American mountaineer, accomplished author and editor of the American Alpine Journal, John Harlin, has been injured in a fall during the early stages of an attempt to follow the entire Swiss border under his own steam.
Harlin's odyssey, which he hoped to complete in three months, would have been an anticlockwise journey around the country, keeping as much as possible on, or 'within a stone's throw' of, the frontier.
This would have involved plenty of walking, climbing along the great Valais chain over mountains such as the Dent d'Herens, Matterhorn and Monte Rosa, a traverse of the jagged Bregaglia and more snowy summits of the Bernina, cycling, and even kayaking (as the political border runs along the Rhine and through several lakes).
The journey, which is well over 2,000km, was not only a personal challenge but would have a cultural and environmental aspect, as Harlin planned to meet and interview alpinists, scientists and historians along the way.
He started his journey from Leysin, the village in which he lived as a boy and where his mother taught biology at the American School and his father founded the International School of Mountaineering (ISM).
On the 23rd June he made the 300m descent into the main valley with New Zealand resident Julie-Ann Clyma, and then walked 30km to St Gingolphe, a town on the French-Swiss border south of Lake Geneva.
He almost immediately ran into problems, experiencing a good deal of knee pain. Fortunately, as he moved south towards the Mont Blanc Range, the knees improved dramatically.
On the 27th, after a series of long and tiring days, he reached Le Chatelard, where the border crosses the Chamonix-Martigny road.
There he had a day's rest and met his first partner, American Cameron Burns, for the next leg of the journey through the eastern end of the Mont Blanc Range.
Over the 29th and 30th the pair moved south to bivouac below the Col du Tour Noir (between the Aiguille d'Argentière and the Tour Noir) from where they hoped to tackle one of the crux sections of the entire journey; along the complex ridge dividing the Argentière and A Neuve glaciers, over Mont Dolent and down to Col Ferret.
At mid morning on the 1st July, somewhere on the flanks of this ridge in the vicinity of the Aiguilles Rouges de Dolent, 54-year-old Harlin took a 15-20m fall when the rock broke.
One of his two ropes was cut but the other held and at first Harlin felt there was little damage except for a possible cracked rib.
However, when he later started to experience increasing pain in both feet, he knew something more serious had happened.
He was helicoptered to Sion hospital, where initial examinations found four broken bones in one foot and one in the other. Early prognosis suggests a plaster cast might be necessary for the next six weeks.
Harlin had been posting daily logs on the Swiss news site, swissinfo.ch
In 2005 John Harlin climbed the North Face of the Eiger and his book, The Eiger Obsession [Facing the mountain that killed my Father] won the 2007 Banff Mountaineering History Award and was runner up for the 2008 Boardman-Tasker Award.
His IMAX film, The Alps, which featured this ascent and an exploration of other areas of Switzerland with his family, has been a global success.
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