Matterhorn/Cervin | David Grima

It was never a lifelong dream. But not all dreams begin in childhood. Some arrive much later, initially so wild that they hardly seem like dreams at all. They feel more like impossible thoughts: things that might belong to another person’s life, or perhaps to yours in another lifetime, but not yet to the one you are living now.

The Matterhorn, its name meaning “meadow peak”, rises like a horn above the alpine pastures of Zermatt.

Just look at the Matterhorn, or Cervin/Cervino as the French and the Italians like to call it. It rises like a shark’s tooth, almost too perfectly shaped to be real. It is what I would have imagined a mountain to look like as a child growing up on a small, sunny island.

Some dreams require time, attention and care before they can become realistic enough to pursue.

Five years ago, my friend Jurgen and I travelled there intending to climb it. The logistics were arranged, the training was done, (or what we believed at the time was enough), and we felt ready. Looking back, that confidence may have been somewhat foolish. But we had made it there, and the possibility felt real enough. But it was not to be. The attempt had to be cancelled before we had even reached Zermatt. What remained was disappointment and a hint of unfinished business. We had come so close to beginning.

A year later, Jurgen returned and climbed it. I was genuinely happy for him. At that time, there was no way I could have joined him. The mountain was never an obsession after that, and it did not occupy the centre of my mind. But it was always somewhere in the background. It would resurface in conversation, in a photograph, in something I read or watched, or in the image of the mountain hanging in an old frame inside an abandoned Refugio I came across on a hike to the Grande Jumelle… a possibility left quietly unresolved.

On the approach hike from Schwarzsee to the shark-toothed Matterhorn (4,478 m).

Over the past six months of living in Switzerland, I found myself wrestling with it more than I expected. Before coming here, it had been on my mind as something that would be wonderful to try if the opportunity ever felt right. But even then, I was uncertain. I was not fully committed to it.

Just over a month ago, I was still undecided. I remember being on the fence about it for a long time, weighing everything, and deciding against attempting it. The scale and sheer exposure of the mountain felt too overwhelming. I was afraid of what it would demand.

What made that hesitation difficult to reconcile was that, by almost every objective measure, I was far better prepared than I had been five years earlier. I had gained experience, ability and much more composure on rock. The once-impossible idea had gradually moved into the realm of the possible. And yet the fear remained, just as real and just as capable of stopping me.

A different perspective of the Cervin, from the summit of Breithorn Occidentale during our half traverse.

There was no sudden moment in which the fear disappeared. I simply recognised that it was not going anywhere, and that waiting to feel entirely ready would change nothing. At some point, it became less about certainty and more about accepting that I owed myself a proper attempt.

Parties negotiate the first fixed-rope bottleneck just after leaving the Hörnli Hut.

I wanted to close this chapter of my life in Switzerland deliberately, rather than leave the mountain unresolved once again.

Exposed climbing high on the Matterhorn. Never overly technical, but with very little room for error.

On the summit, what I felt was not triumph. It was gratitude and a calm kind of surrealness. In that moment, most of the gratitude was directed towards my guide, Denis. His judgement, competence and steady presence had helped get us there safely.

Sunrise over the Gorner Glacier from the Matterhorn, with Dufourspitze on the right.

With some distance, that gratitude has widened.

I am grateful to the mountain for granting us safe passage this time, after refusing it five years earlier. The conditions were extraordinarily different from what would normally be expected at this time of year. We encountered no snow or ice anywhere along the route. My crampons never left my pack, and my ice axe had been left behind in the luggage room at the hotel. A mountain that had once turned us back through weather allowed us through under conditions that felt almost improbable in their own right.

First light on the Matterhorn from two different perspectives. On the left, as seen from Zermatt at 5:40 a.m. on the 7 July, and on the right from 4,000 metres up the mountain in the following days.

I am also grateful to my past self. Not because he knew exactly what he was doing, but because he was willing to imagine something far beyond the boundaries of his life at the time. He dreamed boldly enough to create something I could return to years later, after experience and circumstance had slowly transformed it from fantasy into a genuine possibility.

On the summit, I tried to call my sister to wish her a happy birthday and let her know that we had made it halfway. I also called my friend so that, in some small way, we could finish what we had started five years ago. I knew I was standing at the top, but I could not yet comprehend that I had actually done it.

My favourite photo: taken from the Italian summit, looking towards the Swiss summit, with the Matterhorn’s immaculate shadow stretching across the mountains to the left.

Perhaps that was partly because ordinary life returned so abruptly. That morning, I was on the summit of the Matterhorn. A few hours later, after several hours of travelling by train, metro and tram, I was back in Lausanne packing up my belongings. There was no long transition in which to absorb what had happened. By the afternoon, I felt almost empty, not disappointed, but unable to make the experience feel real.

Descending the Hörnli Ridge, with the long road back to Zermatt unfolding below.

Only the following day did it begin to settle.

I had been there, I had done it.

Downclimbing the steep, sunlit rock of the Hörnli Ridge.

The climb itself is not unique. Thousands have done it before and many more will. I am not trying to romanticize it or turn it into proof of something great. But I would like to think that, within the scale of my own life, it tells a story of resilience.

Courage does not mean being fearless or tough. Sometimes it means being frightened, uncertain and tempted to step away, yet eventually choosing to go anyway.

The Grave of the Unknown Climber in Zermatt. A memorial to those who never returned from the mountains, and a quiet reminder that every ascent demands humility, every safe return is a blessing, and every day is a gift.

The Matterhorn was not the fulfilment of a lifelong dream. It was the fulfilment of a dream I had slowly nurtured until it became tangible, and then nearly abandoned out of fear.

This part of the journey now feels complete. More than anything, it feels like the perfect bookend to my time in Switzerland: one last improbable thing brought into reality before I leave, close this chapter and make space for what comes next.

After months of searching, I found edelweiss above Sunnegga on the Sunday before the climb. I took it as a sign of hope and a new beginning, as though everything were finally falling into place. For centuries, the flower has symbolised bravery, dedication and a rugged kind of love.