Chapter 33: (De)luge

Despite the reduction in weight caused by my dwindling water reserves, the descent this morning was pretty much as hard as the ascent yesterday. At least for me. Star and Portia were bounding all over the place, playing tag. When I was 'IT' I asked them how they managed to walk so lightly. They gave me a sermon about the differences between static and dynamic walking styles. Some experimenting on my side led to excessive backpack dynamics causing me to nearly drop off a ledge. Maybe I'll try again later when we are in a safe environment, preferably a large and perfectly level plane. (Without the air in front of it.)

Around lunchtime, we came through an unexpected village. (It did show up on the map, but nobody had pointed it out to me.) Since the boulangerie was still open, we got rid of the remaining baguette crumbs and spent way too much money on sweet pastry with unpronounceable names, plus some apparently brown bread with nuts and figs that appeared to age better.

The public picnic table happened to be next to a large sign with 'Luge, 100m a droite' in huge, friendly letters, so we collectively pleaded with Mom and Dad to have a go. It got even better when we found out that you could get to the luge station by cable car. (Or so we thought.)
When we were about halfway up, the cable car stopped abruptly. We had already noticed that dark clouds were coming in and the wind had been picking up significantly, making the cabin swing. When five minutes became ten minutes, we pressed the emergency intercom button to find out what was going on. Apparently, the operators weren't entirely aware that we were still in the cable car, but they were unwilling to start up yet. Their final Frenglish answer was: 'We will resume operation after ze wind has gone down a bit. Please stay put.' As if we had any other choice! (We would have, if we had taken the backpack with the emergency climbing rope with us, and a death wish, abseiling down in a thunderstorm.)

As the storm battered our cabin, Robyn got a bit uncomfortable by the way the rest of us spent this time together, so we told her she was free to look the other way or find herself a boyfriend. As she did turn around (due to lack of boyfriend material in this enclosed space), motion sickness got into a fight with her tarte aux myrtilles, making the whole thing awkward for all of us. Star managed to slightly alleviate the conditions with a thorough spraying of deodorant. This only meant that we had to open one of the sliding windows so as not to get high on the aerosol that now filled the interior. We closed the window as soon as the hailstones had sufficiently diluted the interior air.

When the cable car finally started moving again, an hour after it stopped, I decided that it might have been a good idea to notify our parents of our situation, so I texted that we would be back down shortly.

When we got out of the cable car, the operator at the summit station noticed that the carts for the luge that should have been suspended from the outside were missing, so we had to wait for the next cable car to bring us some new ones. (I think he didn't mind sending our smelly cabin back down to the valley and make it someone else's problem. He probably had to go and retrieve the lost carts after his shift.)

One huge advantage of our delay was that the track was definitely clear ahead of us, giving us the chance to go all out. (Last year we encountered a family that stopped on-track multiple times to make selfies, causing a highly dangerous traffic jam that would last for at the rest of the day, spoiling the experience of everyone coming after them.) It looked like the luge company was prepared, because the carts were equipped with seatbelts and the track construction made it physically impossible for the cart to fly off. After the fifth sign with 'FREINS!!!' I decided to make friends and apply some brake after all, because the seat belt seemed to struggle preventing me from flying off and the end of the track was coming in quickly.

Mom and Dad were steaming! (They would have been fuming if they hadn't have been soaked to the bone as they tried to shelter for the storm underneath the picnic table with all our packs.)

Once regrouped, we walked on toward the campsite in silence. The moisture from the rain had been replaced by sweat again by the time we arrived there, only to find a sign proclaiming it to be fully booked. The guy at the reception declared that we were fools to not make any reservations and he predicted we were not going to find a spot anywhere along the route without one. Dad had to do a lot of talking to finally get an overpriced pitch for the night that would only fit two of our tents. They would only let me squeeze in with them after soaking in the freezing swimming pool for at least an hour. Me joining the girls was out of the question, for some reason. (In their tent, the swimming pool was OK.) My parents may come to regret that. . .

The swimming pool closed twenty minutes after I got in (probably as damage prevention for their filters), but I still got to sleep inside.

Caiman Raptor Elk

23.09.24 Front Page

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