Stairs, Stairs And More Stairs
Step, step, step, step ….
There were a few months to go and I was loving every minute on the gym’s continuous staircase.
Well, that’s not quite right, the gym is not my natural environment. I’d set myself a simple target; to take part in a stair climbing event.
The event I was aiming for had just a single flight of stairs, just there was 4,261 of them in a single continuous line 780 metres up a Swiss mountain at a maximum gradient of 89%. There was also the small problem of having a middle-aged fitness level …. and I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s five years ago.
Since being diagnosed, I have worked at keep myself fit and healthy working towards personal targets. Last year it was the “Ride to the Sun”, the previous year was the “Dunwich Dynamo”.
Sometime in 2024, a random Facebook video showed me an event video from “Stairways to Heaven” where participants climb the emergency escape/maintenance stairs of the Ritom funicular railway in Switzerland. Funicular railways climb extremely steep inclines, hauled up by wire ropes. That was the first warning that this was tougher than it looked.
Image from the “Stairways to Heaven” website.
Booking My Place
The seed was planted. I booked my place when tickets became available. The tickets sold out in a matter of hours. Fifty Swiss Francs had bought me a ticket to a world of pain. Not to worry, after all, “pain is just weakness leaving the body”.
That’s it, I was committed with no turning back. The online registration asked one important question “How long do you expect to take?”. The problem was, I just had no idea as I’d not done anything in the gym close to the number of steps I was going to do in Switzerland.
A quick look at the previous year’s results told me the average was about an hour. No problem I can do that, so that was the time I registered with. Doubts I was beginning to have about completing the challenge suddenly grew as I read the subject line of the email confirmation:
“Welcome to the toughest vertical race in Europe”
Whoa, whoa, whoa!!! Who said anything about racing?
This was getting out of hand. The problem was ambitious Bryan from a few months ago had told lots of people what realistic Bryan was now attempting to do. I’d painted myself into a corner quite deliberately, there was no going back.
A month or two later, the event website went offline. The following day and there was still no website, nor the day after. It was starting to look like this was some scam or other which had relieved me of 50 Francs. Hope grew as the days passed with no sign of the website coming back online, so it looked like I was going to get out of doing the climb. What a relief.
Then the website came back online. Switzerland was back on. Oh brilliant, that’s just really fantastic, absolutely fantastic I said to myself with sarcastic enthusiasm. Time to turn up the gym effort to 11, I thought using a binary number sounded so much better than writing I was cranking up the dial to 3!
Getting Fit
As of this writing (16-May-2025), PureGym in the UK offer a one year free membership for people with Parkinson’s, you just need to contact their central Customer Services. This was something I found out about through the Movers and Shakers Podcast.
Pounding away in the gym one day it did make me laugh to myself wondering what the younger gym members thought of me (assuming they’d even noticed). I imagined them wondering to themselves what kind of banging tunes I was listening to. Was it Vivaldi or was I an ageing clubber listening to house music from his teenage years? A smile came across my face (well, the half which isn’t partially frozen) as I laughed at how wrong they all were, I was actually listening to a podcast on Palaeolithic cave art from BBC Sounds! Talk about making a stereotype for myself.
So the fitness levels were well on the way to “barely adequate”, I now needed to plan how I was getting to the start line.
Getting To Switzerland
Flights were quickly booked to Switzerland and I hunted down accommodation which I quickly found through an online booking portal in Quinto, the town closest to the start. Oddly, the area seemed to be browner in satellite view than I was expecting. No, that’s Quinto in Spain.
Retargeting on Quinto in Switzerland’s Ticino canton, hotels were surprisingly difficult to find with May seeming to be outside the main tourist seasons and the immediate area, lovely as it was, did not seem to be a tourist hotspot in spite of the famous Gotthard Pass (of James Bond “Goldfinger” fame) being located at the western end of the valley.
Weather
Two weeks to go meant the long-range weather forecasts now contained the magic date – 10th May 2025. I knew this far in advance the forecasts would not be 100% accurate, but they’d give me an idea of what to expect from the alpine summer weather. I refreshed the web browser a few times, yet it still kept telling me it was going to snow. SNOW! So it was back to the sports shop to buy some lightweight winter exercise gear. Except it was summer in the UK so the shop only had a few left-over winter items which were fortunately the right size for me.
Resetting Expectations
My daughter thought it was time for a realty check and persuaded me to “recalibrate” my expected completion time by adding another 15 minutes to the hour I had said it would take me. Pretty much the next day an email from the organisers announced there could be no more changes to starting numbers. I was locked in as competitor (more like “person who will turn up”) 313 out of 364. All the emails and documents were in multiple languages, it was clearly a well organised event.
Travel Insurance
So, I was now close to ready for race day. Hang on, “race, race, race” .… there’s something I’m missing here. Oh heck, with a few days to departure I recalled once reading “normal” travel insurance frequently doesn’t cover organised sports events or racing. A quick hunt on the Internet found a sports travel insurance company that looked just the ticket. After a quick bit of due diligence to make sure they were legit, I filled in the proposal explaining what I was going to do along with all my ailments. The travel insurance certificate came through the following day. I could still go to Switzerland.
Traveling To Switzerland
The flight and train ride from Zurich to the Southern Italian speaking part of Switzerland was a breeze. I kept checking the map, eager to catch my first sight of what I’d be climbing in a couple of days.
Then the Ritom funicular railway came into view. I looked out from the train struck by the majesty of the challenge, with the Ritom funicular railway hugging the stunning scenery at an impossible angle to a dizzying height. I could only think to myself, “I want to go home!”.
Two days later it was Saturday and showtime, the forecast weather had changed snow to what was now brilliant sunshine. My partner and I arrived at the start point around 08:30 to get me registered and pickup my goodie bag.
The Start Line
The best thing about the start was you could only see the first quarter of the climb, but even that was scary enough when you realised the section out of sight was steeper. At 09:00 the funicular train trundled off carrying the competitors bags to the top.
I was as ready as I was going to be. I’d made sure to have a good night’s sleep, I’d taken my Parkinson’s medication on time, was well hydrated and had eaten well – all the things I needed to take care of to keep the worst of the tremors at bay. I was like a coiled spring as the clock ticked slowly round to my start time, I stretched like the seasoned professional I was trying to pass myself off as.
Then it was time. I was on the start line. Beep, beep, beeeeeep. I was climbing what I had been working towards for months.
Climbing
The stairs were small. The stairs were steep. None of this was a surprise. Well, not to my brain yet the legs seemed to be having a right old grumble fairly early on. The more steps I did up the staircase, the more I realised doing my step climbing training just on the continuous staircase in the gym was not enough. Oh well, too late now. Plod on.
Early into the climb I spotted numbered plates every ten metres on the railway, I think the first I spotted was 126. Watching those numbers tick down kept me going as I mentally marked 10% done, 33% done, 40% left and any other permutation of mental arithmetic I could do to help me ignore what my legs had given up trying to tell me.
My legs had been very British by politely trying to warn me to not go too fast, then they’d become a little more emphatic, then they started shouting. When I still ignored them and carried on regardless, they went all quiet and sulked. My legs had got to the point they weren’t in pain and there was barely any energy left. But I kept going, one foot in front of the other.
With the leading athletes having long since crossed the finish line, I was left with the mutual encouragement of others who were as well prepared for the climb as I was. At regular intervals there were openings off the staircase on to mountain paths that would lead downhill, away from the finish line. I was determined not to take one, but it would have been so easy.
My trusty GoPro Max 360 had come along for the ride, held in place with a loop around my wrist. To avoid becoming a Darwin award candidate needed careful concentration as I turned around on the steps to take some of the pictures, it really was quite dizzying turning around to see the stairs drop away so precipitously.
Photographers and Mountain Rescue were also to be found dotted along the route, offering words of encouragement. A safety rope had been laid alongside the staircase which participants were forbidden from using as part of the climb.
It was impossible to pass people on the narrow steps. Competitors about to be overtaken had to find a safe point to step off from the staircase and let the faster person pass.
The first 350m was not too bad until, rounding the corner, the stairs continued in a straight line without a break for over 750m, the finish appearing like a mirage which never got closer.
The Finish Line
But then, after all the plodding, the trackside numbers told me I had 200m left and time mentally sped up to until the climb was over. A journey of many months had been completed. I had done it.
Climbing over the fence on to the road, a young girl presented me with my completion medal. After photographs, including one with the only other British entrant, it was time to head back down to the start.
Getting Back Down
As it was going to be an hour before the funicular descended, I took the quicker option of walking down the hill. Wrong! The walk along gently descending paths took much longer as they zigzagged over the hillsides rather than the straight down of the funicular. It probably took the better part of three hours.
Back down at the start I texted the kids back in the UK, my son replied “You actually finished it” and my daughter a far more enthusiastic “Well done Dad”.
After some food in the café, we left for the hotel with me wondering “What’s next?”.
The Following Day
The following day I was barely able to get out of bed. I felt like a wooden toy with legs articulated from a metal rod through the hips. It wasn’t too bad once I got moving, just that every time I sat down, I seized up again.
Thinking about how much I hurt that morning made me wonder how Sunday’s entrants were going to be feeling. Sunday’s event was for firefighters who were going to do it in all their protective equipment, with helmets and breathing apparatus.
I’ve not received an official time yet, but I think I took around the recalibrated hour and a quarter. I certainly spent a good few minutes at various spots taking pictures. To put my time into perspective, in 2020 a competitor did it in 25:48. I might be mistaken here, but I think they were fitter than I have ever been in my lifetime.
Posting on Facebook I received so many positive comments. Some of the funniest were:
- “If you didn’t take a slinky, then you failed” – sorry, I did fail, next time I’ll remember.
- Describing the event as putting the ICU into funicular
- Quite a few people liked the idea of sliding to the bottom. I think you’d rapidly reach terminal velocity with a terminal stop at the bottom
There were also a few people kindly describing my climb as inspirational. I certainly didn’t set out to be inspirational – just to carry on being my usual self. Ultimately, I did the event for a self-centred reason; the good of my health. That said, if I’ve given others a nudge with my antics, then that’s nice to contemplate as well.
It may seem a subtle difference in words, but I prefer to describe myself as enduring Parkinson’s rather than being a victim of Parkinson’s.
Since climbing the Swiss Ritom funicular railway, I’ve found there are a few more staircases around the world of similar size. There’s even a Towerrunning World Association.
- Niesen Stair Run, another Swiss funicular railway.
- Flørli 4444 Stairs in Norway near Stavanger.
- Jacob’s Ladder on St Helena.
- Stairs of Mount Taishan in China.
- Karavolades Stairs in Santorini
