It was way over a year ago when my uncle suggested that we take a trip to Switzerland, (by ‘we’ I mean 10 of us, various family members…) Having one half of my family travelled to Poland by Train via Paris and Prague, and they had the most amazing time they decided to do it again! I was able to go on this train adventure this time as I didn’t have A-Levels like I did the last time.
Anyway a year of organising and two days train travel (with a stop off in Geneva) we arrived in Zermatt, Switzerland. This was one of the most beautiful places I had ever been too, every angle you looked around was breath-taking. It was in Zermatt that I faced one of the most challenging treks in my life.
With the aim of this holiday being to walk to the base camp of the Matterhorn we set off early one morning to walk the 5k to the base camp. 5k? Easy peasey. We thought.
This particular 5k was at a steep incline the whole way up, and it was NOT a straight road, there were rocks we had to climb, ropes assigned to pull us up in certain places, it was literally the scariest thing I have ever done- one foot in the wrong places you could slip and fall 4000m to your death. As we’re not the fittest family in the world it took us around 3 hours to reach the peak, and the worst part was there were loads of OAP’S overtaking us and moaning about ‘that British family’ which later we found hilarious. Walking up this mountain was mentally and physically challenging, I had my mother and father either in front or behind me who were just blind worried about their children, I was worried that half the people I was travelling up there with were over 50, though I learned this is nothing to judge on as the OAPs thrashed us to the top.
We stopped quite a few times to catch our breath but also to absorb the incredible scenery, there were now mountains lower than I was! A camera simply couldn’t capture the landscape, it was amazing. This was also something that was challenging, the path was somewhat narrow so you could easily see where your inevitable death could be and how quick too. I may be sounding like I’m being overdramatic, but from the point of view of someone who had bailed on fitness, and has never walked up anything bigger than the south downs, and also had running trainers on… It was pretty scary. I had my FitBit on and at some points my heart rate had reached 135-140bps.
Just before we reached our destination there was about half an hour of walking on snow… uphill… in running trainers. This was OK actually as you could dig your feet in the snow like an icepick. It wasn’t until we got to the Hornli Hut, where we took a deep breath in, gazing up 2000m to the peak of the Matterhorn and smiling at the level mountains all around us, feeling like we could touch Heaven, did my dad turn round and say “How the f*** are we gonna get down?’
This really didn’t occur to us before as we didn’t realize there would be ice and snow, but we were slipping on the way up let alone on the way down!
Bracing ourselves we began our descent having bid each other final goodbyes and everyone was for themselves on the way down. We literally crab-walked down the mountain, we looked like a bunch of absolute idiots. I was the only one who slipped up on my bottom but other than that we made it! You gotta picture this though, 10 British people, different ages, none of them weather appropriate clothing, crab walking down a mountain. I mean, it’s not everyday that you have an inexperienced, unprepared family attempting a trek, which is rated 5/5 for dangerous walks. My loyal FitBit also calculated a total of 16.7km (5km my arse), 500 flights of stairs (5000 individual steps) and 1,500 kcals burned on the trek alone. Mt Everest next year?
-Anna
BU Health & Fitness 
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