Experience The Adventure

Interlocken is known for being a great place for skiers, hikers, and extreme sports. Time to have some fun!

pics to come.

ICE CLIMBING
We drove up to a glacier, fairly early, with a group of 5 of us and a guide, two American girls and a couple from Toronto. It was a nice and bright sunny day. After a small loop on the glacier, he showed us a few basics and sent us down a crevasse.

It was great. It was a challenge because my crampons keep slipping, and every time, it was like a rush. Closer to the end, the guys is asking if anyone else wants to climb more. “You can do this one, but if you can’t make it up, I’m not pulling you up, we’re leaving without you,” says the guide. “In that case I’ll just walk up the walls” I say. He finds that funny. I explain I want a challenge, so he straps me into the spider girl’s wall. You have 10min before the yellow waterfall. The bottom was tough. If you watch the ice cracking under your pick axes, you know you’re in trouble. If your feet fall, you can still hang on. If you lose your axes on an overhang, then your feet don’t matter much. Still, its the crampon grips that are difficult, low ankles are just not normal. “Stop kicking it. It’s ice, not your ex girlfriend” he shouts from above. He was full of funny comments.

He asks once I reach the top, how did you do? Well, I was a little over the 10 min. But the only one with a watch 🙂

The guy from Toronto wants to try and and I tell him he should have enough time. He grabs his light ice axes and heads down. 20 minutes later we hear him, “guys I’m stuck.” You’re making progress so keep going. 10 minutes later, “guys, no really, I’m stuck.” The guide grabs the right pulley, and starts hulling him up. Every time he thought he had a grip and pulled himself up, his axes would slip and down he went. At the top, the guide explains, I would never take those axes down there. Well good thing we have a guide to tell us after!

Canyoning

The most extreme canyon was closed, and with little chance of it opening up in the next few days, so we went to the older most extreme. Grimsel canyon June19, code name,Skunk.

We started early in the morning, putting on all our gear, and rappelling 100m down into the canyon. “Don’t hang onto the guard rail by the side” he tells us. Right, that’s why we are using it to repel down. Everyone seemed scared shitless. It had only a slight affect as yesterday was repelling on that glacier.

The first pool, you get a refreshing taste of chilly glacial water, aptly named the good morning jump. When you surface, you yell Good Morning so they know you are alright. Most are jumps, varying in height, but always seem to be at least 10 feet up, up to about 30feet. We also use the natural slides of the water path, or former water path routes. There were 2 zip lines. The first one you go screaming down below a rock, like a blind corner. As you approach the rock ready to hit it, it stops you inches away, where you clip out and fall back into the pool. The second line was above a large pool about 20 feet up. He encourages everyone to try and flip. The first few all land on their back. You can hear the sound, and it sounds painful. Some don’t try. One guys cans himself, because you don’t know how much time it will take to drop once you release the rope knot. Splat, on my back! It feels like a crush to the chest. Going to order some really nice pics from their website when i get back.

Heading to Lauderbrunen next.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.