From A to Z

You may or may not have heard by now, but the Boy and I are hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro this February. The Boy decided we should shake things up a bit on our second trip to Africa and figured hiking the highest freestanding mountain in the world fit the bill. I agreed enthusiastically but since I am geographically challenged, I only knew it was some bad ass mountain in Africa.  You know a mountain is bad ass when its name contains "kil" which is one "l" short of "kill"...which implies death...and come to find out, you can actually die on this mountain due to its altitude.  My initial enthusiasm thus became tempered with some good old fashioned "Kristi Anxiety Over Death" or KAOD for short, which sounds like "K-O'd", which means knocked out...making it the perfect acronym.

In preparation for the hike of our lives (I am going with "lives" instead of "deaths" here because I want to remain positive), we decided it was time to go on some real hikes. The kind that involve hiking poles, snow and a few terror induced tears (ahem...by yours truly).  Coincidentally a few months back I was introduced to my Dad's cousin who just so happens to summer in the Arosa Valley region of Switzerland. We arranged a meeting in Zurich and quickly hit it off.  She proceeded to invite me and the Boy to their home in St. Peter and voila!  Our first training session was planned, fit with seasoned hikers who just so happened to be family.

So I really wasn't sure what to expect and since our hosts were the pros, I left the planning up to them.  After a 20 minute drive from St. Peter to Arosa, we took a trail alongside a river bed that gently went upwards. "Gently" gradually became steeper and soon a snow covered ridge came into view. This was the ridge we were going to hike up and then hike down. Due to rainfall from the previous week, this portion of our hike was completely snow covered...in August. AUGUST!  This made finding the trail markers a challenge, but a fun, semi-nerve wracking one nonetheless.

We did have a secret weapon:  Gretel, the super hiking dog who somehow knew which part of the ridge to go up.  We never failed to find the markers, even if half of them were snow covered or difficult to see.  The Boy and I were taught hiking techniques on the fly and as I climbed higher and higher, my confidence began to soar.  When we reached the top of the ridge, I went to check out the trail down.  The down part is the one that always gets my adrenaline going.  It is the part that is synonymous with death and typically reduces me to a puddle of nerves and mutterings of  "WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND DOES THIS?".


Expecting to find a trail and then not finding any distinct semblance of one, the confidence that soared while going up, quickly made a long fart noise and exited my body.  I was with family and the Boy though, who promised to stick with me while I moved at a snail's pace.  I had to use my hiking poles in more unconventional ways, along with my hands, all the while side stepping slippery, muddy scree and snow.  Scree is an "m" short of what I wanted to do the first 10 minutes of our descent.  With a little bit of patience, a lot of side stepping, a sprinkle of terror induced tears and a lot of love from the Boy, I made it down the really scary part.

There were so many rewarding moments that outweighed the terror.  I conquered an intense fear of going down a mountain with no discernible trail, I realized I can do Kili because apparently the hike is less intense than this one and I formed new bonds with family.  Here are some more pics from the day and as you can see, Switzerland is pretty ugly:

Pretty part of mountain with a pretty lake and a pretty reflection

A little Edelweiss which is a rare find