This Romand created the “mountain tinder”

The Friborg Thibaud Monnyery has designed an unprecedented alternative to dating sites: he places notebooks on French -speaking summits so that single hikers can express themselves and leave their contact details. And it works.

Nina Larson/AFP

Cathy and Patrick like to tell how they were: thanks to a message left in a red notebook at the top of a Swiss mountain. “It was a super nice way to meet,” recalls Cathy Rotzetter, during a recent hike on the heights of the canton of Friborg.

Tired of online dating sites, this 58 -year -old woman was seduced by an analog alternative with a whole Swiss touch and already nicknamed “Tinder of the mountains”, in reference to the famous digital dating application.

Cathy took the plunge last October. After climbing to the top of the Wandflue, which peaks at 2133 meters, she put a word accompanied by her coordinates in the red notebook found up there. Nine months later, she sits in a pasture, the arm rolled around Patrick, the Wandflue in the background. She tells laughing:

Patrick, who is the same age as Cathy and who prefers to give only his first name, climbed the mountain a week later. Once at the top, he was charmed by Cathy’s word.

On seven summits

It all started with a moment of loneliness at the top of the Broc tooth, which from the top of its 1829 meters overlooks Lake Gruyère. A bet with friends did the rest.

Thibaud Monny is a 29 -year -old passionate hiker and it was by contemplating the magnificent landscape of the top of the broc tooth that he realized that he would like to share his sensations with someone. On a whim, the Fribourgeois slept his thoughts in a carnet connected in leather which is traditionally found on the peaks of the canton of Friborg so that hikers can leave their way there.

He then wrote:

“I put my phone number, a person contacted me,” he reports. The colleagues of Thibaud Monny, trainer in carpentry for disabled people, pleasantly suggested to him to place dedicated notebooks on the summits of the mountains.

“It worked well,” he explains during a recent hike at the top of the Vudalla, a crest that from the top of its 1670 meters offers a sublime view of the Gruyère. “Several couples have formed thanks to these notebooks,” he said, leafing through the one he placed right next to the traditional book of visitors, both sheltered from bad weather in a metal box attached to a large wooden cross.

Thibaud Monny has placed notebooks on seven peaks from the canton of Friborg, but the idea is making its way and the love notebooks are on mountains in the rest of Switzerland and sometimes much further, to Argentina.

A “very simple” filter

Thibaud Monnye says his pride by hearing about the couples who met thanks to this initiative. “Very often, there are messages of thanks for having created this. When someone can find love, made a friendly meeting thanks to the notebooks, it is clear that I made someone happy, ”he says.

The Vudalla notebook confirms the craze and fills quickly. “Passionate about mountains, skiing and climbing,” soberly says one of the messages next to another in the more specific search for a soul mate who “loves sport, metal and tattooed women”.

Unlike the increasingly complex algorithms used for online dating, the red notebook filter is “very simple”.

Cathy Rotzetter is of the same opinion. “The shared love of nature … is a good filter,” she says.

For the most experienced

Thibaud Monnyery abandoned the online dating sites of which he did not like the “swipe”. However, the choice of summits is also a way to make a first sort according to age and physical capacities.

If the Vudalla is one of the most accessible hikes only the more experienced hikers and at best their shape can arrive to the Red Carnet of the Vanil de l’Ecri, at 2376 meters. Thibaud Monny himself found a companion, but without the help of his notebooks.

“She saw me on television” talk about the “mountain tinder” and “contacted” and “now, I’m happy”.