Dreamscapes Travel & Lifestyle Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dreamscapes.ca/i/569741
DREAMSCAPES FALL 2015 36 AN AMAZING RACE ABOVE TOP: Although we proceeded at our own pace, we regularly checked with each other during the climb because we wanted to reach the summit together. ABOVE CENTRE: Looking back, climbing the mountain together was a turning point that instilled confidence in ourselves and truly solidified us as a team. OPPOSITE TOP: Over the course of our three- or four-hour journey, we encountered no other travellers other than those in our group. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: Designed to enable adventurers to climb mountains without any official training and with very minimal gear, via ferrata is a tradition in the Swiss Alps. Jennifer Foden O ne hundred kilometres south of Zurich, in a little cottage pub at the foot of the mountains, the waiter set down in front of us what we had—for several hours—been longing for: two cold bottles of Swiss brew. We poured the beers into glasses, raised our pints and proceeded to drink them—in about seven seconds flat. We looked down the table at the rest of our fellow (all Amer- ican) travellers and the look on their faces was something out of a movie: jaws dropped in utter shock that we drank our beers that fast. "Oh we forgot," one of them said, finally breaking the silence. "You're Canadian." A GRUELLING ITINERARY Let us back up for a moment: a few hours prior we had arrived in Andermatt, Switzerland, the fifth location on our trip through Europe. We had been passed over about six months prior by the producers for the second season of the Amazing Race Canada TV show, so finding Competitours, an Amazing Race-style tour company, seemed to be the next best thing (spoiler alert: a better thing). Those beers marked the end of our most physically gruelling challenge yet: a mountain climb fittingly dubbed "the devil." Up until this point, we had competed in a chocolate war in Belgium, a round robin fencing tournament in Maastricht and a race through Europe's largest outdoor shrub maze near Vaals. We had been fumbling and stumbling, performing mediocre at best. So when we wound up in Switzerland and were told our next challenge was to climb a mountain, well, we knew things were looking up—literally, and in the com- petition. See, our friendship was formed while working together at an adventure travel magazine, and we have since hiked Algonquin backcountry, jumped out of a plane, gone "extreme zip lining" and more. This was our kind of challenge. A SURPRISE SWISS MOUNTAIN CLIMB GIVES TWO AMAZING RACE CANADA REJECTS THE CONFIDENCE TO WIN SECOND PLACE ON A EUROPEAN TOUR BASED ON THE REALITY TV SHOW. BY JENNIFER FODEN AND JENN MARTIN