Invasion of the Flying Saucers

Corona (extinct volcano, about 5400m), the odd-looking bat-shaped peak on the right, was ascended yesterday by a ´happy team` of four, as as Lascar (áctive volcano, about 5600m, centre), our primary objective, was pouring out too much noxious gas...at least as judged by our humourless Swiss ´mountain guide´...who dragged the lowest form of human life to newly plumbed depths.

My contempt for this breed of wasters grows by the day, partly because they try to get away with murder, and partly because I don´t like being in the guide-client relationship. Though I say so myself, I have more experience, better mountain-sense, and more summit-hunger than 90% of these guys, I just don´t have the 4WD and the local road knowledge.

The truth was that he just didn´t want to climb Lascar again, having done so 30-odd times. Well, knobhead, it´s your job, and you have 3 clients who have paid, between them, 210,000 Chilean Pesos for a good day out.

I threw a bit of a wildy when he suggested we retire to the valley for a pleasant walk. What - driving for 3h up to 4500m just to have a breakfast picnic? I looked imploringly to his other two clients for support, but they were Austrian and closed ranks with their neighbour (the fools - they should hear what the Swiss say about Austrians behind their backs). At length, after some very stony silences, a second objective was agreed.

I wanted to summit, so I resorted to the only way to impress a Swiss - to be adversarial, go fastest and to bullshit hardest (turned out he was a rubbish climber and had done great big nothing in the Alps or at the crag). The other two tried to ignore me and spoke dialect German for the rest of the hike. So, dredging my memory for long-forgotten vocab, I pitched in, pointing out the best route in my judgement, and asking why we couldn´t have taken this or that route on Lascar, which we could see clearly that other groups were climbing by the normal route that our so-called ´guide´ had dismissed. Adequately cordial relations were resumed after an hour or two.

Yet, during 13 hours, Mr Swiss never once laughed out loud. It reminded me why I left Switzerland after working there for two years. Spoiled infants with no sense of humour, no interest in other people, a 100% ego-based judgementalism, and a complete inability to admit it when they are wrong? All nations have em, but none more than Switzerland. Nice chocolate though.

Corona was a brilliant mountain, more interesting in shape and in summit architecture than Lascar, and I had a fantastic day out in spite of the painful company.