Canyoning Rocks!

 

Gee how time flies when you’re having fun! This year signals my 10^th summer working as a canyoning guide in Switzerland with Outdoor Interlaken.  Where the heck did all those yrs go? Well let me just say that this past weekend  was a perfect example of how time flies when  Life is Busy. The summer in the Alps has been a bit slow on the uptake this year,  but finally we had a corker of a weekend,  so all the more fun to be out in the hills.

 On Friday I got down the local Interlaken Canyon a couple of times which always provides some good humour. The Interlaken Canyon cuts it’s way down from the village of Saxeten, and is more of a creek than a canyon,  meaning that you could pretty much take a kayak down there…(and that wont be the first time).  And so introducing… Kayaking without a Kayak, otherwise known as Canyoning. Now just imagine dressing up in 5mm wetsuits and booties,  donning a buoyancy aid and helmet, clipping on a harness, then plunging into the wild waterfalls and slides….. very exciting, and sooo much fun!

 Even though I enjoy all the canyons we do here, one still has to have a favourite, and on Saturday I was lucky enough to take a big group down the classic Chli Schliere Canyon…. now there’s a little swiss tongue twister for ya ;-))

 You’d think driving the same road to the canyon everyday would get boring… but not this road. Driving up Lake Brienz and over into Central Switzerland is a stunning route, with plenty going on which always keeps me as a driver on my toes. Even the 20 min walk down the trail to the first slide never gets stale, and for all you know you could be a hundred miles from anywhere. With all the rain we’ve been having through May the water  was quite high, so pretty hands on in there. My body bears testimony to that and everything hurts right now. But it’s good hurt,  the kinda pain that makes you feel like you’re living! The Schliere canyon is formed in Limestone, where the water has cut perfect waterfalls and slides which cascade into a series of deep pools. You really need to see it to appreciate just how sweet it is.

Had a bit of an epic in the beginning of the trip as the third dude to slide dislocated his shoulder! Just what you need first thing on a Saturday morning! This is one of our biggest concerns, as any injury in the canyon brings on the task of evacuating the poor bugger. We always make a point of reminding people that if they have any ‘old’ injuries that might re-occur,  please inform us so that we can advise special care. So anyways I dive into the pool as I can see he is is signalling some discomfort with his left shoulder, and I ask him if this has ever  happened before. “ oh yeagh man it happens all the time”. No shit well thanks for telling me! The dude seemed pretty unphased by it all which was a good thing actually, but after he ‘popped’ it out again in the next slide , I slung it under his life jacket and he opted to walk out at the halfway point ( which is another whole story , but maybe next time)

Beside Captain Popout, we had no further mishaps, and some pretty wild rides down ‘the corkscrew’, ‘the vertical slide’, ‘KCs’ and a bunch of others that haven’t been claimed to name fame yet…. Hmmm , I wonder if we shouldn’t call that first slide ‘Entrance Exam’, cos if you pass that, you should be good to go!

 I think one of the funnest spots on the trip is the Fun Pool. A user friendly launch rock and deep landing zone make people do some pretty funny shit, and so we call it freestyle… like the MacPretzel into a belly flop! You just quite simply are not allowed to do a normal ‘cannonball’ here…. No pain no gain!

 

I think one of the hardest parts of my job is watching everyone down a frosty bottle of amber gold at the end, but hey the long awaited beer back at the base justs tastes that much better then.