Switzerland, Rossstock
In February 2017 I took my partner Graham to meet my brother who lives in Zurich, Switzerland. For weeks before hand my brother and I had been planning an excursion, should we go wild camping? Should we hike up a mountain and sleep in the Swiss version of a bothy? My only stipulations were; please don't kill my boyfriend and let's not do anything too extreme. My brother is extreme in the coolest way, he's super fit, has travelled all over the world, he's helicoptered up mountains and ski'd back down them, he's utterly fearless. We finally settled on a snowshoe hike which Andrew described to me as being 'easy'...... I had my suspicions.
Our first afternoon in Zurich was amazing, we wandered around the city and were treated to lunch followed by a hot chocolate and signature macarons from Sprungli. Later we had a tour around Google HQ (where Andrew works) and went home for a delicious home cooked meal.
The next day we set off for Rossstock. We drove to the base of the mountain, got geared up, crammed ourselves and our kit into a tiny cable car and we were ready to to start the ascent....after being casually fitted with avalanche transceivers and airbags. I could see Graham eye'ing me, what the hell was about to happen?!
Within 10 minutes we could hardly breath, the altitude hit us much harder than we expected, our hearts were hammering and we were already struggling to put one foot in-front of the other. The first half hour was really tough and I had no idea how far we had to go.
We climbed for a couple of hours, it was hard and there were some pretty scary moments. As we approached the summit, the snow had compacted into ice and I struggled to plant one foot and lift the other high enough and wide enough to clear my snowshoes. On top of that if I did fail to plant my foot and slipped I was going to fall a really long way. For the first time in my life I actually froze with fear and felt like I couldn't carry on.
I don't know what takes over at these moments, something kicks in and failure is not an option. We made it to the summit and the view at the top was one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen.
After a quick lunch break we made our decent, although it wasn't as tough as the ascent my legs were like jelly and my trusty hiking boots had failed me and given me blisters so it was far from easy. When we got lower the snow was thick and powdery so we covered a good bit of distance sliding down on our bums.
We got home just in time for a quick snooze before dinner. I knew we were going to a fondue hut up Zurich's resident mountain the Uetliberg but I assumed we'd get the train the entire way. This was not the case, we got the train most of the way and then hiked the rest of the way, by this point Graham was cursing me but then we arrived, there was cheese and schnapps a'plenty and it was glorious!
Snowshoeing up Rossstock was the most challenging thing I've ever done but I felt such a sense of achievement and honestly it was worth it to take the following photos, they're some of my favourites....the Etape Loch Ness will be easy after this...right?!
One of my favourite ever photos, the descent:
It's a long way down!
The climb:
Mountain Hut:
Big bro on the way up:
Ross stock summit. Sheer drops on both sides at the summit. 2,461 meters to the bottom:
Lunch stop, fresh bread, a round of cheese and some cured meat.
Later the same day we climbed another mountain; the Uetliberg for some fondue:
