Canyoning

While in Switzerland this past weekend, one of the activities that Cameron and I did was canyoning in a glacier. It was a couple hours of wandering through canyons dug out by years of glacial streams. We rappelled into the canyon from a mountain road and climbed, hiked, swam, and jumped our way down to the end of the gorge.

Cam had a blast rappelling, but he had done it before. It's a long way down!

I, on the other hand, was not so enthusiastic- it was the scariest thing I've ever done. The photographer and guide kept telling me to jump and let go of the harness to wave to the camera. A 30 second one-handed wave was all I could manage!

The best part was where the water had smoothed the rocks and created natural slides, although on most of the slides, the rock dropped off and became a free fall.

On this jump you could choose if you wanted to jump from a higher rock or lower. I obviously chose the lower, and Cameron obviously chose the higher. In this picture you can see Cameron jumping, and me below getting a pep talk from the guide (something along the lines of me being a scaredy-cat...) while gripping the rope.

...us at the bottom of one of the jumps

On the route they had two zip lines set up- one went down and was stopped by a guide, the other went halfway down and you had to let go of the rope holding your harness and fall into the water. This photo was taken as I was gathering up the courage to let go of the rope... below is after I finally did it.

Yes, I am holding my nose. Glacier water up the nose from a 50 ft. height is not pleasant. We wore long wetsuits with shorty long sleeve wetsuits on top and socks and booties, so the water didn't seem much colder than Birch Point.

We made it out alive!! AND I got to have delicious chocolate fondue for dessert as a reward for my bravery :)