Danger in the Alps

During David’s visit to Texas, he and I talked about the trip he made with me when he was thirteen. Remembering Austria, he asked, “Where did you find that road?”

I thought I was on the main highway to Liechtenstein. We left Innsbruck and followed a twisting, narrow road over the mountains. It had all the hazards of driving around blind mountain curves. Did I make a mistake? Twenty-three years ago Germany with its autobahns was the only European country with super highways.

Our little rental car frustrated me with its sluggish manual transmission. My muscles remembered how to let out the clutch and put the thing in gear, but the Opal had little power even on ordinary roads. On the autobahn in Germany the Mercedes passed me going 135 mph and Volkswagens came up behind me in the right lane flashing lights warning me to go faster or get off the road. I floor-boarded that miserable Opal. It refused to go over 80 mph. In mountains it struggled to go 30.

Going up a mountain with many switchbacks we rounded a curve, and, seeing a particularly steep grade ahead, I attempted to change gears down from third to second – and killed the engine.

Holy cow! I slammed my right foot down on the brake. The emergency brake didn’t work. Here I was on a mountainside with a cliff behind me and no barrier to stop the car.

Keeping my left foot on the clutch, I started the engine. As I eased out the clutch, I jumped my right foot from brake to accelerator. Not fast enough. The car rolled backwards towards the cliff. I slammed my right foot back on the brake. . . and killed the engine again.

Again I started the engine and slowly eased out on the clutch. As soon as I took my right foot off the brake, the car rolled back, getting closer to the cliff. I did not have enough feet.

I tried again and again. I was about to tell David to get out of the car, as his mother was about to die by going off a cliff in the Austrian Alps. Finally I was quick enough for the motor to catch. The car stopped its backward slide and began slowly to inch forward

David did not say a word as the car coughed and sputtered on up the mountain until we saw three-foot banks of snow beside the road. I found a place to stop, and David got out and made a snowball. Back in the car David looked down at the snowball in his hands and said, “What am I going to do with this?” He rolled the window down and tossed it out.

Making snowballs on a warm October day was fun, but in a car rolling towards a cliff was not. Twenty-three years later David and I finally admitted to each other that we both had been terrified.

I am 83 years old and have had my driver’s license since I was 21. In all my years of driving, in city slums, on remote roads in Yugoslavia, in snow in Illinois, and on icy highways returning to New Mexico, that time in the Alps was the only time when I was truly afraid.