Love on the mountaintops

ATTRACTION: SIMPLE NOTEBOOK BETTER THAN A DATING APP TO BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

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Cathy and Patrick relish describing how they found each other, through a message left on a Swiss mountaintop.

"It was just a beautiful way to meet," said Cathy Rotzetter during a recent hike in the Pre-Alps of the western Swiss canton of Fribourg.

Sick of online dating sites, the 58-year-old said she was thrilled to discover an analogue alternative, with a Swiss twist: "Mountain Tinder".

Last October, she clambered up to the Wandflue peak, at an altitude of 2,133 meters, and jotted down her information in the red notebook she found there.

Rotzetter recalled the message as she sat in a mountain pasture, her arm laced around Patrick, with the Wandflue towering behind them.

"I wrote that I liked relaxed hikes and also to have a drink afterwards," she said with a laugh.

Patrick, who is also 58 and who declined to give his surname, found the message a week later, and was charmed.

Started as a joke

Mountain Tinder is the brainchild of Thibaud Monney, a 29-year-old avid hiker who said the whole thing started in 2023 as "a joke".

During a climb up the Dent de Broc, overlooking the picturesque Lake of Gruyere, he realized he missed having someone to share the view with.