With his recent ascent of the North Face of the Matterhorn, Ueli Steck has completed a classic trilogy of speed solos. The Swiss now holds the records for the fastest ascents of the north faces of the Eiger, Grandes Jorasses and Matterhorn, historically the three great north faces of the Alps.

Steck set off on the classic Schmid Route, the original route up the North Face, a little after 8am on the 13th January in relatively mild temperatures (-7°), He found the line in perfect condition and reached the top one hour and 56 minutes later. Filmed from a helicopter, Steck can be seen running across the final, narrow, snow arête to the 4,477m main summit.

The original route on the Matterhorn North Face can be split into three sections, each comprising more or less one-third of this 1,000m mixed wall: the lower icefield; the rightward slanting couloir in the middle of the face; and the long but rather easier-angled mixed slopes leading to the summit. As with his late December ascent of the Colton-MacIntyre on the Grandes Jorasses, Steck climbed the line on-sight, though he had previously climbed the face via the much harder Bonatti Direct in 2006.

On exiting from the couloir, instead of continuing direct to the summit, Steck slanted up left towards the Hornli Ridge, a not uncommon means of finishing the climb. His completion of the fastest ascents of all three great north faces has been achieved in less than a year.

The Swiss alpinist has been taking the whole business of speed climbing quite seriously. Over the last few years he's followed a specific training program to improve endurance, with the result that he feels stronger, faster and has more stamina than last year. He's also worked with a dietician on reaching an ideal body weight of 67kg. However, when he climbed the Matterhorn he was 64kg; not only lighter but also faster.

More than most Alpine routes, the grade of the Original line on the North Face of the Matterhorn varies according to conditions and the time of year: from TD to ED2. Anything between 10 and 20 hours for the ascent is reasonable for a roped party but the average time lies somewhere between 13 and 16 hours. Route finding is one of the biggest problems, particularly in locating the correct start to the couloir.

Although climbing the North Face in under two hours is an astonishing achievement, history suggests this sort of time should not have been impossible nearly 80 years after the first ascent.

In July 1931 Franz and Toni Schmid cycled all the way from Munich and on the 30th camped at the foot of the Matterhorn Glacier. They left their tent at midnight, crossed the rimaye at 4am, bivouacked that evening at 4,150m and were on the summit at 2.30 the following afternoon together with the obligatory storm, which seems to have characterized many, great, historic, alpine ascents.

By 1962 the time for a roped party had been cut dramatically, with the Swiss Michel Darbellay and Christophe Vouilloz completing the route in six hours and 15 minutes. However, three years previous, and 50 years ago this summer, the young Austrian alpinist Dieter Marchart raced up the Schmid Route in just five hours to complete the first solo ascent.

After the French superstar Jean-Marc Boivin made his acclaimed ski descent of the East Face in 1980, he quickly turned to the North Face, making at rapid solo in a little over four hours. It's not certain who claimed the fastest ascent prior to this winter.

Steck found the Matterhorn the easiest of the three ascents and is pleased with his fast solos over the last 11 months. However, he feels that this phase of his career is over and it is time to change his focus, perhaps towards hard technical lines in the Greater Ranges.

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