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At the end of November I got an awesome invitation to spend New Year's Eve in the snowy Swiss mountains together with some of my best friends from Germany and Switzerland. When my girlfriend and I arrived in a small village next to Chur in the eastern part of Switzerland on Friday it seemed impossible to us to hike up to an altitude of 2100m where we wanted to celebrate without any access to electrictiy and running water. It was snowing all the time even in lower altitude...
However, next day - the 31th - we split into smaller groups, put on our mountaineering boots or snowshoes and started our hiking trip trough deep snow early in the morning. It took us more than five hours of climbing to reach the hut. We couldn't follow the relatively short pass up because of avalanche risk and had to choose a longer but therefore save route.
Luckily, a small group of friends had already prepared the hut and a small trail the day before. It was challenging to gain more than 1200 meters of altitude concidering around 60cm of snow and another 10cm to 15cm of fresh snow. :)
Anyhow, we enjoyed the winter atmosphere and this physical excercise and were happy to be welcomed on top of the mountain with a cooked meal.
Finally we were 18 people celebrating New Year's Eve without any kind of fireworks. Instead we were singing and dancing in torchlight and had snowball fights during the first hours of 2012.
The dense snow clouds vanished overnight. The next morning we woke up and were impressed by blue sky, an amazing winter landscape and an incredible Alpine scenere!!! Definitely best place to be at this time! ;)
After we had cleaned everything we climbed down again through untouched white fields and had so much fun while throwing sknowballs and jumping around.
I'm sure I will never forget this special New Year's Eve!

I wish everyone all the best for the upcoming year 2012!

Photos: http://alexandergroos.de/bilder/lai-da-von-new-years-eve-2012.html

Video: http://vimeo.com/34578432