Day Seven

On Thursday we take on the mountain. Its a chilly misty day in Lucerne, and the mountain isn't visible from the city today. we take a 10 minute bus ride to a place called Kriens to take a cable car to the top. The cable cars are dinky, four of us inside a shell no bigger than a smart car, at most we are 40' from the ground. We pass over houses and roads, gardens and then grasslands, we make our way through an avenue of trees and into an alpine forrest, past log cabins and stores of wood, and then over snow. We oo and ah at everything beneath us, its muffled and ghostly under the cloud and over the snow. about half way we have to transfere to a larger cablecar. This one is manned by an elevator boy. About 20 of us stand together as we ascend into a soup of cloud. I'm thankful for the cloud, it hides us from our journey, there is nothing to see and nothing to fear, Until we pop out of the other side pass over a ridge and look into the void. we are easily 200 meters above the sleek slopes and climbing, its truely breath taking. Its an entirely different place up hear, the sun is blinding and we look out over a plain of cloud, islands of peaks poke throuh intermitently. Ben needs to sit down for 5 minutes and we all recover from the last leg. we step out on to a platform almost at the very top of the mountain, its 30 meters wide by 150 long, a man is blowing an alpine horn and people recline in sun loungers under complimentary blankets. Its cold but also quite hot, we climb the last few paths, up to the highest we can go, its simply incredible, civilisation is no more and all we have left is a fantasy world of cloud and spires of rock. After all the excitement we lounge in the sun drinking mulled wine and eat cake, its really very perfect. On the way down we stop half way and play in the snow making a snow man and through snow balls at anything, we're freezing, but continue to roll around like children. It has been a day of differences.