And then we hiked up a mountain....

So last weekend Riley organized a hiking trip starting in this cute little mountain town called Kandersteg. Rachel and I , Riley, Mike, Chris, Bruce, Wilms, Taylor and Penny took the train out though Bruce technically missed the train because a ticket machine gouged a hole out of his arm. We waited for him at the other end though. We couldn't leave without him he was so excited about the hike! We settle in for some beer and swiss bread and he showed up eventually.

The beginning of the hike was kinda brutal. It streched my caves just trying to stand on the incline we were climbing. Apparently in all we gained about 1100m elevation and went 15 km. Beautiful scenery all the way along. We found a salamader that taylor named and wanted to keep but didn't... It took us about 5.5 hours to get to where we were going but the slow pace was mostly due to snack, water and shotgun breaks that we were taking.

The "mountain hut" we stayed at turned out to be a newly renovated hotel type building with rooms that could sleep upto 20 people. The manager, Jean-Patrice we found out later, put us in the basement on purpose so we wouldn't disturbe anyone with our antics.... The hotel itself was sittingright on the precipice of what was almost a shear drop into another beautiful valley and town.

That night we had a bit of a party and JP joined us. It was great! I acted as a translator for a bit because he mostly spoke french and german and he gave me this swiss marmotte doll that yodels when you squeeze it and a ligther with the hotel name on it.

They fed us breafast the next morning on a room with a 180 degree view of the valley below. That night there had been a bit of blizzard so when we headed out for the quick hike down to the next town we walked into a winter wonderland. it reminded me of home and a little cold weather was kinda nice after so much profuse sweating...

And then we caught train home!

This is the vetran interns showing us how high the bar has been set....