OPC Alps trip 07
Garion Bracken
If by chance sometime you happen to see a person with a strut to their walk and a glint in their eye, as you go about your business in one of the many halls, corridors, lawns or courtyards of UL, there’s a chance that you have been in the company of one of the eleven fine members of the outdoor pursuits club who went on the club trip this year. You may feel a presence that is hard to pin, for these brave and daring people are not your normal everyday, moper, drinker and smoker breed. They share a metronomic motivation and love for getting high.
This year’s trip was to the beautiful hillside town of Arolla in the Valais region of the Swiss Alps, 25Km south of Sion. Accommodation consisted of Swiss campsites and Aldi tents. Dinner, couscous, mayonnaise, chili flakes, tinned tomatoes, a dash of oregano and a hint of imagination, washed down with local wine at €2 a bottle.
When not scaling the many Pignes, Monts, Dents and Aiguilles that the Valais region has to offer, swings, volleyball courts, tight ropes, skipping ropes and zip lines were the products of a rope, two trees and a group of people with too much time on their hands, and no TV. If the weather crapped out, as it did almost every single day, incessantly at precisely four o’clock, playing cards or a few bottles of wine were the order of fun, the wine swilled down and rounded off with some banter, a sing along and seven or eight shots of absinthe.
But it wasn’t all fun and games. Climbing mountains is a serious business if you don’t want to find yourself in trouble. In the days leading up to the climb, the cards are replaced with maps and guide books. The wine is reduced to a maximum of one bottle per sixteen hour period and eating lots of high flatulence foods is very important, especially in larger parties. The training took place over two days, in which crevasse rescue and some rope techniques were learned. After that we were on our own, to plan routes and form groups and climb mountains. The climbing varied from nail biting rock climbing up narrow ridges with nasty unforgiving drops on all sides, on snowy icy rock in bitter cold winds that can make your lips turn blue, to never-ending snow plods, along avalanche prone slopes and across crevasse ridden glaciers, with the sun beating down on you and then bouncing off the snow and coming back yet again to make sure your well done on both sides. After five hours simmering you begin to curse your clothes until eventually the contempt grows ‘till you get an insane urge to tear them off, stamp on them and dive into the snow screaming like a loon in some sort of crazed act of self liberation. This may sound like a fate worse than an hour and a half listening to your uncle’s fascinating new business idea that he’ll never go through with. I won’t lie to you; it is at times that monotonous and physically excruciating. But to stand on the summit of a difficult climb, the pinnacle of eight hours of gut wrenching effort, and to look around at three hundred and sixty degrees of panoramic alpine beauty and to breath in the cool crisp mountain air, with a couple of chocolate biscuits gives a feeling that’s hard to describe with pen and paper. It’s like the accomplishment of beating your best friend in mariokart mixed with the satisfaction of spraying a girl with a hose.
For some this stuff is a hobby, for others it’s a passion. If what you’ve read sounds appealing to you or you have any ambition to find yourself in the Alps or Himalayas someday, make your way to the OPC climbing wall and give it a go. Or go along on one of the weekend trips and see some of Ireland’s most beautiful scenes and sites. Maybe even reach Irelands highest point Carrantuohill in the MacGillycuddy reeks. If you want to see what the trip was like come along to the slideshow.
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