A Well Kept Man

After receiving a break from the rainy weather, Alli and I decided on a hiking adventure on Saturday as we weren't in the mood for a long car ride or human interaction (sometimes you just need "me" time). We spent the better part of the morning watching Olympics coverage and scouring our maps, guidebooks, and the internet for a nice route to partake. I decided on a hike that would take us to the peak of some of a nearby mountain, but I was overruled due to the statistics of the hike (4.25 hours, 10 km, 875 m climb, peak of 1916 m). I can understand her reluctance (or woman's intuition) for not wanting to go hike up to this summit, so we settled for a much easier climb (2.25 hours, 7 km, 504 m climb, peak of 1165 m).

We packed ourselves a picnic lunch (more appropriately described as a refrigerator full of food stuffed into a backpack just in case we got lost for three weeks and needed to make sure we had plenty to eat), and headed off towards Gruyère. Gruyère is where the world famous Gruyère cheese is made, and the hike we were to take was labeled the Cheese-Dairy Trail. Upon arriving we decided it was time for lunch (since it was getting close to 1:30 in the afternoon). We took a quick tour of the modern cheese-making facility which included authentic cheese smell. The smell of the salt-water brine bath and aging cheese is not one soon forgot, nor would I recommend the tour for anyone easily nauseated. Wisconsinites will probably find this area to smell much like Green Bay on a Sunday afternoon, everyone else will not.

The tour (not worth it if you ask me) includes a narrated audio tour (in your language of choice) of how the cheese is made, from start to finish. Start = open field waiting for cows, Finish = macaroni and cheese dinner. I don't want to upset my readers so I will eliminate the 'middle' portion of the tour (plus, I really don't want to ruin the "excitement" if you happen to get suckered into going). A cow named "Cherry" narrates the tour as you go through the process of cheese production, and in the end you get a sample of three different ages of Gruyère cheese (6 months, 8 mos, and 10 mos). We haven't sampled ours yet as we are still in cheese detox from the second-hand cheese odor.

After making our way outside we launched on our adventure. The starting time of our hike was 2:30 pm (foreshadowing). We immediately began our hike which wandered through the locals' backyards, and past a farm or two (including a horse stable) and onto a mountain road (which was paved...not quite what I had in mind for a hike, but oh well). The day was cool (no warmer than 17 C or so...low - mid 60's) and we quickly made our way into the forest. It was a fairly steep climb immediately so we were definitely getting a good workout. After about an hour or so the forest opened up a bit to open meadows and the sounds of cowbells. I wonder of the farmers have ever regretted putting bells on the necks of the cows, it seems to me that it would get pretty annoying having to listen to mooing and cowbells all day and night. Maybe they should just follow the cow pies if they want to know where the cows are...they seemed pretty reliable to me (Dried up cow pie means there was a cow here at some point, but it wasn't very recently. Fresh cow pie means there is a cow close by...pretty simple and much quieter.)

The scenery was quite breathtaking as we made it out of the trees. I am not sure how far we could see, but the sky was clear and we had some beautiful views of the area. The air was amazingly clean as well and it felt as if my lungs received a good scrubbing. One never fully appreciates crisp, clean air until they get a chance to take a couple chests full while trying to catch their breath after a long hike. Back to the hike...

At this point we were continuing to climb and hadn't found the alleged alpine cheese hut that was supposed to be at the pinnacle of our hike, so we began to wonder if we missed it. However, the signs were pointing to proceed so we did (we didn't have a watch either so it was tough to know exactly how long we had been hiking, maybe it was only 30 minutes...). We were all of the sudden faced with a predicament that I have yet to encounter in my relatively limited experience in the wild. You see, during the hike we often had to go through closed gates and turnstiles when we reached fences on the trail. The barriers are to prevent the cows from going down into town and leaving unpaid bar bills. After making it through one such turnstile, we noticed the path made its way right between a bunch of grazing cows.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem as most of the cows I have encountered tended to be fat and lazy cows. But we were at an altitude of about 1000 m (0.62 miles) and these cows walked to get here. We also had heard a story from some of Alli's colleagues of the somewhat aggressive nature of certain alpine cows (a father and his son were literally chased downhill by a herd of cows). As luck would have it there was a cow blocking our path up the mountain. She wasn't planning on moving anytime soon either. I tried my best to speak cow..."MOOOOO-ve" I must had said at least five or six times (Alli didn't laugh, and the cow didn't move; I must have pronounced it wrong). Rather than tempting fate and trying to squeeze by the cow and the roughly 200 foot drop off, we decided to go around the cow the other way. This meant navigating between freshly laid cow pies (must have been some cows here recently) and other cows nearby. I led the way as Alli figured if something went wrong, she could learn from my misfortune and live to tell the story to all of my kin.

I instructed her to follow my footsteps to avoid any squishy surprises, but also to avoid eye-contact with the cows as this could incite a stampede. I successfully made it past the cow rather quickly (thanks for the long legs Dad) and was able to turn around in time to watch Alli (I really wanted to take a picture of her). At this point I started to make it seem like the cow was getting ready to attack so Alli sped up a bit. I think she managed to avoid all of the land mines but I think she wasn't too impressed with me joking around (the bruise on my arm is healing nicely, thanks for asking). The trek continued....

We continued to climb and climb and climb, through more forest, more cows, and finally to a clearing with a sign that I found interesting. Remembering my bike adventure through a flash flood area I stopped and read the sign closely. From what I can tell from the pictures it doesn't appear that I should practice cow-tipping or any other cow-related pranks. In fact, I shouldn't even stop to ask them for dinner recommendations, I should just keep moooo-ving along. So we did, although I managed a couple photos before moving very slowly towards the nearest turnstile.

After a little more hiking we managed to reach the destination of the hike, a small village in the mountains called "Moléson." I wasn't sure what time it was but I can tell you that we had been hiking for at least two hours. Apparently the 2.25 hour hike is one-way. It is at this point that Alli reminds me we could have been on the 4.25 hour hike I wanted to go on (which is most likely a 8.5 - 9 hour hike if you don't want to live where the hike ends). We checked out the town (this took about 5 minutes) and decided we should be heading back before nightfall (we also heard the cows are especially frisky at night). Before we left town, I decided to befriend a cow and fed her some dandelions and miscellaneous other greenery. This was interesting in that I have never almost had the skin ripped off my hand before by a cow tongue. I misunderestimated the reach of said cow tongue, nor did I know that the cow's tongue was coated with 50 grit sandpaper. Thankfully I had my pocket sized bottle of hand sanitizer so I did not contract mad cow disease.

We managed to hike the rest of the trail in around two hours as well, passing more cows, turnstyles and surprisingly enough a Green Bay Packers fan. There was a farmer moving her herd from one pasture to another which we had to stop for due to the fact that the cows were passing in front of our only exit from the mountain back down. She was wearing a Packers fleece which I found odd considering everyone here thinks football is really soccer. I wish I would have known how to tell her that Brett Favre is no longer on the team, but I didn't want her to release her cows on me in a fit of Cheese-head rage.

Sadly, I don't have a picture but I'll always have the memory. Needless to say we finished our hike in four hours time (pretty fast if you ask me), although we were only prepared for a little over two. We spent most of Sunday letting our legs, feet, and knees (Alli needed ice due to her knee's bothering her, since our ice supply is limited I had to use ice cream instead...I heal from the inside out) recover from the hike, but the scenery was beautiful...so I won't complain anymore.