jumpingfish

Epic, you say? There should have been bread pudding, you say? I agree. There should’ve been. For all we know, there probably was bread pudding the next night. They know comfort food at Sardonahütte. But there was no bread pudding the night we were there, which was no real loss, because we made prompt bee lines to our beds very soon after dinner.

Although the room was mighty cold when we laid ourselves down, sometime in the night by virtue of the eight people in that room we jettisoned most of our covers, and by morning it was mighty toasty.

After a hearty breakfast of coffee and … (on second thought, I won’t list specifics lest my memory lapse again), we packed and made ready for our descent.

We were greeted by the morning.

And the clouds. Yes, the clouds blew over the crags just above us.

Some of the hardy hiking men from the night before booted up, threw their packs onto their backs and continued trekking deeper into the mountains to another hut somewhere far away.

And with that, we began our descent.

I’m telling you, I told Jerry and Gabrielle and Trudy. I’m going to be slow. This is a good day for pictures.They smiled and nodded, and I promptly stopped and looked back at Sardonahütte which was already hidden behind the rise.

And as I turned back, they had already begun to leave me in the dust.

So this is how it’s going to be, I thought to myself and took hold of my trekking poles and set off to catch up (which in the event I never did).

After the hike up to Sardonahütte from Vättis, we were a little bit cold, a little bit wet (and I was massively sweaty).

I suppose if it had been earlier in the summer rather than September, it might have been warmer, and we might have found it pleasant to relax outside taking in the view, visually retracing our route up valley. But it wasn’t summer, and the day before it had snowed in the mountains just above us. (Alternatively, it could be that I am just a Texan and that the weather that day was indeed balmy by Swiss standards and I was just being lame.) In any event, we went straight inside.

Now, Sardonahütte is hardly a hut. It is a large, comfortable alpine cabin. Even the word cabin does not do it justice. See for yourself:

credit: Sardonahütte/Wikipedia

It has three stories, a lower basement-like, dug-into-the-mountainside floor where you take off your boots and coats and where you find the bathrooms and sinks and showers, a middle story with the kitchen and dining areas and an upper story with the unisex dorm-style bedrooms.

Upon arrival, our hosts took us upstairs where we staked a claim on some palettes (having been the first to arrive), and we opened our backpacks and changed out of our sweaty clothes.

credit: Sardonahütte

Over the next few hours, others arrived in twos and threes. When we finally all sat down to dinner, the dining area (part of the new wing that they had added on to the building in the early summer with the construction materials being flown in by helicopter) was full. We ate heartily — bread and butter and generous pots of stroganoff. And there was a bread pudding for dessert, something which lit Trudy’s eyes afire.

Afterwards, we sat for a while and talked with the people sharing our table as hardy hiking men at the table across the room drank beer and told stories and laughed, gradually growing louder just as Gabrielle said they would. And then … well, then there was nothing left  to do other than retire, which we were quite willing to do.

As we were getting ready for bed, with the fair and industrious Trudy upstairs scooting our two palettes closer together so as to simulate a queen bed, I went downstairs to brush my teeth and wash up (chuckling at the notion that someone might actually use those showers in that unheated basement in weather like that). And as if to top off the day, as I rinsed my toothbrush I heard the hardy hiking men just outside the window talking and laughing loudly and then — I kid you not — yodeling.

Yes. There, at the end of that spectacular hike in the Alps, for just a few brief moments, there were Swiss men outside in the chill night air under the turning stars yodeling loudly in multipart harmony.

Moooooooaaaaaaa, my brother texted me.

Now to understand this, you must understand my brother… or rather you must understand us, which you probably don’t. At least my guess is that you don’t know what he meant. So I will translate.

He was making cow sounds in response to that story that involved cows.

But I must tell you that the relevant sound wasn’t the lowing of those Swiss cows but their bells. And I have a confession to make: when I told the story, I used the word clang to describe the sound of the bells. But these were not cowbells of the clanging kind. These were cowbells of the singing sort.

I have not the time to describe them any further. So instead, I leave you with them:

So there we were, halfway from St. Martin to Sardonahütte.

We were ready to go.

So we followed Jerry as he opened the gate that led from the forest out into the cow pasture where cow bells clanged around the necks of contented Swiss cows grazing in the alpine meadows about us.

And we began our final ascent.

Ok, I admit it, final ascent is over-dramatic. This was a fair hike but not treacherous, although Gabrielle and Jerry, being seasoned hikers consistently left us in the dust. And I further admit that although it was not treacherous, I was streaming rivers of sweat at I brought up the rear as I finally cleared the last step and joined the rest.

The weather had turned on us a bit with a few snowflakes falling from the gray sky. And the periodic rain led me to put the camera away. So I fear I have no visual record of that last step to the hut. But you know, we didn’t hang around much outside the door, even to take in the view. (At least I didn’t. The three of them already had been, as they waited for the slacker to arrive).

We stepped inside, leaned our trekking poles agains the wall, threw down our packs, kicked off our boots and climbed the steps to the (heated) main floor where before long we were sitting warmly and comfortably eating soup and bread and pasta with broad smiles on our faces.

alpine ascent: check.

At some point in our hike up the trail, Jerry pointed and said, “That’s where we’re going.”

I followed his gaze.

There were alpine meadows. There was a white waterfall cascading down a bare cliff face and disappearing behind some hills. There were trees and shrubs clinging to the mountainside up to the tree line. Above that were clouds blowing over snow-clad peaks. And there… there just where his gaze seemed to fall, somewhere between the meadows and the utmost peaks, there was a naked cliff, and I knew that was the place they were taking us to.

“Up there!?” I shrieked.

I am positive that with that exclamation my standing descended several notches in the esteem of Jerry and Gabrielle that day. Still, I would like to give you a sense of it. 

Consider as evidence the following photo.

You see it, don’t you? The alpine hut sitting above the cliff? Of course you don’t. Because you can’t, just as I couldn’t.

How about if we zoom in a bit. Does this help? Look for the hut at the peak of that Half-Dome-like rock face in the middle of the picture.

Doesn’t help any, does it? Right. So, let’s zoom in a bit more. 

Certainly you can see it now. No? Zoom…

Maybe you can see the flagpole right in the center. (I couldn’t.) 

One final zoom…

And now there you can see it: a brown hut beside some white flagpoles sitting on top of a little outcropping. You can imagine my shock at the prospect of climbing up that precipice of a front yard, can you not?

Although I do not deny my lame exclamation when Jerry showed us where we would be spending the night, I just thought that I’d provide a bit of context for my lameness.