March 15, 1917, was a dismal day in Zurich. There was a heavy mist in the air and patches of dirty snow on the ground. The mood of V. I. Lenin was no better than the Swiss weather when a fellow émigré burst into his apartment to announce that there had been a revolution in Petrograd. The response of the disbelieving Bolshevik leader was to wander down to the offices of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung where press clippings confirmed the rumours but offered few details. A brief visit to the Russian Reading Room did little to relieve either his depression or his uncertainty. Abandoning plans to work in the cantonal library, Lenin set off instead to climb the Zurichberg. It was hardly a strenuous excursion. The crest of the Zurichberg was only 270 metres above the city and a couple of kilometres from its centre. The walk, however, cleared his head and helped to restore his optimism concerning the day's unexpected news. It was to be the last of his many forays into the Swiss mountains, for on that same day Tsar Nicholas II abdicated his throne in the first of a series of events that was to bring Lenin to power eight months later.

The fact that he should choose to climb a mountain, albeit a small mountain, on a crucial day of the February Revolution was not inconsistent with Lenin's character.