I had planned to return to Saas-fee during the Easter vacations to try climbing the Allalinhorn again, but the weather refused to cooperate and while conditions were perfect a few days before, huge precipitation (170cm of snow) raised the avalanche danger to 4+ out of 5, making the attempt far too dangerous. So we decided with two friends (Louis and Enzo) and my teacher to head for the climbing garden in Ollon instead.We got there in the early afternoon and started climbing straight away; there were already a huge number of climbers there, so the route options were pretty limited; we started with a nice 6a route that my teacher led, then I took my turn on the top-roped route; the route was pretty good, but the holds had been polished by all the climbers, making them slippery.Once back down we decided to do a two-pitch route with a belay in the middle to learn and master them. I did the two 6a+ sections in the lead and loved the routes, which were really beautiful and just rightly difficult, then I joined my teacher at the belay so that he could show me how to belay Enzo, who was climbing second using a reverso.I did well and was able to repeat the operation alone at the top of the second pitch, then we waited for our friends to arrive for a while a the top.

This weekend, I went with three friends to the Aiguilles de Baulmes for a day of intensive climbing. We started by walking up to the Aiguilles de Baulmes, which must have taken us half an hour, including the exploration of a bunker right on the cliff.We arrived at a first spot on a magnificent rock, but unfortunately the routes were quite difficult. We did a 4c as a warm-up, but I couldn't find the belay, so I had to move to another route nearby. On the same spot I tried a random route which turned out to be a 6b and I came down about halfway down.So we moved on and after a bit more walking we arrived on a new wall, not very big but with some excellent routes, I did two 6a's in the lead and climbed well with my mates. And since we'd been here before, we didn't do all the routes and moved again.

Together with my maths teacher/rope climbing companion, we decided to attempt an ascent of the Allalinhorn (4027m) in the Saas-Grund region. We set off early on Sunday morning, arriving at the Saas-Fee lift station before 10am. But we were held up at Martigny station due to an assault on train staff, which meant we missed our connection to Visp/Viège and arrived half an hour later at the foot of the lifts. Unfortunately, when we arrived, we found that the alpine metro that was still taking us up to 3500m was closed due to the amount of snow that had fallen during the night, so we kept hoping that it would open, but this was only the case for pedestrians on their way to the panoramic restaurant. But as we didn't have enough time to make a trail and attempt the summit from Saas-Fee in one day, we decided to cancel the ascent and take a half-day lift pass.

A few months ago, when I was still in the States, I started to feel pain in my knee.I didn't pay attention to it right away, but during a school sports camp the pain was just too much to be normal, and I noticed a hard lump that wasn't on my other knee, so after the summer vacations I went for a check-up with my doctor, who couldn't determine the cause of the pain precisely, but booked me an appointment at the sports doctor in Lausanne. But the appointment took a bit too long, and in the end I didn't get to the hospital until December.I had an X-ray and more recently an MRI which hasn't yet given me the exact cause of the pain, but it's clear that it's a bone cyst or a growth, so I'm having an operation in 10 days' time, on January 14. Unfortunately, this is going to create a bit of a setback in my project, as I'll have to take a break from sport for 4 to 6 weeks after the operation. So I'll continue to go track once I've recovered sufficiently and there's no longer any direct risk to my knee, I'll also go to the weight room to do some cardio and to train my upper body, but the bouldering will have to wait a bit as the falls are directly to the ground and therefore much riskier.

Just before my operation, I had the opportunity to go on an outing with the Club Alpin des Diablerets. The aim of the outing was to learn how to use an avalanche rescue kit, i.e. an avalanche transceiver, shovel and probe, but also to go on a fun ski touring trip.So we took the train from Lausanne to the top of La Lécherette, where we put the sealskins under our skis and the avalanche transceiver around our torsos.We then split into two groups, one advanced and one beginner (the one I was in, as it was my first time ski touring), and set off in the direction of Mont Chevreuil.I had no trouble getting up there and really enjoyed walking on these skis, we also tried our hand at conversion (i.e. turning around on a steep slope on the way up) and we took a break in a little corner a little isolated from the wind to practice using the shovel and probe.After a few exercises and a bit of theory, we set off again for the summit, where we arrived a little before the second group, so we had a bite to eat and took the skins off our skis to prepare for the descent to Chateau-d'Oex.