No cliffs, a path the whole way, a chairlift even! But even with these concessions from James, it was a rough start all the same for our poor new au pair.
“Yes, I’d love to go hiking!”
James was very happy with the enthusiasm of our new au pair to go hiking with us on her first weekend in Switzerland. “Don’t make it too hard,” I warned him, “Otherwise she’ll never come with us again.”
“I won’t,” he promised.
“Because your optimistic estimates of hike distance and difficulty have already put the kids off this year. And what you think is normal is actually pretty hard for most people. She’s from Mexico, remember, not Switzerland. I’m not sure how much hiking she’s done. ”
“It’ll be fine. Stop worrying.”
You’ve got the foreboding, right?
Our new au pair only had Converse-like sneakers, but no problem! She could use my walking shoes. So off we set, for what James assured us all was an easy hike. “Not even a 1,000 m height gain,” he said. “And there’s a chairlift for the first part. Easy peesy!”
It’s true that it wasn’t such a hard walk. Longer than our au pair had ever done before, and possibly quite a bit steeper too, but nothing too tricky. No sheer cliffs to traverse, and a path the whole way.
Except… although we had made sure she had good shoes, we forgot to check her socks. Ankle socks don’t really work with walking shoes, they slip down. The results are not pretty.
An hour into the hike, our au pair politely inquired as to whether we had any Band Aids.
For once, I did! We patched up her heels and kept going. It wasn’t long though before she couldn’t walk anymore in her borrowed shoes. However! Not really liking the aesthetics of my walking shoes, she’d packed her prettier sneakers. After another stop to change shoes we continued on.
We reached the lunch spot, at a mountain hut perched above the beautiful Orny glacier. Our au pair wisely decided to stay there while went on the to next hut at the top of the glacier.
“We’ll be back in 2 hours,” said James. “Enjoy the sun!”
Only… Kai was slow walking up, so we were not back in 2 hours. Meaning we didn’t have time to make it down to the chair lift before it closed. Meaning we had to walk quite a bit further to the car than we had walked up. And… the track down was not so good. Steep, rocky, and slippery. Not ideal for pretty treadless sneakers.
Though she stayed in good spirits, all was not fine by this point. Our poor au pair slid and slipped, falling hard on her backside more than once. Even with hiking boots, I slipped too. Kai had a rough time of it as well, becoming more and more miserable each time he fell. Once down the valley, we still had to trudge quite a way through the forest to the town. We were very happy to reach the car.
And the next day, when I saw her bruised, limping body, I was even happier to that our au pair’s father was far, far away in Mexico.
Needless to say, she has not come hiking with us again.
