Report # 4

8/15/2002 

Hi Everyone,

Here in the Alps, like many mountainous areas around the globe, can have really changeable weather, and rain in the afternoon is a normal event in the summer.  We have been extraordinarily fortunate; the weather for us here in Kandersteg this week has been excellent.  It's been clear and sunny all day long.  A few clouds have formed each afternoon, but have dissipated by nightfall.  One of my older scouts, Keegan Johnson, brought his laptop on this trip, and like me, he has been keeping an electronic journal.  I am going to use some of his journal entries in this email.  The reason that I want to use his journal entries is to report on what our older guys have been up to, and give you another perspective.  We have divided our group into two groups, and I have hiked with the larger group of younger scouts.  So here are some of Keegan's report interspersed with my own narrative. I hope you enjoy it.

Keegan wrote that "today (Tuesday) we were promised that we would get the day off to rest and relax."   He also wrote that "this was a lie."  Keegan continues to say, "we were awoken (rudely, I might add) at 6:30 a.m. and informed that we were going on a hike.  Not happy.  The good news was that this was one of the same things we had done the last time the troop made a trip to Kandersteg three years ago.  The hike consisted of a 2 mile walk to the edge of town and a little beyond to a chair-lift that took the whole group up the side of a nearby mountain.  The ride took approximately 10 minutes.  One of our "semi-adults," David, video taped the ride up and told me how long it took.  The main purpose of this particular excursion was a sled-like ride at the top of the mountain called a rodelbahn.  It was great fun.  Each person sat on a plastic sled and like on a roller coaster , the sled was carried up to the top of chute.  Then, once at the summit, the sled was released and allowed to coast down a metal half-pipe tube.  There is a brake handle in each sled to slow you down during the ride.  A thin piece of plastic was all that was keeping our guys from almost certain death... I jest, of course.   Traveling down a metal chute at speeds of 35 mph is quite exciting, especially when you are in control of you reckless of your own ride.  Fortunately, nobody died.  Still, there were a few injuries.  Two of the older scouts over-compensated while leaning into a few of the curves and opted to use their hands to level themselves instead of falling out completely.  Nobody lost any limbs, and we kept the bleeding down to a minimum."  The troop paid for the first ride, then almost everyone bought multiple ride coupons.  All the boys yelled as each scout took off on his harrowing journey, "No Brakes!"

"After the rodelbahn, we hiked to the Oeschensee, a glacier lake.  The lake is fed by mountain streams and was one of the most gorgeous sites I have ever beheld.   We decided that this would be a perfect place to eat lunch and relax for a few minutes.   To earn one of the awards at Kandersteg, a person must swim in a mountain lake among other things.  Many of the our scouts decided to test the water.   None of them stayed in it for too long, as the lake water is 5 or less degrees above freezing.  We were advised to keep out of the center of the lake.  I found out later on that the reason for this was because while the glacier mountains nearby fed the lake, there was no stream for it to empty out into.  Instead, the lake emptied into a giant hole in the center, sucking down anything that was unlucky enough to be near."

On Wednesday, our group split in two, older scouts and younger scouts.  The older scouts had to wake up quite early to travel to the Gasterntal.  The name of the glacier they trekked across was the Kanderfirn.  Greg Schneider went with this group.  While Gary Klinger and Phil went with the younger scouts to the Loetschenpass Hutte.  Many other people were hiking the same trails.  Some were going up, others down.

The boys on the Loetschenpass hike started their trip in a van that drove them to  the trail head over a very narrow mountain road.  It took about seven hours of very tough hiking to get to the hut, but, for two of those hours, the boys played on a snow field high above timberline.  The weather was glorious, not a cloud in the crystal blue sky.  In the snow, we practiced breaking falls with the ice axes we carried on the hike.  Jeff, Aaron, Mark, Jimmy, Matt, Brian, Bobby, Ryan, Dan, Justin and Oktawian must have slid down that snow field 15 times each.  After each slide on their backs, bellies and buttocks, they picked themselves up, climbed to the top and did all over again.  Simply wearing a rain suit was enough to turn a boy into a human sled.  The trail up the mountain and down the next day is far tougher than anything we encounter in Philmont.  Some of the grades are 20% or more, and at 10,000 feet, we were all breathing hard.  Above timber line, we had a break in the steep trail when crossed the glacier.  Our staff guide, Gosia, was a young Polish lady, and Oktawian had a great time talking to her in Polish.

Both groups stayed in Alpine huts. Camping in the Alps, is not allowed.  The huts provide food, bathrooms, and beds.  Our meals in the Loetschenpass hutte were very good.  For dinner we had steak and pasta with a fresh salad, and for breakfast we had muesli with natural yogurt, bread and cheese (of course), with bowls of coffee, or cups of tea.  The sleeping arrangements left much to be desired.  The mattresses were laid out side by side on all sides and in the middle of a large attic bunk room.  Each mattress is only two feet wide so we were sleeping "back to back and belly to belly."  If anyone pulled up their legs, you got knees in your back.  We didn’t have the hut to ourselves; we shared the hut with other hikers.  The windows had to be wide open at night, so many of our scouts sleeping below the windows froze.  Jeff celebrated his birthday on the hike at the "top of the world."  Gosia even bought Jeff a birthday fruit filled cookie with a tea candle on it, and everyone in the hut sang Happy Birthday.  Jeff explained to all of us that since he had been born at nine in the morning on the west coast, his official birthday started at 6 p.m., and continued through the next day.  On the way down from the Loetschenpass, we stopped to have lunch at an Alpine restaurant and hotel high in the mountains.  Hiking here has been raised to a very high level; a few more amenities on the Appalachian Trail might be nice.

The older scouts ran into some men taking pictures of a rare mountain goat.  For the life of me, Keegan wrote,  "I can't remember the name.  Go figure.  We didn't get a good view of the goat until we got a few hundred feet higher.  Those guys must have had excellent telescopic lenses to see it from that distance.  Not many people were crossing the glacier.  Most of them hiked to the summit of the mountain, and then returned.  Not an all together bad day hike.  For those of us more serious *cough* crazy *cough* hikers, we continued up the massive (let me emphasize MASSIVE) glacier.  The hike itself was a royal pain.  Unfortunately, we lost one of our crew before we made it to the base of the glacier.  The only leader with our group, Mr. Schneider, was having problems with his knee and had to return to the centre." The hike that our older scouts took is a new "Snow and Ice Climbing" hike that the centre is offering for the firs time this year. So in a way we were guinea pigs.

            "Once we were at the base of the Kanderfirn, we began donning our ice-climbing gear.  First I switched my shorts into long pants.  Let me tell you, it's really fun standing in your boxers at 2,380 meters, attempting not to slip off of a glacier, and trying to yank a pair of pants out of a well-pack "rucksack."  Thankfully I was successful in my attempts and received very little wind damage.  Next, we put on our climbing harnesses.  These are similar to rock climbing harnesses except they felt less secure.  I also noticed that the guides, Jacobo (Spain) and Mustard (England), didn't check our gear to see if we had put it on properly.  They figured we knew what we were doing.  S the top (and yes, we did all make it) we were greeted by the most comforting site ever.  At 2,900 meters the mountain held our salvation, a chalet called the mutterhorn hutte.  This was our final destination for the evening.  The hut was owned by an elderly couple who served dinner and breakfast to hikers/climbers.  We had a wonderful meal (by this time even grubs and stale bread would have tasted like a delicacy) of stew, salad, rice, and sausage.  The drinks, unfortunately, cost a pretty penny.   I bough 1 liter bottles of coke for 5 franks (about $3.50 USD) and 3 2dl orange juices for 2 franks a piece (about $1.5 USD).  Even the water cost money.  For boiled glacier water you paid 1 frank per liter.  It's not too bad, considering all their supplies have to be transported by helicopter. 

            Everyone returned safely from their two days in the high country, showered, did some more laundry and went to the International Bar-B-Q Cookout hosted by the Kandersteg staff. Hamburgers, salad, drinks and other items with 600 scouts from all over the world is pretty neat. Each week the staff hosts these Bar-B-Q's and they have a theme for the evening; this week's theme was "cross-dressing." We saw some very strange looking British scouts, and the staff went overboard in their costumes. Our scouts wore their American scout uniforms, and looked very sharp.

            Philip Sternberg