So . . . no, not the high seas, per se. A harrowing tale, nonetheless, of an epic journey to the top of an epic mount reminiscent of that sacred mount upon which Moses was handed down the laws for a nation of outcasts by a man named "I am." This, my friends, was no ordinary hike. It was a covenant entered into by four willing and yet unable persons.
I feel like if I try to keep using that metaphor, the fact that I went on a hike on Wednesday and Thursday would be completely lost amidst my verbal self-indulgence. So on with the story!
Wednesday afternoon at 5 pm, Nichole, Jon, Greg (a new guy here who's staying with his wife and kids in a chalet just up the road), and I set out for a hike to the top of one of the mountains across the valley from Huemoz. Greg had mentioned it to me the first day he got here, and when we realized that the next Thursday would be bad because of weather we decided to make it happen this Thursday. Since the hike was such a long one, we had to leave on Wednesday afternoon to get a ride to the bottom of the mountain and hike up to a refuge (a little cabin type thing) to spend the night. Now, Greg is in pretty good shape and he told us before we started that it was going to be really strenuous, but I don't think any of us thought it would be as hard a hike as it turned out to be. The hike up to the refuge was an 800 meter climb over the course of about four kilometers laterally. It was steep. Almost all the time it was steep. By the halfway point of the hike up to the refuge, I was wiped out and wondering if I could keep going. Luckily, there was no turning back really, so I had to keep going. I say luckily because spending the night up at the refuge was one of the coolest things I've done since I've been here.
What is a refuge? Well, let me tell you. All throughout the mountains in Switzerland are these little (or not so little sometimes) cabins that are kept up by the districts in which they're located. Most of them are at a scenic point or strategic point for a through hike of some part of the mountains. The one we stayed at was one of the smallest and hardest to get to, but the views were outstanding and the place was just plain cool to stay at. It was basically just a little stone cabin with some tables and a kitchen downstairs and two rows of sleeping mats and comforters upstairs for people to sleep in. We took a bunch of food up with us that night and cooked tuna lemon pasta for dinner and had a nice bottle of wine and some beer that they had there. There were about four other people there besides the four of us, and they all spoke French exclusively. Fortunately for us, both Greg and Nichole are fluent in French and were able to translate for Jon and I.
So, we spent the night at the refuge and woke up the next morning slightly sore, but ready to set out for a day of hiking. The map we had said that our route would take us 14 hours, but we were pretty sure we could cut that by a third at least. We set out down the mountain (yes, we had to go all the way back down to where we started the day before so that we could pick up the other trail) at about 8:30 that morning. Going down was nice. Very nice.
The new trail at the bottom wasn't too bad at first. I actually started to think that maybe it wouldn't be hard at all and that Greg had just been exaggerating about the difficulty of the hike. Well, after about the first mile or two, things took a sharp turn vertically and we started up the first of two 500 meter ascents. It wouldn't have been so bad except that the ascents were 500 meters up over the course of only about 1000 meters laterally. This meant that most of the time, I could bend at the waist slightly and put both of my hands on the ground. It was steep. At points, I started to think that maybe it would be better just to "slip" and tumble down the mountain to the bottom instead of continuing up. After about an hour or so of climbing, we reached the top of the first ascent and had some cheese sandwiches and chocolate for lunch. It was the best tasting food and water I've ever had in my entire life. Alas, we only rested for about twenty minutes before setting out on the second ascent of 540 meters.
This ascent was ever harder than the first because it was mostly over a bunch of scree, just loose rocks and rubble, which forced you to concentrate on every single step you took so that you wouldn't just slide off somewhere down the mountain. About halfway up the second ascent we came across a little glacier area and stopped to chill out (pun only slightly intended) there for a little bit before heading up to the top which was about 45 minutes away. The last stretch was by far the hardest. Just like being in hell. It seemed like it would never end. Jon and Greg were about 10 minutes ahead of me most of the time and Nichole was about 10 minutes behind me so I used waiting for her as an excuse to stop a few times.
Finally, after five hours of hiking, I made it to the top, and let me assure you, it was totally worth it. The top was at 2520 meters elevation so the views were spectacular of the entire valley. We stopped and took a little break to enjoy the view and take a bunch of pictures and videos of the top before setting off down the mountain.
The hike down was almost as tough as the hike up just because we had been going and going for sooooooo long that everyone's knees and feet started to hurt. After another three hours of hiking down, however, we made it to a little village where we got a few cold beers and called a cab. Mission complete. Greg told us afterwards that this hike is the second hardest hike he's ever done. So, yeah. We were all proud of ourselves and each other and we all had great stories to tell when we got back to L'Abri that night. It was a great time with great people and it made me really glad I decided to come back for a second time.
I'm typing this post on my laptop so I don't know how much I'll be able to get done today, but hopefully I will have posted some pictures or a video or both. If I post pictures then I'll put some comments on each picture to give it some context (to see how to work the slideshow, check out this post) and if I post the video (more likely since pictures take longer to upload) then here's the context: the first clip was taken when we had hiked into the middle of the mountains and were in a little bowl sort of place with a bunch of cows; it's right before we started climbing. The second clip is of us at the top of the mountain. Enjoy!
In other news, if you watched the video I posted yesterday then you'll know that they've been having a big vintage car race from Ollon to Villars. It was neat to see the old school cars the first couple times, but now it's just really really loud and obnoxious. Today is the last day of the race. I think I'll post some pictures of the cars coming by at the bottom of this post. That means that I'll for sure be posting the video and not the pictures of the hike. So, I'll post the pictures on Tuesday when I've got some time (for free) on the internet.
Also, the weather here has been awesome for the last week or so. Every day is sunny and 70 and at night it drops to about 50. I'm hoping this keeps up for the rest of the month.
What else? Jon and I have decided to hitchhike east for the break. We haven't quite decided where to go yet. We're thinking southern Italy or Greece. I think if we can make it down to southern Italy, we might be able to get a boat ride to Greece somehow. The big thing, at least at this point, is just making it back to Switzerland to do the bungee jumping on the last day of the break. If you want to see what the jump is like, go here, and be impressed. We're also thinking about compiling a list of "challenges" for us to try to complete while we're out. So far we don't have much, just to get to an island at some point, bungee jump, and get free rides on scooters somewhere. If you have any ideas, please chime in. We're not trying to make the challenges unreachable, but so far I think we only have things that can be pretty easily accomplished, so give us something actually challenging.
I need to stop typing now. This has been my longest post yet, I think. Thanks for sticking around.
Later.
PS I am now on the computer, and I forgot to put pictures on my USB drive so all we have for right now is the video of the top of the mountain. I'll put lots of pictures up on Tuesday.
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