I Am a Polar Bear

Our first full day at Our Chalet is Tuesday. Monday is spent flying to Switzerland, taking two trains along foggy lakesides and a final bus ride into increasingly perfect mountain views. Then we get settled in and introduced to our new home.

On Tuesday we’re up early for the Pinning Ceremony, a celebration of international friendship which includes the ritual raising of the flag to the Our Chalet song and the presenting of the official Our Chalet pin, which is worn only by people who’ve visited.

Our Chalet is one of the five World Centres belonging to the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (well, technically Our Cabaña belongs to the Guides of Mexico but it’s treated the same as the others). The staff and volunteers are Guides and Scouts from all over the world – represented on this particular week are the USA, Canada, Mexico, UK, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Slovenia, Germany, Cyprus and Australia – plus Skippy the cat representing Switzerland. So far, all the guests on the New Year Break are from the UK, and all from Girlguiding’s South West region at that, although a couple are living and/or working in London.

Our main objective for today is to hike to Engstligen, a waterfall two hours away. I gladly accept the offer of borrowing poles for this mountain hike and I don’t know whether to be disappointed or grateful to discover that in fact we’re going to walk up the valley, roughly following the road and the river. It’s pretty flat and the further we go, the closer in the mountains seem to get. By the time we arrive at the cable car station, we’re almost surrounded by gigantic craggy cliffs. The waterfall is twenty or so minutes further into the woods. It’s the first time it’s really been snowy or icy on the hike so far and finally I’m glad of the poles as we skitter over ice, making a very short stop at a public barbecue pit to drop bags before we go out to the waterfall – two of the Our Chalet team are here with crates of food and firewood and by the time we get back from the waterfall, they’ll have lunch well on its way.

Engstligen Falls are the second highest waterfalls in Switzerland, two steps that fall right down from the top of the Engstligenalp above. Its water, heavy with ice and glacial particulates, is greyish and not as easy to see against the half-frozen mountain it’s falling off. It’s a great sight and we take selfies before the most foolhardy of the group venture down to the little metal bridge that crosses the stream. It’s really icy here and for a moment it looks like we’re going to slide over the river bank and into the frigid water.

We all make it safely back to the barbecue pit. Adrian and Jess have the fire lit and banked down and a mix of proper Alpine sausages and vegan falafel burgers are cooked and ready to eat. They’ve also brought chunks of crusty bread and plenty of salad and cheese and even three urns of boiling water for coffee or hot chocolate. When we’ve finished, there’s apples and Toblerones. Most of us pocket the Toblerones to eat later in the day.

When all but three of the sausages are gone and everyone’s got cold from sitting still for nearly an hour, we get up, leaving the remains of the meal for Adrian and Jess to clear up and return to the Chalet, and plod back through the snow to the cable car station. Ray, our hike leader, hands out tickets and we board the cable car, which takes us up 564m to the shelf above the waterfall in just a few minutes.

This is a winter wonderland. The sky is blue and the snow actually glitters. This is a ski paradise and we have to dodge a tow that crosses the main path over to the baby slopes, where small children who can barely walk are learning to ski far more capably than I managed on my last attempt, and where we’re heading for the next little while. We’ve going snowtubing! We each select a very solid rubber ring and a bored-looking man on a stool hooks us up to a rope that will tow us to the top of the slope. Then we sit, hold on tight and let go. It sounds so easy from the bottom but once you’re standing at the top, it suddenly looks a long way down, very steep and you realise that most people are going backwards. Ray advises us to not ever use our feet to try to control our descent because a foot hitting the slope is probably what will tip us up and throw us out of the rings. We’re adults; our legs are long and they dangle over the edge of the ring where they could catch the snow at any point.

It’s terrifying! Of course, you end up backwards because that’s gravity. I briefly try leaning fowards as far as I can to put as much weight to the front of the ring – front from my perspective anyway; a ring has no front – and very quickly abandon the attempt because it does nothing and also I’m preoccupied with trying not to be hurled to my death onto compacted ice. The snowtube course is bumpy and every laden ring that smashed over a lip deepens the landing spot just that bit more. I’m thrown backwards up against high snow walls where surely I’m going to flip over and come down face first on the ice with a ring on top of me but somehow, twirling madly, mostly backwards and shrieking like a banshee, I come to a halt at the bottom where Ray, first down the slope, is waiting and laughing.

We go again and this time I only shriek for the bits where I’m flung unexpectedly backwards up the walls. If we had a third go, I might even manage to not shriek at all but we’re only doing two runs and most of us feel like that’s enough. Now we get an hour or so of free time to enjoy the mountain, to take in the view from the edge by the cable car right up the valley, right up to the pyramidal Niesen on the edge of Lake Thun, or to hike the round walk further in on the shelf. I’m hot – hiking and snowtubing are warming activities – so all I really want is to sit in the snow and cool down and then take in the views. There’s plenty going on up the Engstligenalp to watch. Besides all the skiing kids, there’s people sledging, there’s an igloo that’s closed at the moment, a packed restaurant with diners and drinkers crowding the terrace and a weird giant orange inflatable something half-buried in the snow.

We take the bus back to the village although it doesn’t climb up our particular bit of mountain and we have to walk the last twenty minutes. Then we’ve got time to get changed out of sweaty clothes before dinner of spicy chicken wings and our New Year’s Eve activities. First is a hike to the Magic Tree. Some of our group seem to be under the impression it’s in Our Chalet’s grounds despite being told this morning it’s roughly a thirty minute hike there are back. They’re dismayed when we walk down the drive and round by what passes for a main road up here and by the time we’re crossing a meadow and heading for the woods, they’re complaining. We’re joined by a cat, a calico one barely out of kittenhood who’s clearly starved for affection. She follows us right up to the Magic Tree and while we do our rituals, she weaves in and out of our legs, climbs the tree and appears inside it. The Magic Tree is at least six hundred years old and completely hollow. It looks dead, except that it regularly spouts fresh green leaves. We’ve all got a piece of paper with our reflections on 2019 and our wishes for 2020 and we light a candle each to place around the base of the tree and then put our papers in a basket inside the tree by candlelight. The candles don’t want to light and they don’t want to stay lit but the larger candle we’re using to light everything from works properly and I get some interesting photos of people inside the tree.

Back at the Chalet, we’ve got time to change again and then we’re all in the traditional scrubbed pine dining room for a quiz of the decade with chocolate fondue and a Charleston lesson and then midnight looms. We run back to our rooms for extra layers and go outside for sparklers and non-alcoholic champagne. Alcohol isn’t outright banned here but because WAGGGS is an organisation meant to benefit girls and young women, adults are supposed to drink discreetly if at all and while we’re all adults here, we’re still going for the alcohol-free version that suits Our Chalet’s ethos better. Adelboden is a small village and its fireworks are small but there’s a lot of them. We’ve got a great view over the village from here and we can see the displays from every hotel, every home and even some of the surrounding mountain tops. They go on forever. Just when you think everyone’s exploded everything they’ve got, another display starts up somewhere and it’s not until twenty-five past midnight that it quietens down enough for everyone to gather glasses and used sparklers and go back inside and even once we’re in bed, we still hear the occasional bang from another enthusiastic Adelbodener with a slow watch. Tomorrow we have a late start and a lazy day.