Russ McBee

In September 2005, I spent a week by myself in the Swiss Alps. Although Switzerland is indescribably beautiful, I had enough near-death experiences on that trip to become convinced that the country was trying to kill me -- not the adorable Swiss people, mind you, but the land itself.

One such incident involved a near heart attack on a cable car on the Schilthorn (a 10,000-foot peak in the central Alps).

I spent a few days in a tiny little village called Muerren (or Mürren, if you want to be all proper and German about it). The village is home to about 300 people and sits halfway up the Schilthorn, at an elevation of about 5,000 feet. No roads lead up the mountain; Muerren is only accessible by a cog railway, like the one going up Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga. Since no roads go up that nearly vertical mountain, the 800-year-old village is pedestrian only. The Schilthorn forms one side of the Lauterbrunnen Valley, so the village is blissfully quiet, isolated, and faces breathtaking views of the mountains across the narrow valley. The air is pristine.

It's pretty much the stereotypical Alpine paradise. This was the view from my balcony at the Hotel Eiger:

There isn't much to do in Muerren except walk the hiking paths along the mountain's face and absorb that amazing view. And eat. That was fine with me.

The one attraction of note in Muerren (besides the view) is the cable car which travels from the village to the top of the Schilthorn, another 5,000 feet up. The manager of my hotel gave me a free pass to ride the cable car (which would have ordinarily cost about $50 or so), so I wanted to pick a clear day to make the trip. The first and second days of my visit were intermittently cloudy, but the third day saw the clouds disappear; the clear sky takes on a particular shade of crystal blue high in the Alps that I don't remember seeing anywhere else.

I was excited to see the views from atop that 10,000-foot peak, so I set off for the cable car late in the morning of day three.

The ride up the mountain was pretty harrowing. The larger Swiss cable cars hold about 20 or 30 people, all standing (there are no seats), and the cars move very, very fast. They move much faster than I anticipated.

The crowd filled the cable car; the conductor then closed the door, pushed a button, and WHOOSH! we were off, flying upward at about a 70° angle at breakneck speed.

At first, I was digging the ride. I love rollercoasters, and this was a bit like shooting up that first big hill on a 'coaster, only a lot faster and with nothing underneath. Soon, I realized just how high off the ground we were. Faster and faster we climbed at a seemingly impossible angle, all the while getting higher off the ground. Eventually, we were at least 1,000 feet above solid ground, which itself sloped downward at a dizzying angle.

I felt a little vertigo, but I didn't let it get to me. The other people in the car were also anxious, and most of them were Swiss. That, in a perverse kind of way, made me feel a little better.

As we climbed, it occured to me that the only thing between me and a horrible plunging death were the three steel cables above our car. I tried not to think about that too much.

One Swiss man said (in English) to a group of obviously nervous Italians, "Don't worry -- these things hardly ever fall." The Swiss apparently take delight in the terror of others.

About a thousand feet below the summit, my heart sank into the pit of my stomach, but not because of vertigo: the entire summit of the mountain was socked in by a thick cloud.

"Crap," I thought.

Once I disembarked from the car, I walked out onto a large plaza covering the entire summit. Sure enough, we were firmly, thoroughly enclosed by a cloud so thick that water condensed on my skin and my glasses. I'm pretty sure the only cloud in Switzerland that day was the one stubbornly attached to the summit of the Schilthorn. It saw me coming and decided to set up camp, just to spite me.

Besides the cable car station, the only other structure on the summit is a rotating restaurant called the Piz Gloria; it makes a single revolution once an hour, and was one of the sets used for the James Bond film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." On a clear day, the restaurant has an unobstructed view that spans at least a hundred miles; on this particular day, I couldn't see a hundred feet. Since I didn't have anything else to do up there, I went inside the restaurant for lunch. The food was better than I expected, and sure enough, the restaurant rotates. I saw a full 360° panorama of the cloud we were in, and nothing more.

After lunch, I ambled around the plaza, hoping for the cloud to break. Although I caught a few isolated glimpses of the valley thousands of feet below, the cloud stubbornly hung around. I waited about four hours for it to dissipate but eventually gave up.

Back at the cable car station below the restaurant, I waited at the head of the line for the next car down to Muerren. When the cable car arrived, I was the first one aboard, so I moved toward the front of the car, right up on the glass. Next to me stood an old German man who looked to be about 80 or so. We still couldn't see more than a few feet ahead of us.

The cable car filled up, the conductor closed the door and pushed a button, and WHOOSH! we were off, except this time we were racing downward at an impossibly steep angle, and very, very fast.

Flying nearly vertically down through that cloud, all we could see were the cables which suspended our car.

At least, for the first minute or so.

In an instant, in a breathtaking flash so sudden and unexpected it still gives me chills nearly two years later, the cloud vanished. We were flying downward at breakneck speed, nearly vertical, and this time, we could see just exactly how far off the ground we really were. It was at least two thousand feet, and it came into view in the blink of an eye.

My heart nearly stopped at that moment. I felt it skip at least two or three beats.

Everyone in the car uttered a simultaneous, terrified gasp at that instant, except for the old German man standing next to me.

He gripped the bar below the window and shouted, "Ach! Mein Gott! Scheiss!"

Even those of us who didn't speak German knew exactly what he said. We all laughed in that nervous, "I'm about to die and this might be the last giggle I ever experience" kind of way. And, yes, "Scheiss" means exactly what you think it means.

This photo is blurry because my hands were shaking so badly:

When I came back to the hotel, the lady at the front desk asked me how the day had been. I told her about the clouds, and I told her what that old German man had said. She said, "Well, it looks like you've had your first German lesson. I think you passed."

"Vini, vidi, cardiem." ("I came, I saw, I had cardiac arrest.")

Non-shaky-handed photos of the Schilthorn are here, and photos of Muerren are here and here.