The next day in Interlaken Jeff and I decided to go
climbing. We picked a random mountain by pointing and just walked towards it.
It proved to be nearly an hour away. Mountains always appear much closer than
they actually are. We started climbing. This was definitely the most
challenging climb yet and it got me in great shape. At around 5 o’clock we
decided to blow off our plans to meet up with others to travel to Munich in
favor of continuing to climb.
I had this real impulse to climb. What makes climbing
a mountain so amazing is that it seems so endless, like such an insurmountable
obstacle. It leaves me with such an exhilarating sense of accomplishment.
One particularly scary moment was when I pulled on a
big fucking log which appeared to be attached to a tree. The log came out of
the ground, ran over my hand causing me great pain. Luckily the pain was only
temporary even though the log totally cut up my hand and lower arm. I didn’t so
much notice the pain because I was distracted by fear that this log would
literally kill Jeff who was climbing below me. I screamed “holly fuck Jeff look
out!!” Jeff jumped out of the way giving up his grip causing him to begin
sliding down the mountain. He started clawing into the mountain and finally
stopped sliding. What a scary moment. I don’t know what would have happened had
the log hit Jeff.
We had a few scary moments climbing. We had parts
which we called “no fall zones`` where it was apparent that falling would
likely kill us.
We climbed until about 6:30 when we reached a point
where Jeff wisely assessed it as too dangerous to continue climbing. The decent
wasn't as much fun but was scarier. When the terrain would allow for it we
would slide down on our asses, trying to dig up as much dirt as possible to
control our speed. We reached one point where it was too steep a drop and it
was unsafe to go down. We felt trapped because there didn't appear to be viable
options to our left or our right. We eventually decided that we had to climb
back up for a while and reroute.
It was certainly an exciting climb down. The rain
picked up also which made it worse because the last thing we needed was to lose
traction. Despite looking like the sky was going to open up, luckily the rain
remained light. When we reached the bottom I had such a feeling of joy. I
actually began dancing for a minute inexplicably. Then for the second time on
our trip our climb ended with a beautiful rainbow.
Fortunately when we stopped a car to ask for
directions the woman driving offered to give us a ride back to our hostile. We
got back at about 9 o`clock. We had been hiking and climbing for nearly 8
straight hours. It was an amazing day.
Part of what I liked so much about the day was that we
created our own fun. On the previous days we had paid hundreds of dollars to do
organized excursions to go canyoning and hang gliding. Those days were great.
But our day climbing didn't cost us a penny, we created the experience
ourselves and it was easily my favorite and most memorable day in the
Interlaken.
Read another travel adventure about stealing a boat.
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