07/09/2011
Well today we felt invincible! After numerous people telling us we would never make it up the treacherous hike from Gimmelwald to the "top of Europe", we ignored them and took on the challenge. Everyone said we didn't have proper equipment or enough water or the ability to do it, but we were encouraged by one sole ranger...Nick. He believed in us. Maybe it was our Chi O shirts that people doubted that a sorority girl could not do such a hike, or maybe it was ....; nonetheless we proved them all wrong. Nick told us to meet him downstairs at 8 am. So we got up bright and early, grabbed some lunch, and waited ready for the adventure. Nick took care of us...he even gave us his extra little backpack to put everything in. As we left our Mountain hostel, one guy (who was going to take the gondola to the top to see view) taunted us saying he'd see us back in 20 minutes. Well we sure proved that lazy butt wrong. We headed out to take the Schlithorn on! We had just met our friend the night before, but we quickly bonded over our numerous hour hike. He graduated from Notre Dame a couple year ago and was now working in Atlanta for GE. We pretty much got his life story plus some ransom facts thru our random question game Kenz and I enjoy playing.
We climbed from 4500 ft to 1000 ft as we filled up our water bottle in stream along the way. Nick told us to just look up the mountain and see if there were any cows pooping in the stream, an if not we were good to go. After passing a monument devoted to some lords daughter being struck by lightening and several skull and cross bones warning signs, we were almost there. The last part of it we literally had to climb a mountain peak with no trail, snow on it and a little rope to hold on to with steep cliffs on either side. we finally reached our James Bond destination and enjoyed a pricey beer in the spinning restaurant as we scarfed down a sandwich r two. The only obnoxious thing was watching all the tourist jump off the gondola and snap a pic of the incredible peaks on all sides, as we stood breathless, in pain, but accomplished!
We skipped down the mountain to our hostel and finally got back around 5 pm. The first thing we did was to cure our cravings with popcorn, pickles, and an ice cold beer. Then we put our 1 frank in to take a quick 5 min shower (our first since Wed-having some all time lows in the hygiene field). Nick had earlier informed us if you push the stop button on water to put on soap, ect...then you only needed 2 min of water and then could just stand and enjoy the small amount of water for the other 3 min. We took his advice. We then made some pasta and played Spades until about 9 when we were so exhausted we jumped into bed and fell asleep. I honestly don't think I've been to bed that early since 1997. But our bodies were so exhausted that we went straight to bed.
Location:Schlithorn, Swiss Alps
Those pictures are incredible--glad that you made it to the top!
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