Rafting and hydrospeed centre, where descents of the Sarine river cost SF85 (pounds 48), all gear provided.Bungee jumping: Adventure World, Interlaken, Switzerland (00 41 36 234 363). Claude Ammann's flight school, where passenger flights are available from SF120 (pounds 68); full-day lessons, all gear provided, from SF180 (pounds 100).Rafting: Rivieres et Aventures, Chateau d'Oex, Switzerland (00 41 29 47788). Jean-Francois Blaser's canyoning school, where descents cost SF80 (pounds 45) with all gear provided.Paragliding: Centre Delta-Parapente, Verbier, Switzerland (00 41 26 316 818). Both experiences cost SF80 (pounds 45), optional insurance SF30, all gear included.Canyoning: Centre Paradventure, Diablerets, Switzerland (00 41 25 532 382). Mountain guide Thierry Gasser's centre for rap jump and canyoning.
But a single sliver of ice, pluncked in lemonade out in the back garden or swizzled in Pimms on the beach, will suffice to keep me cool through the hottest summer to come.Rap jumping: Evasion sur Mesure, Martigny, Switzerland (00 41 26 311 630). For the first time, I discovered for myself what the climbing instructors had always claimed: you climb with the legs, not with the hands.I'll never make a career of climbing, but it's a fantastic break from the everyday to take a flier on any of these adventure activities, if only for an afternoon. Feet bristling with needle- sharp front-pointing crampons, a sharpened ice axe strapped to each wrist, I could have killed myself easily just by stumbling.In fact, I found tacking up the sheer vertical glacier wall easier than anything I'd done on rock. There is no mental agony searching for hand or foot holds; you just kick in your toes, flick your wrists and watch the ice chips fly.
So it was to Mont Blanc with Jean-Marie Olianti that I went for my first lesson in scaling ice walls. Good ropes, good rock and a good guide are all that's needed. There are fewer venues suitable for the climber's ultimate summer cooler: ice escalade.Chamonix's Compagnie des Guides is the world's most experienced mountain guiding association. For the finale, we do a pendulum swing on another fixed rope around a massive outcrop.ICE AND EASYClimbing on fixed ropes is one of the oldest, and still most exciting, Alpine sports. The guide gives me an encouraging push, and like Indiana Jones I'm zipping through the canyon with the rock corridor getting narrower and narrower The river is about 60m below. This is a morning event advertised "for the sporty person, irrespective of age".Wearing a climbing harness, I clip on to a long line stretching - slightly high to low - across the precipitous Saxeten Gorge.
