And So, I Skied the Alps (cont'd)

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I slowed my gradual descent back toward Wengen by taking every lift, T-bar, and train I could back upward (trains and cable cars act as the trunk line ski lifts around here, with chair lifts peppered all about to make more runs accessible). I took two rolls of film — mostly of those remarkable, sharp-edged mountains — and was lucky enough to be looking in the right direction up at the Mannlichen/Tshuggen massif to see an avalanche.

The avalanche announced itself with a whooshing crack, followed by a menacing thunder laced with crackling as a river of snow poured off the rock face in a fascinating rush of slow motion, the heavy snow swirling back on itself and gobbling up rocks and trees along the way to boil them through the heart of the thing and disgorge them pell-mell in its wake.

Soon after, I found myself cruising by a mess of wood fenced off with orange netting. It had been the Oberland Cafe. The avalanche last Monday had buried a few cabins uphill from here (I could see the very pinnacle of an alpine roof poking above the snow above), but when it got to the cafe it sheared the wooden top story off the cement ground floor base, carrying the upper floors oddly intact about 50 feet down the mountain to deposit them, at a slight angle from the level, just before the ski path. The couple who owned the cafe were killed.

Trust me. I'm not getting anywhere near one of those things.

Copyright © 1999 by Reid Bramblett. All rights reserved.