Christmas 2024 began with a slow, romantic crawl through the dark — boarding ÖBB's Nightjet in Berlin and waking up to Swiss mountains outside the window. From Zurich, Lennart's family led the way up to Lägernhaus SAC, a wooden Swiss Alpine Club hut perched at 1,340 meters on the Bleikenboden meadow above Schwyz, just below the Ibergeregg pass. Tucked between fir trees with the Ibergeregg ski lifts within walking distance, the hut became our home for six days. The snow came down hard the first few days — the kind of heavy, endless fall that muffles everything. We strapped on snowshoes and waded through drifts, cooked Christmas dinner together in the hut's kitchen, and skied the family-friendly slopes connecting toward Hoch-Ybrig until my legs and lungs gave out and a cold finally pulled me off the mountain. The group's masterpiece was an igloo big enough to host ten people for a party, dug and packed by hand over long afternoons. And then the reward: a morning above a sea of clouds, the distant lake erased beneath them, the white below meeting the white of the snow at our feet in one continuous horizon.
