Lucern and Klettersteig'n the Eggstock

Our trip this weekend started out with a nice little Saturday drive down to Lucern in Central Switzerland. We had made plans for Sunday which sounded at least a little bit physically taxing, so on Saturday we took it a little easier and constrained our "hiking" to Rick Steves' city walking tour. (Rick Steves, if you do not know, writes European guide books.) The most notable thing we saw was a cliff face, into which was carved a giant lion that could have swallowed me in a single gulp if he were not suffering from a spear wound, or, for that matter, made out of rock. I think that is a more interesting way of describing the size of the art than saying something like 30 feet by 20 feet.



The Swiss Army, not to be outdone by a rock carver from the eighteenth century, built a military fortress in the side of a mountain about 10 minutes from Lucern. Claiming student status, we walked around the decommissioned stronghold for two Swiss Franks a piece, exploring where and how they shot cannons out of the side of the mountain and learning a little Swiss history from a man who traveled through Sioux Falls forty years ago and still remembers it. And in 1958 they hid the artillery holes with a rock camouflage.

Sunday was the real adventure, though. Marianne, our gracious host, decided to kick her generosity level up another notch this weekend and take us rock climbing. Or more accurately, Klettersteig -ing. (As you can see, I haven't figured out the proper way to make German verbs out of German nouns.) We started out at 6am in the little blue car that we have recently become so familiar with and made our way down to the Glarnerland once again. One mountain-train, one Gondola, one chair lift, and a short hiking path later, we found ourselves at the face of a mountain. Strapping on some harnesses to keep our mother from worrying too much, we grabbed the wall and started climbing vertically. Actually, I probably should not rush through this—I'll give you a little more detail. In the mountain there are metal eye-rings every ten to twenty feet, and through these eye-rings is strung a long steel cable. Each harness has two carabiners a piece, so what you do when you Klettersteig is you attach both carabiners to the steel cable, then you climb a little bit. When you get to the next eye-ring, you detach one carabiner, reattach it on the other side of the eye-ring, and then detach the other carabiner and reattach that one on the other side of the eye-ring. This way, you are attached to the steel cable at all times, so if you fall, you are still more or less safe.



There were three different climbs, with the last one being pretty difficult (at least to me, who has never really done rock climbing before). The last one had some parts that were at least straight up, and it sure felt like it even had some parts where I was holding on leaning a little bit backwards, almost like I was climbing a bit of the underside of a cliff. It was really exciting, and being able to look down and see at least 100 feet straight down to the nearest piece of ground really pumped the adrenaline through my body. And then, of course, when we made it to the summit of the Eggstock, the view was splendid.



On the way down, Marianne explained little bits and pieces of all of the different types of flowers on the mountain face, including the Edelweisse which is a famous Swiss flower. We stopped at a restaurant and she ordered a drink called "Cold Chocolate." We thought we'd might as well try something new as well. When our drinks arrived, we found that unlike our exploration of Lucern, our new-found knowledge of the resilient Swiss military and our new ability to Klettersteig, not everything this weekend was a new adventure - cold chocolate turned out to be chocolate milk.