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Contact: Saskia Bauer (Managing Director) | saskia.bauer@alpin8.eu | +49 151 155 788 92
ALPIN8 is an Everesting event in the Brandnertal Valley: 8,848 meters of elevation gain—on foot uphill and downhill by gondola—in 34 hours. No competition, no rankings.
At the ALPIN8 Everesting event in Brandnertal, Vorarlberg, up to 300 people tackle 8,848 meters of elevation gain—the height of Mount Everest. Up on foot, down by gondola, 17 laps, 34 hours. There is no ranking and no leaderboard. ALPIN8 was founded in 2023 by Saskia Bauer and Flores Rekowski after they had completed their own Everesting challenge on the Schauinsland near Freiburg.
ALPIN8 has been hosting an Everesting event in the Brandnertal valley in Vorarlberg since 2024. Participants climb 8,848 meters of elevation gain on foot—the height of Mount Everest—spread over 17 laps, each covering 538 meters of elevation gain and 3.5 kilometers. After each lap, participants descend via the Palüdbahn, which runs around the clock for this event. The time window is 34 hours, with the event starting at 5 a.m. on Saturday. ALPIN8 is explicitly not a competition: there are no rankings, no leaderboards, and no prize money. Participation is limited to 300 people. The ticket includes a six-month training plan, online workshops on mental training and nutrition, as well as support leading up to the event—this support begins upon registration, not on the weekend of the event. ALPIN8 was founded in 2023 by Saskia Bauer and Flores Rekowski and is based in Freiburg im Breisgau. By 2026, all 300 spots were sold out, with participants coming from nine countries.
What: Everesting: 8,848 meters of elevation gain—on foot uphill, downhill by gondola
Where: Brand in the Brandnertal Valley, Vorarlberg, Austria. Palüdbahn
Next date: July 2–4, 2027
Start: Saturday, 5:00 a.m.
Time frame: 34 hours
The route: approx. 3.5 km, 538 meters of elevation gain, gradients ranging from 9 to 35 percent
Number of laps to 8,848 meters of elevation gain: 17
Total distance: about 70 kilometers
Participants: limited to 300
Scoring: None. No rankings, no leaderboard, no prize money
Finisher Rate: most recently 75% (as of 2026)
Ticket 2027: 649 euros
Organizer: ALPIN8 GmbH, Freiburg im Breisgau
Founded: 2023 by Saskia Bauer and Flores Rekowski
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All images are available free of charge for editorial coverage of ALPIN8. The condition is that the credit, which is specified for each file, must be included. Use for advertising or outside of an editorial context is not permitted.
We are happy to provide video footage from the event to news organizations upon request.
When you sign up for ALPIN8, you’re not just booking a weekend. You’re booking half a year.
In January, the joint preparation begins with a six-month training plan. This is supplemented by online workshops on mental training and nutrition, as well as ongoing support right up to the start. The event itself isn’t the beginning—it’s the proof.
This order also explains who is participating. The largest group consists not of ultrarunners, but of people in normal physical shape who weren’t sure beforehand whether they could do it. In both 2025 and 2026, exactly 75 percent of the participants completed the 8,848 meters of elevation gain. The rest completed as many laps as they could and returned home with an experience they had previously thought impossible.
On the mountain, there’s no timing in the sense of a competition, no awards ceremony, and no list where anyone comes in last. At the finish line, every name is called out.
ALPIN8 didn’t start with a business idea, but rather a passion. Saskia Bauer prefers being outdoors to being indoors, and she especially loves places where things get physically and mentally challenging. At 18, she took part in an expedition to the North Pole and ran there for 24 hours straight. At 21, she spent a year in the U.S. There, she competed in Campus2Coast, a canoe race from the Michigan State University campus to Lake Michigan, lasting three days and two nights. And she competed in POCAR, an orienteering race in Pennsylvania.
Over the years, this has evolved into something more than just a collection of her own adventures. Saskia co-founded Pangaea Project e. V., which organizes nature projects for children and teens, and the Young Explorers Program in the Black Forest National Park, in collaboration with Abenteuer Schwarzwald. Both are based on the same idea: getting people outdoors and showing them what they’re capable of.
What was missing was a format for adults.
In 2020, Saskia first heard about Everesting on a U.S. podcast: 8,848 meters of elevation gain in one go—the height of Mount Everest—on any mountain. That was the missing piece of the puzzle. The same thing she does with teenagers in the woods—only for people who had long since stopped believing that something like that was even possible for them.
Saskia and Flores Rekowski tried it out on themselves first. Together, they climbed the Schauinsland near Freiburg—twelve times in a row, for about 27 hours, going only uphill the entire time. During the day, they took the Schauinslandbahn back down to the valley. At night, when the cable car wasn’t running, friends would come by car and drive the two of them back down.
That’s exactly where the real problem lay. It’s something you can organize as a pair. But it doesn’t work for a larger group—no one is going to drive a hundred or three hundred people down the mountain all night long. If you want to make Everesting possible for more than just a handful of people, you need a mountain railway that runs at night, too.
The search for it led to the Brandnertal. The Palüdbahn operates around the clock for ALPIN8. It is the technical backbone of the entire event and the reason it can take place in this form at all.
The rest followed from that same experience: nutrition that sustains you for over 34 hours. A training plan that starts half a year in advance. And no rankings, because it’s not about who reaches the top first. Because the hardest part of the Schauinsland wasn’t physical endurance. It was the mental challenge.
In 2024, the first event took place in Brandnertal, with about 175 participants and a thunderstorm in the afternoon. In 2026, all 300 spots were sold out; participants came from nine countries, and about 30 were attending for the second or third time.
The phrase that has stuck with me: It’s not about records. It’s about your own personal Mount Everest.
*Topics Saskia Bauer can speak on: Everesting as a format, mental strain in endurance situations, launching an event based on a personal idea, event organization in alpine regions, sports policy, and sports as a tool for development.*
Saskia Bauer, co-founder and managing director of ALPIN8 GmbH, is responsible for the event’s entire operations—from route planning to partnerships and communications to logistics. At age 18, she took part in an expedition to the North Pole, where she ran for 24 hours straight. At age 21, she spent a year in the U.S., where she paddled the Campus2Coast canoe race from Michigan State University to Lake Michigan over three days and two nights and competed in the POCAR orienteering race in Pennsylvania. She studied Liberal Arts and Sciences in Freiburg and earned a master’s degree from the University of Edinburgh in sports policy and sports in development cooperation. She is a co-founder of Pangaea Project e. V., which organizes nature projects for children and young people, and the founder of the Young Explorers Program in the Black Forest National Park, in collaboration with Abenteuer Schwarzwald. In 2020, she completed her first Everesting challenge on the Schauinsland.
*Topics Flores Rekowski can speak about: the logistics and organization of a 34-hour event, logistics and physical demands over long periods of time, and how to gain acceptance for an event in a small community—collaboration with residents and property owners.*
Flores Rekowski, co-founder and managing director of ALPIN8 GmbH, is a full-time pharmacist. During the planning phase, she provides advice and support; on the event weekend, she is on site as Head of Operations and is responsible for the event’s execution. She handles a large portion of the negotiations and discussions and serves as the point of contact for residents and property owners in the Brandnertal valley. When discussions become difficult, she mediates—with empathy and without rushing. She was there for the first Everesting event on the Schauinsland, which sparked the idea for ALPIN8.
“It’s not about records or leaderboards. It’s about your own personal Mount Everest.” — Saskia Bauer, founder of ALPIN8
“I want to show people what they’re capable of. I’ve been doing this with children and teens for years. Everesting was the format I was still missing for adults.” — Saskia Bauer, founder of ALPIN8
“The obstacle isn’t the mountain. The obstacle is your mind. At some point during the night, everyone wants to give up—the difference is what you think at that moment.” — Flores Rekowski, founder of ALPIN8
“You don’t have to run. You just have to keep going.” — Saskia Bauer, founder of ALPIN8
“We didn’t have a plan. We had a mountain and the question of whether we could do it.” — Flores Rekowski on the first Everesting on the Schauinsland
“We’re not creating an event for ultra-runners. We’re creating it for people who don’t think they can do it—and then make it to the top.” — Saskia Bauer, founder of ALPIN8
From the 2026 feedback survey, 122 responses.
“The only thing that really matters is the moment you sign up. The moment you believe you can take on this challenge. That confidence in yourself.”
“…that I needn’t have doubted whether I could do it.”
“Good preparation and targeted training make a huge difference, even when you’re over 60.”
“It’s not just your legs that need to be strong. Mental strength is just as important.”
“Stay calm and keep going. That goes for life, too.”
“Being crazy depends on the context.”
“I’m impressed by the positive energy that an event like this—without any competitive element—can generate.”
“Even if you didn’t reach your big goal, you can still be proud. Even fewer meters of elevation gain is still absolutely crazy.”
“Community makes all the difference. I probably wouldn’t have made it on my own.”
“Hiking under the stars at night is amazing.”
“Working through the night is going better than expected.”
“Great people. And maybe your event is worth the price after all—I had serious doubts about it beforehand.”
Part of the answer is already clear: The train doesn’t replace walking down the mountain; rather, it replaces the alternative that would otherwise exist. When Saskia and Flores did their Everesting on the Schauinsland, friends drove them down to the valley by car at night. For three hundred people, that would mean several hundred car trips down the mountain, all night long.
It might seem like a lot for just one weekend. But the price covers half a year: a six-month training plan, online workshops on mental training and nutrition, and support right up until race day. In addition, the event weekend features continuous gondola service, round-the-clock catering, a safety plan developed in collaboration with the Brand Mountain Rescue team, and professional photo documentation.
One participant put it this way after the 2026 event: “Maybe your event is worth the price after all—I had serious doubts about it beforehand.”
You can stop at any time—it’s not a failure. Anyone who drops out after ten laps will have climbed 5,380 meters in elevation. From the 2026 feedback: “Even if you didn’t reach the big goal, you can still be proud. Even fewer meters of elevation gain are still absolutely crazy.”
There is a safety plan in place in collaboration with the Brand Mountain Rescue Service, several refreshment stations, a heated rest area, and a recovery zone. The Brand Mountain Rescue Service will be on duty for the entire 34 hours, with rotating teams. Their base station is located halfway along the route at the middle refreshment station, where an all-terrain vehicle is on standby.
The main signposts along the route are marked with emergency points, so that any location can be clearly communicated. Mountain rescue can reach any point along the route at any time.
The mountain railway’s guidelines apply to the cancellation, and they are strict. If the Palüdbahn cannot operate due to weather conditions, the event is suspended. In that case, there are two assembly points: the valley station and the Summit Camp. Anyone who is currently on the trail should continue on to the top. No one will be sent out on the trail from the valley, and anyone at the top must remain there until the lift is running again.
Registration opens in September for the following year. The 2026 event was sold out. Press spots are available; see below.
Registration takes place on the website: www.alpin8.eu/anmeldung
From the outside, ALPIN8 looks unremarkable: people walk up a mountain and ride the gondola back down. You can only really understand it once you’re inside.
That’s why we allocate a small number of spots to newsrooms each year. The same rules apply as for everyone else: You decide for yourself when to stop. Four rounds are enough for the story; no one expects 17. There’s no obligation to report back, nor is there any requirement to submit a final draft.
What you’ll get: a spot at the event, access to us, the security team, and participants who are happy to speak, as well as the photo and video footage afterward.
Spots are limited because the event is capped at 300 people. Sign up early—ideally in the fall for the following summer.
Saskia Bauer
Founder and Managing Director
Email: saskia.bauer@alpin8.eu
Phone: +49 151 155 788 92
ALPIN8 GmbH Bötzingerstraße 64, 79111 Freiburg im Breisgau
HRB 728742, Freiburg Local Court
For inquiries during the event weekend, you can reach us on-site at the Summit Camp below the Palüdbahn mountain station.