World Vertical Week was held last week and the hundreds of pictures tagged with #verticalweek on Instagram give a great overall look into what people have been up to during the week. Three of the most inspirational photos were taken by Hollie Holden, Sami Renner and Christoph Oberschneider. Each one of the winners will receive a new Suunto Spartan Ultra to accompany them on their future adventures. 🌲// Legs/entire body felt like an 🐘 at this weeks @vanrunco trail ✈️ crew BUT I managed to hit my @suunto #VerticalWeek goal of 4000m (1k more than my 1st goal! 🙌) of climbing and we were blessed with a pretty layer of 'convenient snow', right @coralie2700 ? 😉🤣❄️ A post shared by Hollie Holden (@holholden) on Mar 5, 2017 at 12:59pm PST “The Vertical Week was a great opportunity for me to start building my strength and climbing skills ahead of my upcoming training season for my 1st 50 mile Ultra Marathon - the Squamish 50 in August which is a tough, mountainous course with 11,000 feet (3350m) of climbing! I set myself the goal of covering a similar amount of climbing during Vertical Week so I spent a lot of time on a local trail called the BCMC which starts at the base of Grouse Mountain climbing to the top. This trail has 850m of elevation gain in just 3km of climbing! I ended up doing this trail 4 times in the week (3 times within one 24hr period!) then finished off the week running trails with my local run crew, Vancouver Running Company Flight Crew, surpassing my 3k goal and hit 4000m for the week instead! The weather in Vancouver has been unseasonably cold, with lots of snow & wet rain and I wouldn't have done anywhere near as much climbing last week if it wasn't for the awesome community of friends that I have here who are willing to come climb mountains in a snow storm with me!” –Hollie Holden, BC, Canada Cause she asked so friendly... 🐦 #lovemountains #skimo #verticalweek #collectingmoments #mountaineering #watzmann A post shared by Sami (@samirenner) on Mar 5, 2017 at 10:10am PST “The photo was taken on the last of three summits at the “Watzmann-überschreitung”, a famous summer tour in my hometown with over 24km and 2500m of climbing. The goal for me was to do this very technical tour with skis. As I reached the third summit, I shared my last Powerbar with a bird. A few days earlier during the Vertical Week I was in Zermatt, reaching Breithorn’s (4164m) west and east summits on skis, and on two more skitours. All in all, my Vertical Week was about 7500m of elevation gain over 65km.” –Sami Renner, Germany Welcome back, #winter! Yesterday was a great #powderday in @visitgastein. Can't wait for more! A post shared by Christoph Oberschneider (@coberschneider) on Mar 2, 2017 at 3:09am PST “I work as a backcountry skiing photographer in Austria, so my goal each winter season is to capture the beauty of backcountry skiing & ski touring, to share my passion for the sport with as many people as possible and ultimately to get more people to enjoy life in the outdoors. So far we have had a very dry winter here in the Alps, so getting good shots has not been an easy task. So when it finally started snowing 10 days ago, I headed out to Sportgastein (a freeride spot close to Salzburg) with two good friends. We found some beautiful lines in the backcountry with lift-supported ski touring and I managed to get some good shots. And that's how I also spent the rest of the Vertical Week, ski touring in the mountains around Salzburg and trying to capture the beauty of the winter landscape and some more skiing action before the snow starts melting again.” –Christophe Oberschneider, Austria Congratulations to our three winners and thank you very much everyone for sharing your Vertical Week moments!

World Vertical Week will be held globally on February 27 – March 5. You can climb where ever and choose whichever human powered sport you want. Last year the biggest average ascents per Move were climbed in Switzerland, Austria and France. Ski touring and mountaineering led the highest average ascents for individual sports. Which countries and sports will lead the way this year? The only thing you need to do to participate is to make sure your country information in your Suunto App settings is correct. After that your ascent will automatically be calculated in your home country’s total figure. By the end of the week we’ll find out where in the world the real climbers live. Have fun! #VERTICALWEEK PHOTO CONTEST Share your Vertical Week experiences on Instagram or Facebook with #VerticalWeek for a chance to win a Suunto Spartan Ultra GPS watch. (Terms and conditions apply. Read them here.)   Read more How to enjoy the outdoors with your partner: a chat with Emelie Forsberg and Kilian Jornet Greg Hill's mountain rules 7 tips to accelerating your uphill speed

Watch Greg Hill’s "7 Terrain Tricks"   This sounds like a lot of thinking to do. That’s OK – it takes a lot of time to go up. It’s all about developing a loop of thought patterns that you keep going over and over – where’s the next safe spot? What’s above me? What dangers am I exposed to, and where am I going if something happens? – that’s what keeps you safe.   And it’s not about making things tough – sometimes it’s about making them easy. Yeah – especially the ‘fight the smallest guy at the bar’ trick. You want to go up the safest, easiest terrain, because often, it’s the least exposed to danger. If I’m touring in a new area, I’ll have looked at a map, found the smallest slopes, and used that information while I’m out there.   Greg, who taught YOU the tricks? Most of these I picked up at the beginning of my skiing career – but mostly, I’ve learned from the mountains themselves. If you watch and listen, you can learn a lot – and that’s at the heart of what many of these tricks are about. Nothing can teach you something like a real-life example. Early on, a mentor taught me to ‘always ski from the top’. Not long after, I found myself on a tour, about to drop into a line, and realized, I wasn’t at the top. So I got back on the ridge, worked my way to the top. The third turn in I sent down a Class III slide that would have almost certainly killed me.   That’s not the only time you’ve seen these tricks work in real life. Absolutely not. "Seeking the higher ground” – we were on Mt Manaslu in 2012. We camped on the highest ground we could find. That night, an avalanche caught 30 people sleeping in tents. Camps II and II got hit. 12 people died and 30 were caught in their sleeping bags. We were above the slide because we’d picked a spot with no risk from above – just 50m away from where the slide hit.   You want to reduce your time of exposure – but that doesn’t mean you need to rush. Yes – movement between safe spots should be fast, but don’t make hasty decisions. Move quickly, think calmly. You don’t want to rush decisions.   Is it possible to reduce risk to zero? Absolutely not. And for me, that’s part of the definition of adventure – it’s an activity that involves risk. That admittedly is part of what makes it exciting and interesting.   Stay tuned for more from Greg Hill in the next instalment of his video series – and ski safe! Main image: Bruno Long  READ ALSO Greg Hill's mountain rules     

Watch Greg’s video below to learn the rules and find out why they are important for you too – then scroll down to our interview with Greg to learn more about the life experiences that shaped them.   Greg, let’s start with the obvious: tell use about that avalanche! May 15th 2014. Deep in the heart of Pakistan, at 5500m, as far from rescue as possible. I only broke my leg, but was very lucky to have lived at all. It was only 30cm high, but it was a few hundred meters across, but the entire feature that I was skiing slid for about 700m vertically.   What did you do wrong? There was simply nowhere to go – and that was my technical mistake. What I did wrong was skiing a feature with no escape routes or safe spots. I skied like I was able to outrun an avalanche. A small ski cut would have triggered the thing and I would have been on top. But the bigger rule I broke was rule number one – not being afraid enough. I also broke rule number two – the partners I had there weren’t my normal partners. My normal partners would have questioned me more. They didn’t question me enough. Did they learn something from this? I bet they did.   Why did you need to be in that avalanche? The funny thing is, I had lasted so many years without any issues – I needed that slide to keep my ego in check. There weren’t red flags popping up. We had waited a bunch of days for the snow to settle. The mountains were dormant. But I still broke the rules.   What’s your biggest tip to help you follow the rules? Keep asking yourself questions. As you’re hiking up. Am i being afraid? Am I well-trained? Do I have the knowledge to back my decisions? Are my partners adding more? Always remember – you don’t know you're making poor decisions, until you experience a consequence.   What can we learn from you next? This is a lead-in to my terrain tricks video – we’ll discuss concrete, tangible terrain decisions that will help you find ways to wander around the mountains and stay safe.   Stay tuned for more mountain advice from Greg Hill in December! READ MORE PREPARE FOR SNOW  

Kilian Jornet is returning from Mt. Everest without having been able to make a final attempt at the summit. Poor weather conditions during the final stage of the expedition forced him to abandon his climb of the world’s highest mountain via it's North Face. Though it was a difficult decision for Kilian and his team, he is as passionate as ever to continue to seek adventure through his Summits of My Life project.  “During the first few weeks we were acclimatising well and the conditions were good. However, when we were getting ready to prepare the attempt the weather began to change. There were some heavy snow storms and a large accumulation of snow. As a result, although we were in good physical shape, there was a high risk of avalanches and in the absence of good safety conditions it was impossible to climb,” Kilian explained.   In spite of not being able to complete the challenge, Jornet was happy with the experience. “There’s a sense of frustration because we’re well acclimatised and we feel good but it would have exposed us to too much risk. Nevertheless, we’re happy because it’s been a very positive experience in which we’ve learnt a lot. Being alone on Everest is incredible as there was no one else there. Now we’ll go home to recover and plan the future. I think that if we come back there are some things we would change but it’s been a great experience and a good lesson for next time.” So, having spent three weeks at base camp on the North Face of Everest (6,000m) acclimatising and preparing for the challenge of climbing the world’s highest mountain, Jornet and the Summits of My Life team postponed the the Everest challenge until a later date. With this challenge, Kilian Jornet intended to complete the Summits of My Life project in which since 2012 he has broken records for the ascent and descent of mountains around the world.  READ MORE KILIAN JORNET’S GAME PLAN FOR SPEED ASCENT OF EVEREST THIS IS HOW KILIAN PREPARES FOR EVEREST Main Everest image: © Daniel Prudek/Shutterstock.com

Mountaineer Luka Lindič has been climbing one of the toughest peaks on the planet – Gasherbrum IV in Pakistan. Climbing Gasherbrum IV © Luka Lindic He and Aleš Česen made it to the North Summit, around 20metres below the 7932-meter-high main summit, after battling fierce weather that made reaching the summit impossible. Of course the guys are pleased with how far they reached on this treacherous route, in difficult conditions. They originally planned to take a new route, via the North West face but that was completely impossible in bad weather. Before tackling the G4 they scaled Broad Peak, making them the only team to successfully summit that mountain this season. This climb was used to acclimatise, and got the guys in the right frame of mind mentally for the big route, Luka says: “Some people might think using a climb like Broad Peak to acclimatise might take away a lot of fitness, but I think if you plan to climb a route like we did on G4 then it shouldn’t be a problem. If it makes you tired, then you are not prepared enough! It took away a bit for sure, but we benefited lots more than we lost. A climb like that is also important from a mental point of view, as a final check.” Luka Lindič and Aleš Česen © Luka Lindic The weather in the area meant the Alpine style of climbing the pair used gave them an advantage over other teams climbing differently. Luka says: “The other teams were climbing in a classically Himalayan style and spent lots of time and energy preparing. Now, it seems this is how it will be in Pakistan. The weather is not stable and you get a window of maybe two days. If you climb Alpine style like we did you are flexible and it’s easier to get up and go when there is a good weather window. With Himalayan climbing that’s a lot more difficult to try. That was our advantage this time.” Feeling strong after Broad Peak they started on G4, dubious they’d make it far in bad conditions. However, they managed to climb through the weather and pushed on until they made the North Summit. The guys tried to wait for bad weather to pass © Ales Cesen Luka says: “It was pretty bitter sweet. On one side you know you will not climb G4 but you know inside you did the maximum you could. It was a cool experience after struggling all day to reach the North summit we had sun for a few minutes, we could even see the summit for a few minutes. We had pushed hard already and decided the summit wasn’t possible, but were happy with what we did.” The guys had to rappel back down to avoid being swept away by avalanches. Now back from the trip he can contemplate the attempt, and he knows he’ll go back. He’s got some technical climbing planned in the meantime, he says: “I will go climbing in China for one month in September then my plan Is to spend some longer time in the Alps. I’ve been on expeditions this year so I feel like I have missed some technical training in the Alps and I want to get back to the level of climbing I want to be at, as doing expeditions you lose a bit of that.” Main image ©Luka Lindic