Leysin, Switzerland –
I’ve been watching.
The older teens like to spin themselves before launching.
They also seem to get the highest on the banks of the turns.
Maybe there’s something to their technique worth trying.
So, on my next run, I sit and work to start myself spinning as I start to slide down the slope.
Down, around, up the bank of the turn, down and then up the bank of the next turn, and I’m at the bottom of the run.
It’s all over way too soon.
And soon enough, our two-hour window is over, and we’re turning in our tubes.
We’re tired, but it’s the good type of tired.
We’ve just spent two hours swooshing down a series of bobsled-like runs designed specifically for riding large inner tubes, snow tubes, down slopes and around high-banked turns.
It’s a unique park, designed and built each winter by Silvio Giobellina, an Olympic medal winner in bobsledding, high in the Swiss Alps in Leysin, just next to the town recreation center.
And it’s open for not quite three months each winter.
See, we had decided to spend a couple of days in Switzerland during the week between Christmas and New Years, and Dore had never had a chance to try any winter (i.e. in the snow) activities.
Hmm, only a couple of days, and no experience in snow and ice…
Probably not the time to take up skiing…
Tobogganing! That’s what we should try doing!
Yes, zipping down a mountain on a wooden sled with minimal steering…
I’m sure there’s got to be a technique to the steering, but we never figured it out.
It probably has to do with shifting your weight.
At least that’s what I assumed, but it didn’t seem to work too well in practice.
Of course, it could be that we needed more practice.
Maybe next time…
Anyway, while planning this trip, I discovered the “Tobogganing Park” in Leysin.
Let’s see, a couple of hours riding inner tubes down groomed courses. No skill needed.
Perfect!
So we spent the night on the Northern outskirts of Montreux.
I had visions of walking the streets of the city while strains of “Smoke on the Water” ran through my head.
Yeah, it didn’t work out that way.
We were too far out of town, and we didn’t take the time to head into town for a walk around.
Anyway, as we were cruising down the highway, I swear I could see the spot where the Casino had burned down, inspiring the song.
And in my mind, it will stay that way, whether the spot I saw was the actual location or not.
So, I guess I might have been a little preoccupied as we were driving south, because I missed our exit.
And we didn’t have a GPS with us on this trip.
So, as we drove further and further South, we came to the conclusion that we had gone too far and needed to turn back.
Eventually, we found our exit, and began the drive up the mountainside.
Up and up, until we finally got to Leysin, near the top of the particular mountain it’s perched on.
Pulling into town, we found ourselves right beside the rec center, and the Tobogganing Park.
So, no searching to be done, just park, pay our entrance fees, collect our tubes, and enjoy a couple of hours of sliding down the snow.
It was late December, just a couple of days before New Years, so it was still early in the season for the park, and we could tell.
There were a couple of the runs that were not open yet, as they were not finished being constructed.
Still, there were several available to choose from, and we weren’t disappointed by the selection.
And they had a rope-pull, where you could sit on your tube and be pulled up to the top for your next run down a chute, so we didn’t need to worry about the altitude, and getting out of breath when climbing the slope back to the top of the park.
It wasn’t a very long climb, and I found myself walking back up to the top more often than I would use the rope-pull.
But then again, I grew up in the mountains, so the altitude didn’t get to me that much.
Besides, the hike up was the only exertion that we had to make.
Once we got to the top, it was a matter of picking which chute we wanted to go down next, get in line, and wait our turn.
We had time to catch our breath.
As crowded as the park was, we never felt like the wait for a chute took too long, even for the most popular runs.
Of course, we took the length of the lines as an indicator of which were the best chutes to go down.
We were some of the few adults in the park, and I got the impression that most of the kids were local, and thus came to the park numerous times during the season.
That would enable them to form opinions on which chutes they preferred.
And we figured we could leverage those preferences and piggyback on their accumulated experience.
Not that any of the chutes weren’t fun to ride.
But there were certain ones that were definitely favored by the older teens, and those were the most attractive to us.
We weren’t disappointed.
Although, I must admit that it was somewhat counter-intuitive.
We expected the chutes that began from the tower, the highest point, to be the most thrilling.
But they weren’t.
Yes, those were probably the ones where we got up the most speed.
But they were fairly smooth, with no sharp turns where we could get high up on the banks.
No, the sharp banking chutes were the ones where we started from the top of the hill, and didn’t have to climb the tower steps for a higher launch point.
Maybe it was because the higher launch point would lead to too high a speed to take those sharp turns.
After all, those teens had learned how to maximize their speed, and thus their banking on the turns.
And they wouldn’t want any of them to top the banks and come out of their chute, into the next one.
No, that wouldn’t do.
Still, it was quite fun, and an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.
And then we had the drive back down the mountain.
Let’s just say that I was glad that it had been a warm winter up to that point, and I didn’t have to deal with a bunch of snow and ice on the roads.
If I had, then I would have wanted a different rental car…
Sorry, I don’t have a gallery of photos to link to for this story. If you want to view a variety of my photos from around the world, click here.
Leave a Reply