If 'Mario Kart' Had a Track in Davos It Would Look Like This Swiss Sled Run

I'm one of the 500 people who've signed up to spend this particularly bone-chilling January night careening along Light Ride, an interactive sled run that debuted during the 2020-2021 winter season at Lenzerheide. The brainchild of multidisciplinary design firm No Ordinary Art, it's inspired by the Mario Kart video game series. The last time I interacted with Mario and Luigi was on a Nintendo trying to save the Princess in the '90s. And when it comes to sledding, I've done my fair bit, but always been a bit of a purist. Still, I'm intrigued by this technical take. I'm apparently not the only one; sledding sell-outs are the norm for Light Ride, particularly on Saturday nights like this one.

I'm more than a little terrified, but luckily, there's little time to reflect. An automated voice blurting deep from a hidden speaker somewhere in the snowy surrounds urges me to "Go go go go go go…!" This crowd of sledders comes from around the world, but apparently no translation is required. We are all off and kicking our feet like ducks in a mad paddle, careening into the darkness of a Swiss Alpine night.

My inner daredevil kicks in, and I flash back to the childhood sledder I once was (then clad in a black plastic garbage bag, throwing myself down the steepest driveway in my neighborhood).

But this ride is no backyard run.

Just over a mile long, Light Ride is, for the most part, a twisting downhill screamer that feels like even more of a rush on the blades of a sled than it would on skis, as the hairpin bends, including one called U-Turn, challenge my ability to veer at the last second. It's even more of a rush than the black diamond trails I've accidentally wandered onto in the past.

"[Tobogganing] was the same in all destinations and we wanted differentiation," says Primo Berera, who's a principal at No Ordinary Art. "So we reinvented sledding and made it a kind of real-life Super Mario Kart in winter."

The company wired and digitized an existing toboggan run at Lenzerheide to interface with sledders, Primo explains. Although he is describing it with nonchalance, the result is this rollicking sled ride along which you collect points by interacting with multi-sensory targets in the form of light projections, emojis, and light games glowing and dinging away in the snow.

For competitive types, those ding-ding-dings provide motivation, as they're tallied into a score for each sledder at the finish line. There's even a speed-check clock along the way on a particularly ass-hauling straightaway, just to add to the adrenaline.

"The Light Ride is quite an adventure," as Berera puts it. That's more nonchalance, in case you were wondering.

Seriously: I feel as if I'm flying through a blasted-open prism at one point, all the colors of the rainbow illuminating the snowy trail as I do my best not to become entranced by these unfamiliar hues and careen off the track. All the while, I'm simultaneously trying to "catch" emojis with my mitten-clad hands to score just one more point.

Suddenly, I'm bulleting through a tunnel flashing with more LEDs, snow spray whizzing through the air from sledders digging in their heels in front of me to slow their (sled) roll. I come to a heel-dug halt of a stop at the run's finish line and catch my breath from the rush, hoots and hollers from other sledders rising all around me in the night.

Some of them have even dressed up like Mario and Luigi for the occasion—and they're eager to see how they've scored. Meanwhile, I'm far ahead of them already, rushing to the gondola so I can get back up the mountain for one more crazy ride down.

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Terry Ward is a freelance travel writer in Tampa, Florida, who has lived in France, New Zealand, and Australia and gone scuba diving all over the world. Follow her on Instagram and find more of her work on terry-ward.com.