Evendays

After a year of planning, an ascension of a lower summit, and days of waiting for perfect conditions, a group of 20 somethings from Lausanne made a night climb of the highest peak in Western Europe (4807 meters – 15,771 feet), the famous Mont Blanc in France, and there installed a Jacuzzi.

This seems to have been inspired by their engineering spirit, their love of the mountain, and large quantities of beer.

Can you imagine struggling up to the summit, roped to your weathered guide, only to arrive at the top to find a party going on? What a disappointment… And some would say sacrilege. (They do apologize – at the bottom of the site page - to those who thought they were going to have the mountain to themselves that day.) Oh well, sometimes we only like things if they happen to be our own idea.

Click on the picture below to go to their site with all the pictures. It’s worth the trip.

 

A couple of weeks ago, my mountaineering buddy Philippe and I took a group of 5 Pepperdine students (picture) snow-shoeing in the Valais Alps in the region above Sierre called Vercorin.

Unfortunately, I told the students they needed to be in good shape to do the 10 to 12 kilometers we’d planned.

They finished the hike without any problem and enjoyed their tea and hot chocolate at the lodge while they waited for me to finish…

But, I DID finish…

In order to graduate from High School and continue on to university, Swiss students must present a research paper (at least 20 pages long) or project and then give a public defense. Son 2 turned in his 35 pages of research on the history of polar survival techniques.

His counselor suggested that for the public defense he build an igloo high in the mountains and spend the night in it, so he and Arnaud, a buddy from the Geneva church, waited for the first heavy snow (2 feet) and I drove them up to a jumping off point at about 4500 feet.

Risk of avalanche was terribly high, so they followed a snowed-in road up a couple of miles and, within sight of deserted chalets (chalets aren’t normally built in avalanche corridors) they made camp. It was just below freezing, yet they managed to get a fire going but had less luck with the igloo for, as expected, you cannot construct an igloo out of fresh-powdered snow. (Actually, that’s an old Inuit proverb that comes in handy in many situations.)

They had packed in a tent (polar explorers NEVER count on good luck, only good preparation) and set out to drink gallons of hot tea (in order to stay awake all night). After a couple of pounds of sausage and some cooked apples, they burned the rest of their wood supply and crawled into the icy tent.

Wife and I picked them up this morning at the bottom of the hill. I suggested they stay another night, just to see if they could survive it. It would give them a chance to build an igloo with the now-compacted snow. But no go. They were out of food and Son 2 had used up all the memory in his camera.

Plus, graduating from High School is not THAT important.