Okay, so now the fun bit. The Alpine slide. There are slides in Switzerland that require a gondola to get to the top, and once you’re up there, take you on a winding ride in a kart the half way down the side of the mountain. There are two kinds of alpine slides; summer and winter alpine slides. The summer slides are either basically go-karts in a track with a handbrake on a metal slide/track (gravity-powered, not motorized), or mountain rollercoaster style. Then in the winter, there are *actual* toboggans in snow tracks, like luge. The one I did was more like a go-kart on a metal track. Although it’s gravity powered on the way down, there is a motorized pulley system to take you up, much like when you’re climbing to the top on a rollercoaster. The track then winds all the way down the side of mountain back to where you started. The slide I went to is called the Rodelbahn, and it’s a couple of minutes long. If you want to enjoy your ride or go fast, (or at the very least not get stuck in a traffic jam behind someone’s grandmother) You’ve definitely got to strategically position yourself in line behind people who look like they’re going to go fast. There are a lot of parents with their babies or toddlers in their laps that want to go down the slide, grandparents, and many people that have never done this and are scared of going too fast going down the slide, and the result is that they ride the handbrake the entire way down and cause a very large traffic jam, since nobody can go faster than them. Pay attention to who you’re standing behind in line if you’d like to avoid this. There are large signs at the top that say not to brake and stop at the top, but I found it helpful to wait at the top a few extra seconds for the traffic below to clear, while paying careful attention to when the person behind me was coming, so they didn’t get stuck behind me. This gave me an opportunity to create more space between myself and the person ahead of me, so that I could ride with the handbrake all the way off the entire way down. It took around two or three times for me to figure out how to get a brake-free ride down, but I eventually did on the last ride. I’ll say the individual rides are relatively cheap, but the gondola ride up is about $30 round-trip per person (Unless you get a Swiss travel pass, which I did not spend the money on ahead of time). Once you’re up, though, you can buy individual rides for $6 each, or you can buy a few at a time and save a few bucks per-ride. It’s definitely worth going at least a few times. Plus there’s a SPECTACULAR hike up there once you’re done with the slide. It takes about twenty five minutes to get down to the scenic view point, but there’s a panorama view with lightly snow-capped mountains in the back (if you go in the summer), and a gorgeous lake that’s perfect for a picnic, or a drink (See photos below).

Related Posts: