The North Face of the Eiger – the Wall of Death - the evil ogre of mountain climbs! There I was, right under its sheer terror, transfixed by it, flat on my back in the snow. I didn’t want to get up, I felt warm and safe in my padded anorak, and curiously triumphant. Very curiously, since all I’d done was fall over in my first ski lesson, whilst three-year-old Swiss brats whizzed by in Olympic style.

But to be there, in that mythic place, 10,000 feet high, where the brave have died, and also conquered! It rubs off on you, I swear it does. Never mind that you can get there by train, that half a million people do it every year, that there’s a barn-sized tavern overflowing with hot wine and raucous revellers. It’s the Eiger, and the Jungfrau, eternal snows, glaciers, avalanches, derring-do.

It was sheer chance that Florrie, from snowless Hong Kong, and I, an adopted Bangkokian, used only to cotton wool snow when the Thais pay their annual respects to Santa Claus, were having our first bash at snow-sliding at just about the highest location possible in Switzerland. Staying in Interlaken in early May, you have to go pretty high to find slopes still snow-covered and ski-able. Kleine Scheidegg is the place, and the resort where Eiger climbers start from too.

The Eiger has long challenged climbers – shook its fist in their faces, and sent 55 to their death at last count. It provides an extreme combination of difficulties - "6000 feet of rotten limestone hung with snow and icefields, hidden in mist and clouds, wracked by furious storms, frequently swept by avalanches of snow and rotten rock", an English mountaineer described it. They just love that!

They began trying, and dying, in the 1930s. In 1935, two Germans got to a 3300m ledge, and froze there: the Death Bivouac. In 1938, in a week-long ascent, stalked by death from repeated avalanches which nearly ripped them from the face, a German-Austrian team conquered the Eigernordwand (the face’s German name). Two Frenchmen next succeeded in 1947, and said "never again."

In 1957 there was a drama on the North Face that rivetted the world’s attention. Two Italians and two Germans got in difficulties. Thirty expert climbers from all over Europe came to their aid. Despite an epic rescue attempt, only one of the four survived. One’s body hung grotesquely from his ropes for years afterward, frozen into an ice sheaf in winter, swinging free in summer, visible to all below.

Then in 1966, an expedition led by an American called John Harlin went for the jugular: a direct vertical ascent – no zig-zagging about like all the other wimps. Again, the media focused hard on the dare-devil deed for weeks on end, and the whole world knew that Harlin’s rope broke and he plummetted several thousand feet to his death. The others, however, reached the top, and a taboo was broken.

Now people climb it solo in a day, then jump off the top. OK, not on the same day, but a guy called Eric Jones has on separate occasions clambered up the Wall of Death alone and base-jumped from the summit, i.e. used a parachute on the way down. Still, the Eigernordwand’s a long way from getting on the tourist day trip list – at least three climbers died on the face in 2000. Just tackle the Scheidegg hotel, that’s challenge enough.

Clint Eastwood took on both in The Eiger Sanction (1975), a bunch of secret service hokum in which he is assigned to kill ('sanction') one of his team whilst climbing the north face – but who? The 'target' is to reveal himself during the ascent. Told his mission, Eastwood admits some previous experience - "I tried to climb it twice, it tried to kill me twice". At least one thing was more real than Hollywoodesque about this movie and further confirmed the Eiger’s fearsome reputation: a stuntman died in the filming.

Cut the horror – all else is bliss at Kleine Scheidegg. Above, snow-draped slopes glisten and soar to the pinnacles of the Monch and the Jungfrau. Below the land falls away, ski runs lead the eye ever downward through pine forests to emerald pastures and cobalt lakes. And that’s just the start.

For the real treat, the true jaw-dropper, lies another 1,400 metres higher at the Jungfraujoch, the frozen saddle that joins the Monch to the Jungfrau, where the Aletsch Glacier stretches across the roof of the Alps. A tough call. Climbing boots on, then, ropes over shoulder, ice-pick in hand, say goodbye to loved ones.

No, just hop on another train.

The Jungfraubahn is an engineering miracle. It climbs out of Kleine Scheidegg and heads straight for the Eiger, burrows relentlessly into the mountain whilst winding ever upward in a huge elliptical curve, until it comes to a halt in the rocky bowels of the Jungfraujoch. On the way, it stops at the Eiger North Face. Is this to pick up chickening-out climbers? I didn’t see any way in or out, nor a ticket booth, just a view onto the face through thick glass windows for we softies.

Incredibly, I later learned, there is a way out for climbers - who carry mental maps of the face flagged with evocative names. Near the White Spider, just under the Difficult Crack, a wooden door opens out onto the mountain wall. It’s the big let-out if in trouble (and near!): "Sod this for a lark", they can say, open the door and walk into the tunnel. It's scarcely believable, like something out of Sinbad the Sailor – "Open sesame!" Unfortunately, there may be a train bearing down on you, in which case you’d be better off out with the avalanches.

The juxtaposition of extreme peril and cosy safety is bizarre in the extreme. A Russian climber, Sergei Kalmykov, commented after a recent ascent, "The only thing that was strange and hard to accept for us Russians after our wild mountains: the tunnel and railway station. Our first bivouac was 100m from the tunnel’s windows and passengers peered at us!" His crazed team was on the face in mid-winter in atrocious conditions, such that the mountain rescue service refused to accept that anyone was out there: "The present weather conditions on the Eiger North Face preclude any group stay there," it insisted. Their Swiss minder replied, "But these are Russians. They are not like other people."

It all makes you so ashamed, but what the hell, the choo-choo gets you up there in 50 minutes, without even chilblains. I’ve never understood mountain-climbing anyway. I mean, it terrifies me just to look off a tall building.

Luckily, there are no sheer drops at the Jungfraujoch, just sheer beauty.

You emerge into a steel-and-glass observation post called the Sphinx, crouching on the saddle. You walk out onto an open deck. The light is brilliant, the snow is sparkling white, the sky is deep blue, the air is crisp and pure, the world is new.

To the south, the magnificent roof of Europe stretches away to infinity. The continent's largest glacier, the 22 km long Aletschgletscher, glides snowbound along a broad white valley towards a line of high peaks on the far horizon. To the north, the land falls dramatically away to give a panoramic view over the ski runs and mountain resorts, down into the valleys and lakes around Interlaken, and far into the Swiss lowlands, even unto Germany’s Black Forest and the French Vosges on a crystal clear day.

To each side, the great mountains soar to snow-capped peaks, set against the sapphire skies of the high-altitude air: the Monch, rounded like a monk's pate, at 4105m; the twin breasts of the Jungfrau, the Young Maiden, rising to 4166m. Behind the Monch, out of view now, lurks the fierce fang of the Eiger, reaching 3975m.

You can take a hike round the Monch to a mountain lodge and peer at the Eiger summit if you wish, from just a few hundred metres below, but it’s still a serious climb, if a heck of a lot easier than from the north. (This from someone who failed even to climb Snowdon). Southward from the Sphinx, you can go ski-trekking or – mush! mush! - husky sledding across the vast Aletsch Glacier.

At 3571m the Sphinx Terrace is the highest vantage point in Europe that can be reached by public transport. Touted as "The Top of Europe", it is indubitably one of the great travel experiences. It’s cheating, sure, it’s pretty expensive too at 159 Swiss Francs (about HK$750) for the round trip from Interlaken, but it is very well worth it. Just don’t pick a cloudy day, because you’ll be inside the cloud.

Creature comforts are there too, very welcome when biting Alpine winds scour the outside decks. It’s no fun in the Foehn: this scourge of the Alps can reach 200 km per hour of fury. In a complex built into the rock are restaurants and cafes, and even a conference room, just the thing for summit meetings. A cool dive is the Ice Palace, a cavern cut in the Aletsch Glacier. Decked with ice sculptures, it has a bar all made of ice where, you guessed it, drinks are on the rocks.

It's really hard to pull yourself away from this other-worldly experience, but in the end go down you must.

Another day, another thrill: first ski lesson. Kleine Scheidegg is a hell of a place to start learning. Each January, the Men’s World Cup Downhill Race, the longest and oldest in the world, starts from the Lauberhorn just above. They whoosh down 4.26 km in 2½ minutes. Florrie and I, meanwhile, struggle even to stand up.

Instructor Heini Zurbuchen, "Henry" for us, is patience and good humour personified. A gangly Steve McManaman lookalike, a native of the valley below, he’s been skiing since he was three - probably better at it than walking.

"Skiing is about fun, about having a good time. It’s not about work like going to the gym. It’s a good time sport," Henry enthuses. "So let’s boogie!"

We stand stiff, leaden feet strapped to long thin planks which slither about and threaten to do the splits.

"Be loose," Henry insists. "Stiff muscles and postures lead to hurting yourself when you fall. It’s best to be supple when you’re skiing, not rigid."

"Point your skis slightly inward and push with the sticks." Off we go, slope about 5^0, just right, sliding downward with no control whatsoever, but we’re doing it! We somehow skim in a long curve and come to a natural stop as the incline switches to zero. Wow, didn’t fall over, pretty good!

A few more of those and we’re feeling even better. OK, take us to the Lauberhorn now! Well alright, maybe not today. It’s break time anyway. "Yodel–ay-ay-dee! I always yodel at break time," Henry tells us. "When I have a group, everybody yodels together - mass yodelling." It must curdle all the cow milk in the valley.

Next we learn always to lean forward, to put weight on the lower "downhill" ski wherever we are, to balance with the upper "uphill" ski, to look ahead not down, and other basics, without which one will mostly be horizontal, if not in plaster. We gradually get it, I fall twice, Florrie only once. We even do a hundred metre downhill run, or sloping slither, perhaps I should say, without coming a cropper.

"The key is to react fast - literally, keep on your toes," is Henry’s last watchword. Pity there’s no more time after this one morning to advance some more. Even this halting start has given a glimpse of the exhilaration that lies ahead with real skill. Some other time, some other mountain, some other land. I’ll do it yet.

Florrie and I have another fish to fry, courtesy of James Bond. (Seems you can’t escape the movies round here). We start deep in a canyon where bridal veil waterfalls gush 500 metres from sheer mountainsides. A series of cable cars winch us inexorably upward to the very tip of the 2970m high Schilthorn, where the world's highest revolving restaurant awaits us – highest revolving Chinese restaurant, if you like, since there’s a Chinese menu amongst others. Cosily seated, a glorious panorama of snowy mountain peaks rotates around you. Or is it the other way round? All this up and down in thin air gets disorientating.

This Alpine hideaway gained fame in the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service when it played the role of the secret command centre of - you guessed it - a megalomaniac who held the world to ransom. Indeed, Piz Gloria (its Bondian name) owes its very existence to 007 money, for the project was foundering until Bond film producers Broccoli and Saltzmann saw the opportunity and ploughed in some dough.

It's been a surefire winner ever since. The view is unique. Because of its particular stand-alone location at almost 3000 metres’ altitude, the Schilthorn eyrie gives a sweeping panoramic view of the Bernese Oberland's wall of high peaks that cannot be had from any other public vantage point.

But hurry, it may not last. All the high alpine structures were built on the assumption of permafrost foundations, but the mountains are now defrosting due to global warming. Places like Piz Gloria and the Sphinx could well destabilise and fall in this century. What James Bond did once, explosively, all humanity may achieve in its leisurely and feckless manner. Sic transit Piz Gloria.

Meanwhile, if you want to get really high with the greatest of ease, the Bernese Oberland is surely the place.