Canyoning

Interlaken is the extreme sports capital of the world, and we decided out of all the options we wanted to do canyoning. I wasn’t really sure what this entailed but the pictures looked cool so we booked a tour. We had to be at the base of the tour company at 9:00am (which was rough after the night before) and when there, there was a mass of people all being divided into groups and assigned guides. Our guides were Toby and Ted, and they led us through the process of picking out wetsuits, wetsocks, wetshoes, helmets, harnesses, and lifejackets. We packed everything into the trailer and got into the van with the other half of our group—about 7 German guys who didn’t speak a lick of English. The ride lasted about 1.5 hours and then we reached a field (full of cow patties) and were instructed to put on our wetsuits. Have you ever tried to put on a semi-damp wetsuit?? It was nearly impossible and took me about 15 minutes. Toby had to help me. We all piled back into the van for the last leg of the drive. We were driving up a really pretty road, on the side of the mountain (the kind where its cliffs up to the right and cliffs down to the lift) and the van stopped and we were all instructed to get out. This is where the canyoning was going to start?!?!? All it was was a guardrail, a road, and a 150 ft. drop!!

Ted gave about a 15 minute instruction talk to the Germans (in German of course) and then Toby looked at us and said, “Those are their instructions. Your instructions: Don’t mess up.” I mistakenly looked over the guardrail and have never been so scared in my life. We made the boy (Cas) go first, and I wanted to go second. When it was my turn, Toby clipped me in, and said, “Okay, now climb over the guardrail.” I could barely climb over the guardrail in Geneva to jump off the bridge into the river (20 ft. max); how could I do this?! So I climbed over, and he’s like, “Okay now let go and lean back.” It probably took me 5 minutes to let go of the guardrail and after that I just focused on getting down. I tried to look around and enjoy the amazing-ness of where I was and what I was doing, but as soon as I looked to the side (not even down) my whole body tensed up and I started freaking out. Only looking up from here on out. About halfway down the cliff was a ledge, and we were told to not stop and just keep going. When I reached the ledge, I kind of fell, and Toby kept giving me slack, so instead of being horizontal to the wall (with feet firmly against it), I was parallel to the wall and Toby was just kind of lowering me down, with my body dragging down this sheer wall of rock. Eventually the people in the canyon were able to signal to Toby to stop giving me slack so I could regain my footing, but by that time I was only about 30 ft. from the bottom. Piece of cake from there on out. When I got the bottom, Cas told me I pretty much just slid down about 50 ft. of the cliff and it was one of the funniest things he’s ever seen.

Once the whole group was down, we started our trek through the river. Canyoning is pretty much just walking along a river, but there are huge boulder and drops all over. You do a mix of climbing, sliding, jumping, and zip-lining down. The river water was FREEZING and my wetsuit was a little too big, so I wasn’t as warm as I would have liked and I couldn’t feel my hands by the end of the tour. But it was one of the most amazing things I have ever done and I would definitely do it again!