Cliff Hanger, hanging from a cliff.

(If you’ve watched much of the show ‘In Between the Lions’ you’ll get the title.)  aka Klettersteig Kandersteg. 

So, this is what Brett and I did on Saturday.  We took this mountain:

and we conquered it!!!!

We went with our very good friends Beat and Damaris (I almost wrote ‘und’ instead of ‘and’—how German am I!).  We hitched ourselves up to some ropes, hitched our ropes to the cable, started with a little bit of ladders,

but mainly just pulled ourselves straight up the cliff with sheer awesomeness (and the help of the cable and rebar positioned everywhere you might need it).  That’s me (with a little bit of cropping so you don’t see a nice big view of my bottom):

That’s Brett:

 

That’s Beat just hanging around and Damaris.

 

 

It was an absolutely beautiful day, and the view was AMAZING.  I have to say though, that while I’m grateful for these pictures from Brett’s phone, they aren’t quite as good as my camera could have done.  And also Brett got annoyed with how often I wanted to take pictures, but seriously, there were so many times I looked down at Brett climbing up vertical rock and I wanted to take a picture, but I had to bite my tongue. 

There were also two bridges crossing the waterfall/gorge.  LOVED them.

 

That’s me and Damaris.  I don’t know why the next pictures turned out fuzzyish.

 

There are at least five people climbing along this cliff.  Can you find them?

The other bridge.

It was so cool.

 

At the top—we made it!!!  (It was about a 3-hour climb.)

 

We had to go back over the edge to pose these pictures of us coming up the final bit.  (Beat on the left, and me.)

In the words of a dude from this blog:

It’s 350 metres of vertical delight at grade K4-Schwer with long peg-traverses, wire Nepalese Bridges crossing twice over the great waterfall that drops its entire length.  Several delicious overhangs are rigged with spiral ladders to take the sting out of the tail, but still keep your heart pounding to the top. Even the final 150 metre walk to the Allmenalp Restaurant through pine forest and pasture is wonderful in July,with  its fields of wildflowers and two fully grown Lama staring snootily at you as you walk and unwind.  Make no mistake, this is a tough and demanding climb, true to its grade.

Please, please, watch this video because it shows exactly what we did.  In fact, Brett was just going to go with Beat, and then I was looking up where they were going and I found this video and promptly invited myself along and got a babysitter for the kids.  It was awesome.  (I have mentioned before I like heights, right?)  Brett didn’t like it as much as me.  He’s not sure if he’ll do more climbing like this.  But it was a great day.

I just have to post a few more pictures found on the internet because mine weren’t the best:

(I actually was wanting to take a picture just like this one of my foot, but I didn’t want to bother Brett to get his phone for me again.)

The end.