Small Victories

A good photo is only as good as the subject. This is Mike, my partner of nine years, and he is sitting atop one of the most treacherous, technical, and dangerous hiking trails in all of the Swiss Alps.

The conveniently named Hardergrat/Brienzergrat (“grat” meaning “ridge”) is a trail I had only dreamt about. This ridgeline is an unofficial, 14.9 mile point to point Swiss trail that traverses a knife edge ridge at nearly 7,800 feet above sea level. The ridgeline towers high above the Brienzersee, an ice blue lake that sits between the quaint Swiss towns on Brienz and Interlaken. It harbors unparalleled 360 degree views of the mighty Swiss/Italian Alps, and is listed on many sites as one of the worlds “Top 10 Best Hikes”. It was the top search on my Instagram explore page. Whenever I went to look something up on google, it was my first automated suggestion. It was a hike I had only hoped to get to in my lifetime.

Flash back to summer 2018. Mike and had just graduated college and were bright eyed and bushy tailed 22 and 23 years olds suddenly living back home and staring into the large black void that was now our life, with seemingly no direction and immediate plans (I assume that this is a mutual feeling for almost every recent college grad). I was eager for adventure, and quite frankly eager for distraction. I am a dance artist and had just finished up four years of training at the University of Massachusetts Amherst/Five College Dance Department resulting in a shiny new BFA in dance performance. So, the job search was, well… bleak. It was late July and I was house sitting for the family I worked for. One of my many odd jobs. Turning on another episode Stranger Things, I hunkered down and pulled out my phone. On a whim, I sent a text to Mike.

“You wanna go to Switzerland lol”

“Yeah let’s do it lol”

This is the kind of uncomplicated spontaneity I live for. “Lol.”

Flash forward to September. We are sitting on a mountain train in the Swiss Alps looking up at the beast we are about to conquer, feeling slightly… sick? The ridgeline is jagged and sharp, but still wonderfully green in the fall sun. Looking at the whole, it seems absolutely impossible. But that is something I learned early on about hiking, and arguably why I love it so much. You can only take it step by step and conquer each problem in front of you, in each present moment. It forces you to zoom in; to be exactly where you are at exactly that time. It makes you compartmentalize each larger goal. Climbing a mountain is not one victory, but the result of many small ones. Such is life.

We arrive at the top and the view is most certainly “world’s best” worthy, and we continue on towards the trail as the tourists and selfie sticks fade into the background until it is only us and the sound of Swiss cow bells from the valleys below. There is no trail marker, but there of course does not have to be. There is only one direction to go along the knife edge ridge. Any step off the one foot wide path would absolutely be fatal. We chose to start from Brienz, which clearly seemed to be the more difficult section according to every website about the trail online. But it is also ironic, because the entire trail will send most into a crippling anxiety attack.

We begin our passage focusing on each small victory. We are exposed to the highest degree, hand over hand climbing and scrambling with a small patch of earth below us, and air all around us. We were doing well and making good time. We ascended and descended what seemed like several peaks, and the fact that I had not completely shut down yet from an anxiety induced panic attack was giving me the adrenaline and confidence I needed to carry on. After several hours of hiking I thought for sure we had already made it over the most difficult and treacherous part, climbing the summit of Tannhorn mountain, to be exact. But what we experienced next informed us that we were very, very wrong.

We ascended over yet another peak in the ridge and what laid in front of us stopped us in our tracks. A mighty and sharp piece of earth rose jaggedly and aggressively into the sky. It was no longer green, but rocky and sharp, and we instantly knew that we had wildly underestimated our calculations on the ridge thus far. THAT was Tannhorn, and we were scared. We soldiered on along the incredibly narrow and unforgiving ridge towards the monster in front of us, until the already too narrow strip of earth we walked on became almost nothing. The trail seemed to end, and as we looked up in front of us, both Mike and I now totally crawling on hands and knees, there was only a high wall of rock with a cable chord precariously attached to the right side of the face. I knew then that I had never actually experienced a true “fight or flight” moment before this, because I was for sure experiencing it now. My first instinct was “absolutely not, there is no way I am scaling the side of a 7,800 foot mountain without ropes, or anything that will securely tether me to the side if my hand slips off the cable chord.” But thinking about the other option made me equally sick. If I chose not to continue and turn back, I would have to spend hours going back over the too thin ridgeline, this time going down, which in extreme exposure situations such as this one, is even worse. We were stuck, and finally anxiety had stopped us for the first time during the climb. There were no other options, and for the first time in my life I was worried that I really, actually, truly had a possibility of not making it to see tomorrow.

After several minutes of extreme panic to a degree of almost completely losing it, adrenaline and our deeply rooted survival insticts took over, and we fought our way up Tannhorn, scaling the rocky side of the mountain and hanging on to nothing but a cable chord with a lofty 7,800 foot drop at our backs. It was the scariest and most surreal moment of my entire life.

Here, before the summit of Tannhorn, and atop the rocky wall we had just scaled, is Mike, re-attaching his poles to his pack, and taking some much needed deep breaths. He is strattling the ridgeline, giving you a sense of just exactly how narrow and dangerous the trail is. There is no wonder why this hike is not an “official Swiss trail.” In the background lies the long and unforgiving ridgeline, going all the way back to the Brienzer Rothorn train station where we had gotten off that morning. This picture encapsulates one of the most transformative moments of my life. It is the trophy to an extreme physical and emotional feat. It is a moment I will remember forever, not just because my iPhone captured it, but because I lived it, in real time, and conquering that small, but momentous victory allowed me to be there. Really there.

The most ironic thing about capturing the photo on my mobile phone is that I had actually lugged my large and high quality DSLR camera all the way up that mountain and along the ridgeline. It was a heavy weight on my back that could have caused some real problems on highly exposed terrain like this. But I insisted I take it, because “I will want to have high quality photos of this experience.” Low and behold, I arrived at the top of the mountain that morning to find I had not even put the memory card into the camera before I left.

This shot was taken on my iPhone 8. It did not need a filter, because the content and the backdrop spoke for themselves. I did not edit it extensively, because I did not want to edit the memory. I loaded the snapshot into the VSCO app, and tinkered with the saturation and sharpness ever so slightly, to give it a higher quality feel. I wanted to make sure this picture displayed the experience and rigor of that afternoon. I made sure to capture not only Mike, but the entire ridgeline behind to show just how much we had been through. A visual representation of the intense physical and emotional ups and downs of that day.

We went to sleep that night with tired legs and happy hearts, and still just the slightest tinges of continuing anxiety that only subsided the next morning. Our hike along the Hardergrat/Brienzergrat is a story I will never get tired of telling. It was simultaneously the scariest, most difficult, and rewarding experience of my entire life. Our bodies are capable of so much more than we ever give ourselves credit for. It’s good to be reminded of that. I am thankful for my body. I am thankful for this ridge. And I am thankful I have this photo to remember it all.