Géraldine Fasnacht presents her new film

The sportswoman from the extreme French region presents her new film in preview this Friday in Crissier (VD). It retraces the aviation and snowboarding feat she achieved on Monte Rosa, in June 2024.

“It was the most complicated adventure of my life,” says Géraldine Fasnacht on the phone. Coming from a woman voted “adventurer of the year” in 2021 by the magazine Paris Matchthis statement is enough to set the tone. The 44-year-old Romande punctuated it with a sigh, which mixed relief at having accomplished this feat and memory of the hassle it caused her. And even despair, at times.

On June 13, Géraldine Fasnacht snowboarded down the northwest face of Nordend, a summit in the Monte Rosa massif in Valais, which culminates at an altitude of 4,608 meters. “It’s a steep slope of 55 degrees, which is practically ice all year round,” she explains.

If this feat is remarkable, it is ultimately just another line in the impressive CV of the Vaudoise, who is used to lifting mountains by hurtling down them on her board or with her wingsuit. What made this adventure a feat was its combination with another perilous challenge: landing with a small plane on a glacier at 4,200 meters.

“Technically, it is an extremely difficult place due to its high altitude, the most complicated in the Alps. The weather conditions had to be optimal and the configuration of the glacier left very little room to land and take off,” says Géraldine Fasnacht, who passed her pilot’s license in 2011. It’s simple: it’s the altitude record for a landing in the Alps. It had already been established by the Valaisan Hermann Geiger in 1953, who landed in the same place.

A obsession and the tragedy of Romeo

“As a tribute to his achievement, I wanted to follow in his footsteps,” confides the pilot and rider. And it was particularly good: from her microlight, which she called “Romeo”, she spotted the Nordend and the possibility of leaving her there, literally this time, with her snowboard.

And if, in addition, it offers her the opportunity to push her limits, the native of Lausanne – who “doesn’t like what is easy” – is delighted.

“It was a dream to achieve this sequence of the highest and most technical landing in the Alps with a steep descent from the Nordend summit. I thus combined all my passions for the mountains,” explains Géraldine Fasnacht. For this pioneer, the idea of ​​killing two birds with one stone on this rocky point has become an obsession by 2022. And a long way of the cross.

“Every day, I watched the different weather sites and webcams in the region for two to four hours,” she rewinds.

And the least we can say is that the Romande had to be patient: impossible to find a window for more than a year, the fault of the persistent ice on the slope.

Another Alpine feat will be attempted by French-speaking people????

Throughout this period, she also trained to land her microlight – which she took off from Sion – in high mountains, in steep places.

But Romeo experienced a tragedy one day in 2023. Misjudging the landing and the snow, Géraldine Fasnacht crashed her small plane on the Monte Rosa glacier. Results: broken propeller and damaged fin. Even if Romeo was quickly repaired thanks to a specialized mechanic, the extreme sports car lost all its hopes at that time.

She also warned the film crew – the idea from the start was to make a film around this challenge – that the project was finished.

And short film 17 minutes

But here it is: if Géraldine Fasnacht seemed resigned to realizing “this unattainable dream”, it continued to wander in the back of her mind. Little by little, the flame was reignited as she noticed that the weather conditions, at the start of 2024, looked more favorable than ever, including a small layer of snow on the Nordend ice.

So she went back to flying around Monte Rosa and, her impression reinforced, tried it on May 25. But once Romeo landed on the glacier, it was a cold shower: the fog made the descent by the chosen route too dangerous. It was only a postponement.

On June 13, after more than two years of obstinacy, she followed the flight to the Monte Rosa glacier (1h15 round trip), the climb in seal skins to the summit (3 hours) and the descent in snowboard. This only lasted a few minutes, but it offered a good dose of adrenaline to Géraldine Fasnacht and superb images to her film crew. They brought the film to life Nordend – Dreaming beyond limits.

This 17-minute short film, directed by Guido Perrini, shows Géraldine Fasnacht – herself equipped with a go pro camera – sliding down the snowy and pristine slopes of the Nordend, in wide (thanks to drones) and tight shots. It also rewinds the different stages of this unusual challenge.

“A lot of progress at the level ecological»

La Vaudoise presents this film during a preview open to the public, this Friday evening at the Millenium conference center in Crissier (VD) (for more information, click here).

She could also be questioned by the audience on the ecological aspect of her challenge. So she anticipates:

The adventurer specifies that “Romeo weighs 300 kg and consumes 15 liters per hour of unleaded fuel, it’s like a car. I did the calculation: if I had gone up with other transports, adding them together, I would have consumed more gasoline than with my plane.”

One question remains: why does she talk about her “ultimate alpine adventure” in her film? “I still have projects in mind,” (re)assures Géraldine Fasnacht. “But they will no longer be of the magnitude of Nordend: I no longer have the patience to wait so long before succeeding in a challenge!”