After several disastrous encounters working as a camp counselor during the summer, I swore off any outdoorsy activities involving copious amounts of mud, bugs or giant rocks. Yet, the world-famous Swiss Alps are gorgeous enough to coax anyone, even a traumatized camper like me, outside and onto the trails. Hence, when one of my fellow program students invited me to an overnight mountain hike into Lausanne, I could hardly decline. Armed with a few granola bars, an L.L. Bean backpack and running sneakers, I tried to look as legitimate as possible ... and failed.
But it didn't matter because - fortunately - two of our fellow travelers came prepared for absolutely any possible event that could come our way. Bear attack? They had mace. Drought? They had three-liter camel bags. Plague of darkness? They were well-equipped with head lamps. I didn't even think head lamps existed outside of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." ROTC and Travelocity Gnome, as we nicknamed these two luminous godsends, greatly helped us as we navigated the Swiss mountain terrain.
After getting off the train from Geneva to Lausanne, we somehow located a sketchy-looking bus on the side of the road. Communicating in broken French, we were able to discern that the bus would take us "up," which was a good thing because we were, after all, trying to climb the mountain. The tiny village where the bus dropped us off was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. The houses were all tiny stone or wooden cottages owned by very friendly Swiss farmers, who were herding droves of goats and cows.
Apparently, cows are basically celebrities in Switzerland because they help produce cheese and chocolate, the two great Swiss exports - and the two main reasons I chose to study abroad in Geneva. Through the mist, the jaw-dropping mountains rose in the background and the clear lakes reflected the beautiful morning skies. Our goal was to make it to the top of Cornettes de Bise, the tallest mountain in the range at about 8,000 feet, then descend back to the village and spend the night in one of the local hostels.
The ascent was breathtaking, figuratively in beauty and literally in terms of physical exertion. ROTC and Travelocity set the pace at a very fast clip, so that the time flew by as we passed through rocky canyons and ravines so deep they still had snow in them from last winter. Parts of the ascent were very difficult and required us to scale steep inclines with little stopping us from potentially free-falling to our doom. By the time we made it to the top, I had shed all my thermal layers and was guzzling water like a dehydrated buffalo. My five comrades and I congratulated each other on our success and took celebratory summit pictures. Not to sound incredibly clich
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