After a rock-climbing fall in Bethel two years ago that shattered his foot and nearly took his life, Roger Beaudoin recently celebrated his recovery by climbing the Matterhorn in Switzerland.

For more than 20 years, the famous peak has figured prominently in Beaudoin’s life.

In 1988, Beaudoin, a native of Holyoke, Mass., was living in Milan, Italy. A dedicated skier, he took a summer train trip to Zermatt, Switzerland, where skiing is a year-round sport.

Zermatt is home to the Matterhorn.

“I’d heard of the mountain, but I didn’t know that I’d know it if I saw it in a picture,” he said.

When he got off the train, he said, “There it was, at the end of the village. It takes your breath away. It’s so steep, so imposing, so forbidding. I was in awe.”

Beaudoin dropped his bags at his hotel, and, he said, “set off to touch the mountain.”

Clad only in a T-shirt, shorts and tennis shoes, he started hiking up alone toward the base (a move he doesn’t recommend).

It took him five hours to get to a hut at the base. For the last two and a half hours he was above the tree line, on a trail with several switchbacks.

He made it, and touched the mountain.

Then the weather changed and the temperature dropped. Chilled, he had to hustle back down.

But he was hooked. “I said, ‘Someday, I’ll come back and climb it.’”

Beaudoin eventually moved to California, where he enrolled in rock-climbing classes.

“That’s when the climbing obsession started,” he said. “I tried to prepare, with the Matterhorn an ever-present goal.”

In 1993, he returned to Switzerland and contacted a guide, hoping to climb.

He prepared several days for the altitude change by hiking and climbing a lower mountain that duplicated the type of climbing required on the Matterhorn.

But the prime climb wasn’t to be. It rained for days in Zermatt, which meant snow on the Matterhorn.

Beaudoin didn’t want the trip to be a total loss.

“I had to climb something,” he said.

So he signed up for a peak named Pollux. “After I signed up, I learned an avalanche had just killed several people there. But the guides said, ‘Whatever is going to come down has already come down.’”

Somewhat reassured, Beaudoin and his guide set off and successfully reached the summit, a knife’s edge 2 feet wide.

If Beaudoin slipped off one side, his guide told him, he would jump off the other side to try to balance the fall by the rope that connected them. Otherwise, the guide said, he would not be able to hold Beaudoin.

But that wasn’t necessary. And the climb, said Beaudoin, “inspired me to come back.”

He returned to the U.S., and in 1994 moved to Bethel, where a year later he opened a restaurant named after his favorite peak.

In 1996, he returned to Switzerland. But again, the weather didn’t cooperate.

He climbed yet another secondary peak, this time with a guide who that day was observing the one-year anniversary of his son’s death in a climbing accident.

Beaudoin worried about the man’s ability to concentrate on the task at hand. But whatever the guide’s emotions, they didn’t slow him down.

“I couldn’t keep up,” Beaudoin said. “I kept slipping and falling. And he’s looking at the view.”

But he was successful in reaching the summit, and the guide praised him, saying he could climb more difficult terrain.

“That fueled my fire even more,” Beaudoin said.

In 1998, Beaudoin’s persistence paid off.

“The conditions were perfect. We climbed in a very fast time, three hours and 20 minutes,” he said. The average is five to six hours.

The last part of the climb was made over ropes permanently fixed to the rock.

Standing on top on a 3- to 5-foot knife’s edge, he said, “I was overcome with elation and joy. I was screaming and crying. It was overwhelming.”

But after only 10 minutes, the weather turned and Beaudoin and his guide had to quickly descend.

Though he had reached his ultimate goal, Beaudoin had no intention of hanging up his climbing equipment.

He returned to Zermatt in 2000 to climb another peak, and in subsequent years he continued to climb in the U.S.

But the Matterhorn continued to beckon.

With another trip to the Swiss peak in mind, Beaudoin honed his rock-climbing skills locally.

After the dangerous but successful climbs in the Alps, he almost died two years ago on a 65-foot cliff off North Road in Bethel.

He was out with a novice climber, teaching him techniques for going up and down the cliff. It was late in the day, and Beaudoin was about to rappel down the cliff while the other climber belayed him from the bottom.

But Beaudoin, who was not wearing a helmet, had forgotten to double-check where the rope was attached to his partner’s harness. As it turned out, it was attached insecurely.

As Beaudoin started to rappel down, the rope ripped free from his partner’s waist and Beaudoin tumbled toward the ground.

“I did at least two somersaults. I hit my head pretty hard,” he said.

He landed on his feet, tumbled forward and landed on his back between two large rocks.

“I heard the birds, and I saw my truck (parked nearby). I started doing multiplication tables to see if I was still there,” he said.

A trip to the hospital revealed he had shattered his heel.

Pins, plates and months later, his heel was still swollen. His body had reacted to the metal implants.

Beaudoin wondered, “Can I climb again? Will I be freaked out by heights?”

Six months after the accident, he went ice-climbing in Grafton Notch with Chris Hayward, another local climber.

“We went up pretty high, and I wasn’t affected,” Beaudoin said. “It was as if nothing had happened.”

But his swollen heel bothered him. “I had to limp back,” he said.

A year after the accident, the pins and plates were removed and the swelling disappeared. Beaudoin again turned his thoughts to the Matterhorn. “I knew I’d go back,” he said.

In August, he did. Weather was again a problem, with a lot of snow and a backlog of climbers waiting to ascend.

Beaudoin had hoped to do several altitude acclimation climbs, but his one attempt had to be aborted, because he did not have the equipment to negotiate rocks that were unexpectedly ice-covered.

Running out of time, he took the one good day that was left for an attempt.

He and his guide started out at 3:30 a.m., climbing with headlamps for the first two hours.

Without the altitude preparation, “I was fatigued early,” he said. “The only thing that kept me going was that I had to go sideways occasionally. Without that respite I wouldn’t have made it. I was hyper-focused on each hole for the next step.”

His attention was drawn away briefly when the sun came up.

“It’s spectacular to see the sunrise. It comes up and the Matterhorn turns glowing gold,” he said.

The last part of the climb, over the fixed ropes, called for some acrobatics. With 160 other climbers going up and down that day, Beaudoin found himself climbing around them.

Once on top, the weather was perfect.

“We could see into France, Italy and Switzerland. We were on top for 45 minutes to an hour,” he said.

The good conditions gave him a chance to fulfill a secondary goal. He had brought with him an eagle pendant that belonged to his father, who died earlier this year.

“I wanted to leave it on the summit,” he said. “I took a photo of it lying in the snow before I buried it. It was a sad, grieving moment.”

Despite the fatigue and emotion of the climb, Beaudoin said, “I had boundless energy going down. It was just the opposite of normal.”

He’s still not done with the peak.

“I have two daughters, and maybe when they get older, we’ll climb it as a family,” he said. “I know I’ll keep returning to the place.”