Frozen Falls

Today we went on our first hike. Katie went over hiking protocol, equipment checks, route cards and all the things we need to be able to explain to the guests. Ready for anything in our waterproofs, sturdy boots, woolly hats and a packed lunch, off we went to the frozen Engstligen Falls. It was a beautiful day and the walk itself was very pretty, following a half frozen river with snowy scenery all around. Occasionally we saw a cross-country skier, although the funniest encounter we had was a group of youths strutting 'coolly' down the alpine pathway, one of them carrying an iPod speaker system which was blasting out some dance beats. Woah...

A two hour walk later, we reached the falls and climbed up onto a big boulder to eat lunch. The falls looked gorgeous; half frozen and water spilling down over the ice.

After lunch we backtracked to the cable car station, and took a ride on it high up to the top of Engstligen. There were a lot of ski runs up there, but we were headed to the snow tubing runs. Rhianna explained how to do it, and then we all grabbed ourselves a tube and got ourselves clipped on to the line that would pull us to the top of the hill. We had a ticket for two runs, and there were four routes to choose from. On Rihanna's advice, most of us chose the supposedly calmer route for our first tubing experience. NONE of them are in any way calm!! You pick up so much speed and you zoom right up the embankments every time you take a corner!! Pretty scary stuff. On my second go, I braved the wildest and twistiest route. Bad idea. I ended up falling out of my tube on a particularly steep bend - fortunately I had a helmet on or it might have really hurt. I ended up having a third go as Eve very kindly lent me the 2CHF for the run. This time I went down the straight route. Although it is straight, that doesn't make it any less scary because if anything you pick up even more speed going down! Three times was definitely enough for me.

Just before we got the cable car back down, we had a look inside the Igloo-Fondu restaurant. It was very pretty inside the igloo, with roses frozen inside polished blocks of ice, and tables set with fake animal furs on the seats, but it absolutely reeked of cheese!!
Very tired after the long walk back, we (particularly Eve and I) were overjoyed to be greeted on our return with a hot dinner of Cottage Pie. Total comfort food!
That evening we practiced the crafts on offer to guests on Craft Nights. There was wood burning, woggle making, Scherensnitte (traditional Swiss paper cutting) and snowflake/flower making. I was so tired by this point I could hardly keep my eyes open. Extremely glad to finally go to bed.