played football on Salzegg under the Eiger north face, snow bike racing, you can even have a game of golf on the Lauberhorn in summer if you fancy it. And of course there’s the pool race at the end of the season. None of these even approaches today’s event however. You might remember that back in January we had a world cup ski race here. The course is 4.4 kilometres long, and it has a vertical drop of just over 1000 metres. It goes from the top of the Lauberhorn down to Innerwengen just below the village. Today’s challenge is to complete the course in reverse. That’s right, you start at the bottom and race to the top. It’s called the Vertical Up.

There are no rules concerning how you might accomplish this, as long as you don’t use anything motorised. Skis are ok for example.

Fancy dress is encouraged.

Here’s Georg from Central Sport. You might remember him piloting the Space Shuttle in the pool race last year.

Lining up for the start.

And off they go.

The first 50 metres is a gentle meadow. This doesn’t last long. The Zeilschuss comes next.

The winner will take 30 or 40 minutes to complete the course apparently. To put that into context, if you were to go to the finish from here using the train and a couple of lifts, it would take you just as long as the winner will do it on foot.

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We had a good game of curling yesterday evening with all the usual suspects from Rocks.

And needless to say we followed this up with a good old knees-up for St Patrick’s day.

High jinks in the bar later on.

After all that today was always going to be a quiet one. We went for a nice walk. The goats are always pleased to see us.

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Skiing is quite a tricky sport to master. We’ve been doing it regularly for 25 years and we’re still learning. This being the case, ski manufacturers are always trying to convince customers that their latest innovation will make us all ski a lot better without any additional effort or skill. Most of this is utter bunkum of course – if you really want to improve you get some good coaching.

The latest fad from the ski industry is fat skis – skis that are considerably wider than we are used to. I have always poured scorn on this idea – it can’t possibly work, and anyway who wants to ski on a couple of 5 inch wide planks?

So it was with some amusement this morning that I found myself at the top of the hill at Männlichen, clicking into a pair of silly fat skis. The reason for this is of course the demon drink. Bob and Rachel came round for dinner last night and persuaded us to borrow their fat skis for a day. Here’s Val (note the ridiculous skis) with Rachel.

I really wanted to hate them. Trouble was, everything I tried just worked like a charm. Steep, icy pitches? No problem. Fast carving and short turns? Easy. I knew they’d be good off-piste, and sure enough they were spectacular, even in the crud that was left behind after yesterday’s wind storm.

Val liked her silly skis so much she made Rachel an offer and bought them when we got back to the village. Bob’s aren’t for sale, so I need to go shopping not only for new (fat) skis, but also a large slice of humble pie.

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Occasionally we get a weather phenomenon called a Föhn. This is a mild, dry southerly wind that blows at well over 100 km/h. Today’s Föhn has closed everything.

It’s hard to see in a photo, but up the hill the snow is being blown around like crazy.

We popped up to the Co-op for a few bits and pieces earlier, but other than that we’ll hunker down at home. Fingers crossed that the power stays on as Bob and Rachel are coming round for dinner.

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Not much to report today, the weather has taken a turn for the worse and it’s snowing at the moment. We’ve mostly been doing laundry. The Jungfraubahn have fixed the selfie camera at the top of the Lauberhorn at last. Here’s a pic from yesterday morning.

And of course it was quiz time in Rocks last night, and once again we came out on top, mainly through sheer weight of numbers.

Our team (l-r) Sian, Martin, Mike, Val, myself and Ozzie.

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We had a good night out with Sally and Paul last night, popped into Rocks for a nightcap on the way home and found a party going on.

It was a good skiing day today in warm sunshine. Much of the snow in people’s gardens has melted, and it doesn’t look like there’ll be much more this season down in the village.

We waved goodbye to Sally and Paul this afternoon. Have a good trip home chaps and enjoy Interlaken and Geneva.

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We all went up to Männlichen at silly o’clock this morning. Had a couple of runs then met Sally for coffee. Weather’s a bit hazy but not too bad.

Paul and I ski round to Scheidegg. Here he is with his first black run in the background.

We skied back to the village via Mary’s, then enjoyed a few beers at the Figeller bar on the nursery slope.