When You Play Stupid Games…
Wengen is a town that reminds me very much of Queenstown, New Zealand. I describe Wengen as the Swiss Alps on Red Bull.
The entire town is filled with thrill-seekers of all sorts. It is an adrenaline lover’s playground, where you can paraglide off the mountainside and soar thousands of feet above the spectacular Lauterbrunnen Valley.
For an even bigger rush, one can tackle the legendary Mürren–Gimmelwald Via Ferrata, traversing an exposed cliff face with roughly 400 meters of air beneath your feet, plus a zipline and a dramatic suspension bridge. Experienced adventurers can also take on technical rock climbing and high-alpine mountaineering, surrounded by the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau peaks.
The Lauterbrunnen Valley is also world-famous for BASE jumping, with athletes launching from sheer cliffs around Mürren.
And, if you prefer your adrenaline on the ground, mountain biking and trail running through Mürren’s steep Alpine terrain can turn an already breathtaking landscape into a serious physical adventure.
Average age in this town is as expected – 20s, 30s, 40s. Everyone is fit, and bristling with excitement, for their next adventure. And, as you know, I fit right in there as a well-conditioned athlete, capable of jumping waterfalls on sheer granite mountaintops! Ha! (Just kidding, of course).
We shed our wet clothes at the Hotel Alpinrose and then walked up yet another hill to get to a wine bar that Rebecca wanted to visit.
We sat on sheepskin-covered chairs as we looked out at the sheer granite cliffs in front of us and listened to the shouts and conversations from groups of 30-somethings moving from one adventure to the next.
As we were calmly sipping on a light German pinot, a man in his 30s made his way slowly up the stairs to the deck where we we sat. He was walking on crutches very carefully and gently lowered himself into a chair beside me as he struck up a conversation with the three of us.
He told us Wengen is a town of “stupid games”, referring to all of the extreme sports promoted there. When we asked him to tell us more, he expounded on paragliding, BASE jumping, and the sport he came here for: Speed Flying. He explained that speed flying is not the Squirrel suit I was thinking of but instead uses a much smaller, faster wing than a traditional paraglider, allowing the pilot to descend steep mountainsides at high speed while making sharp, dynamic turns.
The speed flying pilot typically launches by running down a steep slope, then flies very close to the terrain, using brake controls and body movement to steer the wing around ridges, cliffs and other features. Because the wing is small and highly responsive, speed flying requires advanced understanding of wind, weather, aerodynamics, terrain and precise wing control. Formal training is strongly recommended. The sport carries a serious risk of death because pilots travel quickly and often have very little altitude or time to recover if they misjudge terrain, encounter turbulence, or lose control of the wing.
In mountainous areas such as the Swiss Alps, changing winds, rocks, trees, cliffs and rapidly approaching terrain make mistakes especially unforgiving, which is why our new acquaintance was on crutches. Less than 10 days earlier, our new acquaintance had miscalculated while speed flying and he crashed. He was airlifted to France where they rebuilt his completely shattered tailbone with cement and put steel bars in his spine to replace the vertebrae he crushed upon impact. It was not lost on any of us that he was lucky to be sitting upright. As he told us “This is a place for “stupid games” and when you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes”. He held his crutches in the air in mock victory as he said these words. Duly noted, young sir, we will not be paragliding nor speedflying anywhere in the near future.
Fortunately for us, and for the folks that love us, we only had time for dinner and a quick night’s sleep before awakening to sunshine and a big push to our next location.
The trek on this day was the most spectacular we have seen since we started! Take a look! We hiked far down a mountain and through town to a designated gondola that took us to the top of a peak where we stopped to eat breakfast before heading to the trail.
The views on the trail were the exact reason I was drawn to this trek and to Switzerland.
Our hike was spectacular and thankfully “unadventurous” with little to no cliffs we could slip or fly off of.
We walked many miles this day to our final stop in the mountains at a lovely carless-town called Murren, approachable only on foot or gondola.
We can now expect our days to run like Swiss clocks – we awaken at 7am or earlier, pack our bags and have them at the front desk by 7:30 when we take breakfast (we are on a half-board package) and then we are out the door by 8am.
We trek until 3pm or 4pm, logging a solid 7-8 hours of walking. We typically stop to hydrate once or twice and we stop to eat our lunch of crackers and cheese and hard boiled eggs. My hiking gals have electrolytes, caffeine bars and protein bars so that no one is ever left with low energy or hunger. Being prepared on the trail is essential to your success out here. You only consume what you pack. Switzerland water is pure glacial water and it is safe to drink out of the taps. I make sure I’ve got a sandwich and 2 liters of water in my pack before I set foot out the door. Sometimes, when we’re lucky, we come across wild mountain blueberries out on the trail and make a snack of those. Nothing tastes so sweet as a wild berry on a 100 mile trek.
It’s time for this gal to hit the road! We are in Murren and I’m off on a side quest to a small town called “Winteregg”. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. Thanks for joining me today.