This weekend I went to Interlaken, which is a small (if somewhat commercialized/overly-touristy) town in the middle of the Bernese Oberlands. It has lakes on either side (thus, Interlaken) and huge mountains all around, including Jungfrau, which is one of the tallest in Europe. So it’s basically this little spot in the heart of the Swiss Alps.
On Friday we get in around 9, so it’s dark, go to our hostel, check in, then walk to the main part of town. We see a Hooters, and since nothing in Switzerland is ever open late, it was our only dining option. Suffice it to say the Hooters girls in Switzerland (at least where we were seated) are not up to par with their American cohorts. So ate a pretty disgusting meal, then headed back towards the hostel. As we walked back, Dan pointed in the sky and asked “is that the sky?” I thought it was, but then I noticed an outline of a dark shape and we realized it was a ridiculously huge mountain. We spun around and looked all around us and realized that even in the dark, you could see these gigantic black shapes. We were surrounded by mountains. It was a crazy epiphany. I can’t really describe it properly. You just had to be there.
The next day, most of our group goes off to do skiing/snowboarding, but me and Dan hang back because we were going skydiving! We booked it a couple of weeks ago and had been talking about it nonstop since. For me, that basically consisted of looking at pictures of friends who had been skydiving in the past and getting really excited, and for Dan that meant reading about the hazards of skydiving and finding skydiving accident videos on youtube. But finally the day was here! We hopped into the van with 11 other skydiving hopefuls and headed toward the airfield (about a 20 minute drive). The drive was awesome because of all the beautiful scenery with the lakes and the mountains. Obviously, one of the first things that happened once we got in the van was they told us that getting a DVD and photos of the skydive was 40 francs more than we were anticipating (something they didn’t indicate anywhere), but we bit the bullet. We had already spent a ton of money, so it was just kind of whatever at that point.
We got to the hangar and had an “orientation”. This consisted of all of us being “instructed” on what we needed to do during the jump. We all laid down on the floor and we’re told we would need to lean our heads back and kick our feet back and do a pelvis thrust as we were falling. We would need to hold on to our harnesses when we initially jumped, but then our “buddy” would tap us on the shoulder and we could let go. And when it was time to land, we needed to lift our legs up so we could land on our bums. And that was it. The whole thing lasted about 95 seconds. It was less than unofficial, and that made me a little nervous, but whatever. They also told us that there was a main parachute, a backup parachute, and a computer in the parachute so if our buddy was knocked unconscious for some reason, it would automatically deploy. We put on our jumpsuits, and then we’re assigned to our jump buddies. Mine was a dude named Mick. He had some kind of vague australian/new zealand/english/german accent, and was shorter than me and had a graying scruffy beard. My camera guy’s named was Andy, and he had a similarly unidentifiable accent and basically just spun around and filmed me the whole time. As Mick secured my harness, we made small talk and he joked around with me, telling me the equipment looked a little rusty, that it was his first jump, yada yada. Me and Dan were in the first load, so before we knew it we were walking towards the plane.
This plane was a tiny one-propeller thing. As we were walking towards it, Dan commented on how small it was and Mick said “this is the bigger one”. 12 of us piled in (4 jumpers, 4 jump buddies, and 4 cameramen) and began our ascent. We were packed onto tiny low benches sitting directly in front of our jump buddies. Mick showed me his altimeter, and explained to me that we were going up to 14,000 feet, that we would deploy the parachute around 6000 ft, that it should take about 1000 feet to fully deploy and then we should be good from 5000 ft down. He said if it didn’t deploy properly, we’d just have a little bit longer of a freefall and it would make for a more interesting jump. The plane ride was pretty bumpy, as you’d expect for such a small aircraft, but the view was beautiful, flying right near the mountains and over a bucolic town. Once we got around 5000 ft, Mick began strapping himself to me and tightening the harness (during one part of which I had to sit on his lap), and soon we were ready to roll. I put on a ninja mask kinda thing that Mick gave me because it was gonna be cold, fastened my goggles (which fit over my glasses luckily) and was ready to roll. Soon enough, we were up at 14000 ft and Dan was the first to jump.
They opened up the door and it was a long way down. Dan was put into the position, and all of a sudden, I hear a tiny yelp and look down and Dan was but a speck in the sky. I was going second so they rushed me into position. At first, I didn’t realize that I literally needed to lay down and Mick would basically be crouching over me, but I quickly got my feet down on the floor of the plane and looked down out the door.
To be perfectly honest, no attempt to be macho or anything, I wasn’t nervous at all about going skydiving. I just figured that they were professionals, and they wouldn’t be able to do this for a living if they weren’t good at their jobs. I thought there was a better chance of a plane crash or car accident before the dive than anything going wrong during the dive itself. But when I saw Dan disappear, and all of a sudden had my head sticking out the door, I was scared. Luckily, that moment only lasted about 3 seconds because before I even knew it Mick had flung us out the door.
I can’t really describe what it felt like. It was unbelievable. Your breath comes so fast air is just pelting you in the face even faster. You look to your sides and see clouds and mountains and look down and see houses and roads and grass from a birds-eye view in the same way you see things when you’re up on a plane, but you’re not on a plane. You’re not attached to anything except your jump buddy. I’ll have a video of it soon enough, but the main things I remember were feeling elated and laughing and smiling and screaming.
The freefall felt long and short at the same time. Mick deployed the parachute and we we gracefully floating back toward the Earth. Mick “welcomed me to his office”, then spun me around a few times, and then we were back on solid ground. The whole thing probably wasn’t more than seven or eight minutes, but it was worth every cent.
We spent the rest of the day and night rehashing how amazing it was and hearing stories from our friends who skied/snowboarded.
Today, a few people skied/snowboarded again but five of us decided to hiking up in the Alps. After two train and one gondola ride, we were up a few thousand feet and found a trail to walk on. It was incredible. The trail wasn’t too demanding or anything, but we took our time and just soaked in the view. There were mountains on one side of us, some reaching all the way to the clouds, and trees on the other. It was by far and away the most beautiful place I had ever been in in my whole life. I tried as hard as I could to remember every second of it. Just walking around in the Alps, chomping on snow, surrounded by picturesque scenery, it was one of the most serene and amazing things I’ve ever done.
Cross skydiving off the bucket list. Cross off hiking in the Alps too (though it wasn’t on there before). This was one of the best weekends of my life.
