Euro Day 44 - SOW Day 2

Tuesday, 6 August 2019

Phew that was a big day. We left the house at 8am and arrived home just after 7pm.  

We started with the short drive down the valley to Chateau D'oex, then we took the train to Gstaad.

From there we waited 10 minutes for a shuttle bus which took us 30 minutes up a valley then wound up a hill (through a series of hairpin bends which queasy Paul loved!) right up to the bottom of a gondola.

From there we took to our feet and climbed a further 140m (vertically) over 1km up a goat track to reach the spectacular arena (the elderly and infirm were able to get a further shuttle bus)

By the middle of the day this lake was filled with orienteers cooling off (photo from SOW facebook page):

We weren't done with the climbing yet though.  Jon, Paul and I had a 45 minute walk to the start including another 240 metres climb.  This seemed like a lot but it wasn't close to Zali's task - a 75 minute walk to the start including 400 metres of climb. And even then she wasn't done as she still had another 150 metres of climb to cover on her race!  She did really well today and finished happy after about an hour.  The rest of us were ok, although Paul was a chump and took the wrong map, so after finding the first control of the M55 course, he returned to the start to swap it over.   The views on the course were simply spectacular - in fact you'd pay good money just to do the walk to the start - it was  incredible!  Needless to say the courses were really hard work as the terrain was so steep.  

This is the video of Day 2 

Afterwards we walked back down to the gondola station and used our free passes to ride the two gondolas to the very top.

Far below we could see the arena and even the starts, including Zali's which was right on top of a very high ridge!

The very top (which I'm assuming was over 3000 metres) had a cool suspension bridge across to a lookout thingy:

The free ticket on the 'Glacier 3000' pair of gondolas was also so that we could visit the first ever orienteering course held on a glacier!  To get there we had to take a chairlift from the top down a bit.

It was just a little maze-o, but it did have a twist - it was a match-race, with two people starting at once and each course mirrored in the symetrical labyrinth.  It just took a few minutes but it was super fun skidding across the slushy snow.  I think Jett pipped Zali, Jon thrashed me, and Paul had a triumphant victory over a 10 year old.

From there we made our way back up the chairlift, down the two gondolas, onto the shuttle bus (after a 25 minute wait), onto the train (after a 15 minute wait)..

then to the supermarket, then home - exhausted and hungry!  I made delicious green thai curry for dinner then we had the only dessert which suited our amazing day in the Swiss countryside: