"Suddenly I needed a new phone number."
Many people think that mountain biking evolved from cycling. Or from the downhill orgies of the Californian bling hippies. But that's not quite true. Long before Gary Fisher and co, there were mountaineers who rode their bikes through the valleys to the climbing areas. My father achieved great fame as the first person to climb the north face of the Eiger and that's how I was born into mountaineering. I worked as a mountain guide from an early age and climbed practically every peak in the Alps. But I had been carrying my big dream around with me for years: crossing the Himalayas from Lhasa to Kathmandu. The problem was the vast expanse. It would have taken at least half a year on foot. Then I heard about these new mountain bikes. That was it. You could cover long distances in a short time on them, even without tarmac. I wanted to embark on the adventure as soon as possible, because no group had yet managed this expedition. So, together with a few companions, the first crossing could succeed. I asked Wolfgang Renner from Centurion if he would be willing to lend me a couple of bikes. What I didn't know was that my name was well known to him, as he had read my father's book "The White Spider" about the Eiger North Face ascent and was fascinated by it.
In the spring of 1987, fifteen of us set off, including Wolfgang. He didn't want to miss the chance to join us. We had specially modified the Centurion bikes after test rides in the Black Forest: high handlebars, wide BMX pedals for the hiking boots, spare spokes as chainstay protectors. Ahead of us lay 1,500 kilometres in thin mountain air. To make as much progress as possible, we cycled every day from dawn to dusk. After just eleven days, we reached our destination. Fantastic! Without mountain bikes, something like this would never have been possible. The funny thing was that we had the Alps on our doorstep. But at the time, no one would have thought of cycling over them. It wasn't an issue. For whatever reason. It was just the way it was. It wasn't until three years after the Himalayan expedition that the bold idea of cycling from Oberstdorf to Lake Garda came up. Wolfgang asked me if I knew a suitable route. Of course, I knew all the passes from mountaineering. But I could only roughly estimate which ones would be particularly suitable for mountain bikes. In any case, the pushing passages should be limited. After all, we wanted to cycle. So we started with the concrete planning - Wolfgang, Gerhard Strittmatter, a former track world champion, and myself. We set off in the summer of 1990. 440 kilometres, eleven mountain passes, 14,000 metres in altitude. The conditions were good, if not ideal. In Bormio we got caught in a terrible downpour. We often had to push. Nevertheless, it was easier than expected. And so marvellous. You can't even describe it in words when you're standing on a pass in a sweat and looking into the distance. Or when you start the next day early in the morning from a mountain hut. Afterwards, BIKE magazine published a big report about this very first crossing of the Alps by mountain bike. Suddenly everyone wanted to conquer the Alps by bike. I received an estimated thousand phone calls. I couldn't cope with all the enquiries. When Stern magazine ran a six-page story about the "Heckmair Route", I had to get a new phone number. It was just madness. I also realised why. Very few people can win a marathon, but they can win a battle against a force of nature like the Alps. It's a wonderful challenge with an extremely high experience factor. If I have a really long time again, I would like to cross the Alps again transversally from Vienna to Nice. That would take months. But it's my big dream.
