The Great Outdoors

To say we enjoyed the outdoors this weekend would be a bit of an understatement! It's Sunday evening as I write and we are all completely exhausted. However, there is some satisfaction in knowing that we really took advantage of our surroundings this weekend.

Saturday we headed out at 10 a.m. for a town called Les Diablarets. The town is in the same direction we headed last weekend for the Hot Air Balloon Festival. Our friends Matt and Sandra joined us for what we hoped would be a fun day of sledding, or as the Swiss say, "luging". Yes, the whole way there I was thinking of my lifelong fantasy of being an Olympic Luger with my cousin Kate (long story). The drive alone was going to make the trip a worthwhile outing. The mountains were spectacular and I can't even describe how absolutely breathtaking the evergreen trees look with snow on them.

Les Diablarets is settled in a valley and there are mountains in every direction as far as the eye can see. The sky was blue and the sun was shining. We rented three sleds (similar to the old-fashioned wooden ones). Now this wasn't going to be like sledding at Cooper Park, this was hard-core Swiss sledding. This was taking a ski lift to the top of the mountain and curving down 7 km of alpine trails. Insane! Dan took Sam, Matt took Zoe, and Sandra rode solo for the first run. I stayed down below with Ben where we enjoyed playing in the snow and sledding on a much smaller hill! I was beginning to worry when the group hadn't turned up after an hour. I found out later they had to wait almost a half hour in line to buy a lift ticket and then they grabbed a sandwich at the top of the mountain. When they finally showed up they were very excited and ready to go again....all except Dan and Sam. Sam was pretty wet from getting snow sprayed in his face and Dan was limping because of a crash. Someone cut him off on the trail and then STOPPED. Dan twisted his knee pretty badly.

We only had time or energy for one more run so Dan stayed down with the boys and Sandra and I went solo and Zoe rode down with Matt again. I was blown away with this experience. One, it was crazy...trying to steer the sled was a bit tricky at first. I only wiped out three times! What got me the most were the views. As I was whipping down this run I was blown away by the beauty of the mountains. The sun shining off the snow and then you would take a turn and be in the shadow of the mountain. The only sounds were the occasional person laughing or yelling! I can't wait to go again!