“Oh baby, it’s a wild world”
I’m just going to dive right into this one. Three of my friends, Jemma, Valerie, Tiffany and I were super excited because we were in the Swiss Alps and about to embark on what we were told was a 2 hour round-trip hike. We took a gondala up the first mountain, and then we started the hike. It was a little after 2pm. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking, which made up for the grueling incline that had our calves immediately burning. Everything was going great, but we noticed it was taking us longer than we had expected. Since we were told the entire hike to the top and down was only two hours, we were a little annoyed that it took us over two hours just to make it to the summit. It was so beautiful, however, that we didn’t mind that much. There were many cows along the way that were wearing cowbells, and it was so serene and quiet in the mountains that often the only noise that could be heard was the cowbells ringing.
The entire hike was gorgeous, but the top was absolutely breathtaking. Words don’t do it justice, so I’ll just post some pictures.
We spent about half an hour at the top, eating the snacks that we had packed and letting our legs recover. It was easily one of the most beautiful views I have ever experienced, and despite everything that happened following, it was 100% worth it.
Things went downhill shortly after these photos were taken. After resting for a little bit at the top we started our journey back down. We took a wrong turn at one point and ended up literally skiing down a massive hill of cow shit, so our moods were a little testy. We made it to the bottom quicker than we had made it to the top, but we were drop-dead exhausted. When we finally saw the end where we were supposed to take the gondala back down the second mountain, we were super relieved. But once we got there, we saw it:
THE GONDALA PLACE WAS CLOSED.
It was only 6pm, but there was absolutely nobody around. There was literal plastic covering the gondalas, just to rub it in a little more. We saw a sign that read “Sattel: 1 hour walk” and we almost started crying. We had already been hiking for four hours, and another hour hike to the town was the last thing we wanted to do. Since it was already 6, we didn’t want the sun to start setting, so we started hiking.
I’ll just say this: this mountain was not meant for humans walk down. I kid you not, it was literally close to a 90 degree incline. We had to run down, not because we wanted to, but because our legs wouldn’t allow us to do otherwise. We were in the middle of nowhere, and the views that we had admired on the gondala ride up, we were now resenting. Valerie twisted her ankle at one point, and Tiffany also wiped out. By the time we made it to the bottom, we were beyond exhausted, hungry and angry.
When we got to the bottom we quickly realized that there was a possibility that since the gondala place had closed, the buses and trains could stop running too. Who knows how things operate in the Alps. We were over an hour away from Zürich, where we were staying, so we started to panic. We found the bus stop and waited for 40 minutes, and just when we were starting to think we were going to have to sleep in Sattel, the bus came. I have never been so happy to see a bus in my entire life. It took us to the train station in Schwyz, and we happily got on the train. We assumed that since the train stopped at one of the same stops that it had on the way there, that we were fine.
We assumed wrong.
Since we were so brain dead and exhausted when we got on the train, we didn’t realize that we were supposed to make a transfer at the station that we had recognized. I realized that the next stop on the sign said Lucerne, which was well over an hour away and in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION from where we were trying to go. We had no choice but to stay on the train, so we got off at Lucerne and then transferred to a train that took us to some random town called Zug. From Zug, we finally transferred to a Zürich bound train and made it home, by about 11pm. So what should’ve been an hour and a half from the top of the gondala place to our Air B&B turned into 5, and to say we were fed up would be a massive understatement.
At the end of the day, we survived. Barely. It definitely made the Swiss Alps even more unforgettable than they already were, but lets just say that was the last gondala I will EVER take in my life.
So, lessons learned: always check the gondala schedule, make sure to always get on trains going in the general direction of your destination, and brush up on your Swiss German prior to hiking the Alps.
Idly Wild 