The Mecca of Extreme Sports: Interlaken, Switzerland

My friends and I made a trip out to the well known tourist destination Interlaken, Switzerland. Interlaken is located in the Canton of Bern. Interlaken is located between Lake Brienz and Lake Thun and is located at 1,870 ft. above sea level. This is a town based around tourism and considered the capital of extreme sports for adrenaline freaks such as myself.

I did all of my snowboarding in the Bernese Alps mountain range, which is located in the western part of the Swiss Alps.  This specific area is known as the Jungfrau region.  The main peaks in the Jungfrau region that I snowboarded on were Jungfrau, Monch and Eiger. These peaks are all around 13,500 ft above sea level.

For the two days that I snowboarded (Friday and Saturday), there were three different mountains that I snowboarded on. Here is the map to give you a better idea of the trails and mountain range:

           If you look at the middle of the map all the way at the bottom, you will see Interlaken. From there, we had to take a bus to the train station.  This train eventually took us up through the mountains and dropped us off at Wengen and Grindelwald.  From there we were able to take a chair lift or gondola of some sort up to the top of the mountain. The one thing that I have learned during my study abroad experience is that the Germans are amazing when it comes to engineering. Without them, I can’t image a lot of the engineering feats that have been possible without their expertise in this field of study. Here are a few pictures of the ride up the Alps on the train and rail system the Germans built:

           Overall, it took around 30-45 minutes to arrive at the top of the mountain. From there, you could take many different types of trails to get to the other mountains. Some of the trails that we rode took over an hour long! It was the most amazing and scenic snowboarding I have ever experienced and even rode through towns while snowboarding over streets to eventually arrive at a gondola station to bring us up to another mountain. At one point, there was a guard dog protecting a trail near a few houses.  I thought it was just a dog wanting to play. I did not know why this family had stopped in the middle of the trail looking at this animal but being a snowboarder, I wanted to keep up my speed on the trail and carelessly cruised right pass them ignoring this wolf/dog. This animal soon caught my attention and was chasing after me! I was very surprised he was keeping up with me since I was going pretty fast.  After a few seconds of chasing me, he then started growling with this very ferocious look.  His teeth were out like he was about to eat my leg for lunch. I finally realized that this wolf was not a friendly dog and I had to whip my board around to scare him away and make the wolf think I was going to hit him/her.  After I did this, he realized how tall and aggressive I was and understood that I was probably not the best person to try to eat.  He then went back to the trail where the family was cautiously going down the trail with their children. The kids were very small and the wolf went back to try and bite the kid’s leg and the father eventually scared away the wolf with his ski poles. No one was hurt during this encounter but it was definitely an experience I will never forget.

         Feeling pretty gutsy after this encounter, I then thought it was a good idea to snowboard in the out of bounds areas. If you look back at the map, I was snowboarding under the middle peak called Eiger. More specifically in the area where the word in blue "Kline Scheidegg" is and the white area without trails to the left of the word "KL. Scheidegg" on the map. Everything underneath the rocks where there are no trails and all white area is where I was snowboarding the majority of the time.  There was endless fresh powder and even though it was the hardest out of bounds area I had ever ridden, it was well worth the possibility of getting injured. I fell a few times in the out of bounds area and must have slid 50-100 yards on one fall because this area of the Alps was very steep.  After two full days of snowboarding in the Alps, I came out healthy, uninjured....but very sore.  My body took a toll from the out of bounds snowboarding but it was the best snowboarding I have experienced! Here are a few pictures from this out of bounds area where me and my roommate Reza were the only two people in this area: 

             Feeling the need to push the extreme sports limit again, I decided to canyon jump on Sunday before I left back to Rome. This is similar to bungee jumping but you are safely connected at the chest and it is more of a big swing. I was the first out of the group to jump since I was the biggest and need to prepare for the taller people first. The feeling I had when I was falling through this canyon was similar to the feeling one gets in an airplane if the plane drops very quickly and suddenly. So imagine that elevator drop type feeling, and multiply that by 100! I was definitely scared while falling but it was such a cool feeling. It was a very safe thing to do and would canyon jump again if I ever came across the opportunity! If you have facebook, here is a video of my canyon jumping: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150716670345961&set=t.1056570085&type=3 

I will upload videos of some of the trails I rode on later down the road when I have more time. If you guys think I should check out other resorts that can give the Swiss Alps some competition, definitely let me know in the comment section. Thanks!

Here are a few more scenic pictures captured on my GoPro camera: