October 28, 2017

Canyoning is a gift

….Canyoning in Interlaken, Berner Oberland, Switzerland. With my awesome positive crew sitting under a waterfall and loving every moment….

I’m surprised that I meet so many people who still don’t know what canyoning is. I’m going to change that haha. Canyoning or canyoneering (as the Americans call it) is basically a water park but in nature. In crystal clear blue water rushing through perfectly carved granite, if you are lucky. Yes, like a water park designed by mother nature but with adrenaline added to the mix. A risk of being at the mercy of the elements, of surrendering your physical body to the unpredictable and uncontrolled unknown. Humans dancing on the edge, just like we were designed to do, to truly feel alive.

Canyoning is a celebration of all that we haven’t yet destroyed in nature. It is a celebration of all that is still wild, that isn’t bubble wrapped in today’s western societies. It helps you see that there is something precious in the pristine and that our remaining nature needs to be protected. It basically goes like this. Get dressed into neoprene (usually the water is quite cold), don a harness, do your due diligence with regards to local knowledge, weather, topography, grab the appropriate ropes and make you way down from top to bottom. Canyoning is abseiling down waterfalls, it is jumping into deep blue pools, swimming up to an infinity edge overlooking the next steep drop, it is sliding down epic water slides carved not by man but by the power of water of rock over tens of thousands of years. Canyoning is climbing in the caves behind waterfalls, floating through the forest, exploring around rocks, letting the water fall heavy on your back as a natural gravity massage and spinning around in whirlpools like you are a child. Everything about the experience is consuming, complete immersion in the moment, in the grandeur of nature, in being alive.

There is world class canyoning in Switzerland, Austria, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Porto Rico, Ecuador, Columbia, Philippines and Patagonia, Chile. I worked as a canyoning guide in Interlaken, Switzerland and every single day was a joy. A joy to be able to go in that canyon, to feel the power of the water, to take people (sometimes their first time) into the unknown, to help enhance what would already be an experience of a lifetime.

In the video below I take my mum canyoning in the Italian part of Switzerland, Cresciano, Tichino.