Interlaken 3/6/10

West to the top of the 18-floor Metropole Hotel (AKA the “concrete shame” of Interlaken according to Rick Steves). Great views of the city and the Alps at the top of the highest building around. Went back to the Schuh chocolate store to redeem my voucher chocolate. Delicious, but it turns out that 7 truffles can be expensive.

Headed out at 1 PM today to do my canyon jump at Grindelwald’s glacial canyon. Little bit of a hike up, but once we got to the top I was still pretty stoked. They didn’t have the pro photographers there today unfortunately, but luckily Kymm and Cambria did a fantastic job of capturing the moment for Laurel and I. There’s a great video of me that’s scarier to watch than the actual jump with only the 85 M rope to hold me. The first 3 seconds were fine; it’s the 5 seconds of freefall following that that are nerve-racking. After that the line gets taut and you swing through the canyon a couple times. Beyond that it’s pretty hard to describe, but basically it’s the closest I’ve been to being Batman jumping off the building in Hong Kong.

Kymm and I decided to do night sledding on the Alps. The guides took us up the mountain on a gondola to about 5,000 feet or so. Once there they gave all 30 of us red lights on lanyards to hang behind ourselves. Sledding consisted of us going back and forth on the mountain for an hour with only the red lights and the white of the snow to lead us. The guide said that white was good: anything dark was a tree, rock, or body. It’s funny to see the line of red lights going down the dark trail. Considering people sometimes crashed into each other, the experience was like Mario Kart as the guide put it, albeit no turtle shells and banana peels. There were times, though, when we weren’t getting good speed, which resulted in a lot of scooting forward on our butts, and eventually the ultimatum of simply getting up and walking to the next decent patch of powder. I crashed once when I went up the side of a bank. It was really cool going at night, though, because the trees conceal most of the scenery anyway and the chaotic nature of the ride is a thrill. Occasionally, the city lights will come into view and lone cars can be seen driving. Along the way, the trail also crossed alpine meadows and passed frozen waterfalls. Once I had no lights to guide me as we were all so spread out. Someone suggested that the guides could dress in Yeti costumes and jump out Matterhorn-style at us, but that sounds like a lawsuit. Afterwards everyone got fondue at the restaurant at the bottom of the mountain where we had picked up the sleds to begin with. Not a spread like mom prepares, but we got bread, hash browns, and a sunny side up egg. Going during the offseason the only other people who really travel around Europe are study abroad students, so we conversed with some studying in Madrid and Florence during dinner. It’s funny that Prague’s Tram 54 is so vehemently hated by everyone.