Charmey Adventures

Sunday, I went with Ruth, Alain, and Simon to Charmey Adventures, an aeriel ropes course, high in the mountains.  We started out with the Red Course difficulty, which was relatively easy.  The course was a series of wooden platforms, each surrounding the trunk of a tree, large enough to accomodate three people at once.  They were anywhere from 3 to 15 meters above the ground, and the only way to reach the next platform was by navigating a physical challenge.  There were tight ropes, swings, ziplines, and swinging stepping stones, each designed to test your strength, balance, flexibility, or sometimes, just pure guts.  One challenge on the red course required its participants to leap off the platform and fall 3 or 4 meters before being caught by a swing, and sent careening into a tangle of ropes.  Ruth had a bit of trouble collecting her nerve for that one ("Shpringen!" Alain and Simon, kept calling out) but she did it eventually.
      Of course, we were always attatched to the wires extending between the trees by at least one carabiner (mousqueton), but at times that simply added to the challenge.  For example, on the Black Course, that Alain, Simon, and I did later, there was a wire spider web that we had to cross, but there was no secondary wire on which the mousquetons could attatch, so it was necessary, so clip and reclip the two mousquetons between each segment of the toile d'araignée.  And that meant supporting yourself with one hand while the other fumbled with the clips, which was more enervating than it sounds.

The most difficult part of the day undoubtedly came when I made a premature entry onto one of the more difficult sections of the course.  There was a single rope supporting each in a row of circular swings, so it was impossible to balance without expending alot of energy.  Unfortunately, I left the preceding platform with three people still on the following one, so I was obliged to wait until the person on the next crossing had completed their journey.  In all, I probably hung for about only 5 minutes, but by the time I finally dismounted, my arms were exhausted.  At some point during my endeavor on the black course, Ruth ran into Lucia, another AFS Fribourg student, and her host mother, and they called up to me, but I never saw her.  After successfully completing the challenging (but not overly so) black, we descended for a couple of rides on the violet, which was essentially two very long, and very high ziplines.

At lunchtime we stopped at the centre of operations, and had some of the bread and cheese that Ruth had packed.  Simon did the little kid's course, all of a meter off the ground, with Alain, of course, harassing him all the while.