The Hike

It was dead set in the middle of September and I was at 9000 feet with a group of people I had signed up to hike with for a week in the Austrian Alps. The nights and mornings were cold, but the days were divine.

We’d just spent the night in a hutte with no running water except for one flushing toilet to service 200 people. The place was under renovation and we had to walk up scaffolding to get to our rooms from the main floor where the dining room, bar and patio were.

We dined on boiled potatoes with condiments and I drank half a beer. I could barely keep my eyes opened due to all the climbing and fresh air I had taken in. I was bushed and headed to bed before the sun fully set.

When I got to our room, Brett and Kathy were already tucked up in bed and I climbed the ladder high up to my bunk in the corner near the window. Brett, a book worm had brought a half a dozen books in his pack and asked us if we wanted him to read us a fairy tale from his favourite philosopher, the German Friedrich Nietzsche. We could hardly think of anything more environmentally appropriate to do, and heartily agreed to his offer.

Just as Kathy and I were drifting off, and Brett was getting ready to extinguish his headlamp, the rest of the gang started filtering in completely oblivious to our tranquil setting. Shawn, the alpha female amongst us was fun, and always made sure everyone else was happy too. Tonight she jumped from bed to bed and splashed us with a magic sleeping potion that she had pulled from her bag.

Check out time in Hutte country is early, and with the renovations going on, the place was buzzing with tradesmen as we finished our packing and tied our shoe laces. The guys must have realised that they could smart-ass those of us who didn’t speak their language and in the hallways a couple of them tried it on me.

‘Imagine,’ I think one guy said, ‘you are on this trail for a week and you have no idea what’s going on out there in the rest of the world. It could all be over, as far as you know.’

‘Hmmm,’ I said back to him, ‘I’m sick of thinking about all that ‘20-12’ stuff. Floods, fires, famine, wars? Is all this because we’ve behaved so poorly over the past, what? – fifty years? Is this because everyone wants to drive a car and have a cell phone? I haven’t done anything so bad that I should have to worry about being ‘done in’ all the time by a greater force – have I? There’s a lot of strife about things that I don’t even care about, or think about or even know about!

‘Why are we supposed to be afraid? Is it creature comforts? Rest assured I feel guilty for them. Is it energy? Guilty for food, guilty for the joy ride, definitely guilty for the air-conditioner. Yep, guilty. I say – guilt be gone – god-damn-it! Be gone!

‘And, besides,’ I paused bashfully, ‘Mein mann ist ein plumber – I’ll be fine.’

‘Was?’ he asked – German for ‘what?’

‘Ja. Mein mann ist ein plumber,’ I didn’t know the word for plumber in German. I really hadn’t understood what he had said in the first place, so if he was being friendly, I thought I’d let him know that I could relate to his trade.

‘Er arbeitet mit wasser,’ I said, ‘ – und toiletten? – verstehen sie toiletten?’

‘Was?’ he asked again.

Maybe this guy didn’t even speak German.

‘Never mind,’ I said, ‘it’s okay.’

I made my way out to the cold and designated stone footing where I’d seen other hikers brushing their teeth and splashing water on their faces from a temporary outdoor water supply. I started to brush, but soon slipped and crashed to the ground, my face inches from the frozen spit and toothpaste of the 199 others before me. My water bottle bounced and splintered down the rocky drop and landed about 15 metres away.

I looked up. Nobody was there to see me or to help me. I wanted to cry. But I’m not a crier. I let out a little peep, but it sounded wrong. It’s just not me. I got up and collected my toothpaste and toothbrush on my way down to the water bottle. The lever was cracked, but the bottle wasn’t. It was still useable. I gave it a hug. I wanted to cry again, this time with tears of sentiment, but I decided to forget it. I’d better not keep people waiting. So I scurried off to meet my team.

The path in the distance that I couldn’t quite make out was where we were headed. It was steep in an upward direction with a promise of a steep decline on the other side of the ridge. Another reason to cry, I thought, but it would have taken too much energy. I could barely breathe. When we reached the saddle of the mountain there was a giddy sense of celebration and my mood changed. I knew I could handle the cable descent and the loose rocky path that followed down to the lake below us. I like going down.

The lake was a good resting spot. Besides, Johann, one of our members, had taken a tumble part of the way down and needed bandaging and reassuring by his pretty wife Ursula. They, along with Martina were part of the German contingency that joined our group at the last minute. They were lovely people and very strong hikers. 

Our guide Charlie and the Germans weren't accustomed to taking breaks. On the few occasions that we dropped our packs and sat on the ground, they stood smiling at us ready to race on. Charlie has hiked these trails for years and guides groups all summer long. He’s strong. I think he could do our week long hike in a day and a half; he was always in a hurry to get to the next spot, lunch or lodging.  

I’d say you could call Charlie a playboy. He’s bright and sparkly and pretty flirtatious. It seemed he had a waitress rushing through our dinner service at all the hotels and huttes we stayed at, so that she could sit beside him and kick her legs back and forth with a glass of wine before the evening ended.

Charlie and our host Franz are best buddies from their Austrian childhood. Franz can hike as well as Charlie and he knows all the peaks, wildflowers and geology by name. Franz is married to Carol. Together they organised the hike that turned a lot of strangers’ into friends.  They and their children live in Wyoming and run one of the best lodges in Jackson Hole – ‘Teton View Bed, Breakfast and Beyond’.

Lynda and I didn’t plan it, we ‘if’ed’ it. We decided before the hike that ‘if’ we felt like taking a day off the trail we could. We decided to do that on the last day of our hike, and made the announcement at breakfast. While the rest of the group disappeared into the canyon behind us, we asked the hotel concierge, aka Charlie’s last girlfriend, for travel advice that would help to reunite us with our group at the end of the day.

The concierge assured us that with little traffic coming and going in town the only way out would be by bus. Hitchhiking was not an option.

Well, we hitched a ride from the first car that came by. The husband and wife took us 10km’s out of their way where they let us off at the Alpine border between Austria and Italy called Timmelsjoch Pass. It was gray and windy as Lynda and I huddled together and walked arm in arm to the lone toll booth.

In my nicest German, I asked the guard if we could hitchhike from the other side of the crossing. He said a few things that sounded very seriously like ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ to me, then laughed. So we laughed. He pointed for us to stand over there.

Cool.

We waited to see what would happen next.

Mr Potato-man, or more respectfully ‘the potato farmer’, was the third vehicle to cross the summit. The passengers in the first two cars drove by gesturing apologetically that they hadn’t any room to carry us to a new location. The border guard was hitching our ride for us, and the potato farmer was happy enough to have us tag along.

Lynda and I hopped into the back seat of his twin cab truck. The front passenger seat and floor were full of potatoes and dry clumps of dirt.

The narrow winding road ahead took us through little villages and steep valleys, and we established that this trip with a trailer attached was a weekly event to sell his goods.

At a fork in the road he pulled over and asked us if we wanted to be dropped off to continue hitchhiking directly to the town of San Leonardo or meander slowly with him while he dropped in on his customers on the longer way to town.

Before we left that morning Lynda asked me, ‘Karen, what are we wishing for?’

‘Adventure!’ I said, ‘Let’s not just shop, and eat, and drink coffee.’

So, we went with him the long way, on even narrower and windier roads.

We went to a resort, some restaurants, and a couple of little grocery stores to visit his clients. Sometimes we got out and went in with him, but mostly we sat like little captives in the back seat and waited. Eventually we turned down a road that was so narrow Lynda and I could have touched the trees from our respective windows, if we had tried.

Lynda poked at me and said, ‘He’s making strange faces and keeps looking back here.’

‘Is he looking at both of us, or just you?’ I asked.

‘He can’t see you over there,’ she said. ‘He’s just looking at me.’

‘We’ll be ok,’ I said, placating her as I surveyed the surroundings. Danger hadn’t been on my agenda all day. It had been pretty nice. But, what about all those religious roadside markers we’d been passing on this little stretch of forested road? Just who were they erected for? Was it was time for me to sit up and pay attention?

I caught Lynda’s eye, then quietly unzipped my fanny pack. She watched as I thumbed through it and pulled on my gloves. What was I looking for? Ah-ha! Dental floss! I took it out, held it up, shook it gently and looked serenely at Lynda.

I mouthed the obvious, ‘Dental floss.’

Lynda looked at me as if to say, ‘What the hell?’

Very quietly I opened the box and tore off about 18 inches of my preferred floss – waxed. I put it back in my pack and zipped it up.

Deftly, like I have done a thousand times before, I wrapped each end around an index finger, formed a little knuckle, and then gave the floss a tug.

‘He’s chubby and he’s old,’ I whispered, ‘If we have to run, let’s hope he falls over. I’m sure he’ll have trouble getting up. If we can’t get out of the car, I’m going to choke him,’ I snickered as I looked at the string between my hands. 

Lynda didn’t laugh, but I was only half joking. Hitchhiking is a delicate game of cat and mouse; a testament to the high levels of stress that I sit comfortably with.

I leaned forward, and asked him how much further until we reached town. He held the back of his right hand up towards me while he continued to navigate our narrow path.

With his big fingers spread wide, he said ‘Funf.’

I sat back.

‘We’re almost there,’ I said to Lynda.

We arrived in San Leonardo five minutes later and stepped out of the truck at Mr Potato Man’s next stop, a little market stall in the centre of town.

When we arrived at our hotel in the tiny village of Schnalstal the manager wouldn’t let us in our room until Charlie arrived, so we sat and waited. We had thought of hiking up to meet the others on the trail, but were sort of just glad to be there. Finally, as in all good fairy tales, we were reunited with our group. They came down from the mountain two and three at a time, and we were all very happy to see each other safe.

That night we toasted our success with a last supper. We had lots to celebrate. It was Kathy’s birthday and Peter bought us wine. It was Ursula and Johann’s anniversary and they treated us to Willie – a pear liqueur. Shawn and Rocco were on their honeymoon, and we had all just hiked the E5 trail!

When I went to bed it was raining. I stood and looked out the window for a few minutes and wished we had had more time together. By the morning September snows were falling, and we piled into the bus that was scheduled to take us back towards civilisation or at least to life as we knew it.