I just got back from Switzerland. I spent 4 days with Greg and Andrea; 5 days with AlpineHikers, a professional guided hiking tour company; and 2 days on my own. The trip also involved a lot of plane, train, and bus travel, but I won't talk about that because it is boring.
Thursday, July 17
Greg and Andrea met me at the Visp train station. I left my suitcase in a locker there, and we took a bus to Moosalp for a short hike to stretch my legs on the way to our first hotel in Embd.
Here is an overview of our GPS track. As usual for GPS tracks, ignore the spurious squiggles in the deep valleys.
A typical Swiss stream and a typical Swiss electric fence. Many or perhaps most such fences aren't energized. Sometimes you can hear the clicks when they're on. But we were always careful, just in case.
The Embd tourist bureau has tried to drum up business by setting up troll statues along the path. If your German is good enough, click the image to go to the Picassa album where you can magnify the image and read the made-up legend.
Yo, landscape.
Switzerland has wild roses, some of which look quite vicious.
Embd sits on one side of a valley. Here is a long nighttime exposure of Grächen on the other side of the valley.
Friday, July 18
Although the Embd church stops playing its quarter-hour chimes at night, it begins the new day at 6 am with an obscenely long clangor. I failed to get a good photo that illustrates the vertical nature of Embd, but you can see how much lower the church is than our hotel with only one tiny schoolyard between.
We started the day with a ride in a tiny gondola so that we didn't have to walk back up the hill we'd walked down the previous night.
This was our first full hiking day. Roughly 8 miles, climbing from 6000 feet to 9500 feet through Augstbordpass, then back down to 6000 feet at Gruben.
We passed a yak farm. This is apparently not a regular feature of the Swiss countryside, but more of a tourist attraction. Yaks get more strands on their electric fence.
Here we see Greg and Andrea with a typical Swiss hiking sign. A yellow tip designates an easy hiking trail. A white and red striped tip designates a mountain trail that may be steep, narrow, and/or exposed.
Here's another sign, this time at the desolate top of the pass. Sometimes the signs state how long it should take a standard Swiss hiker to reach each destination.
It isn't all desolate. Sometimes the rocks grow moss. And sometimes the moss grows flowers.
Nearing the end of the day's hike... relatively speaking. Gruben is at the botton of that deep valley ahead.
Standard Swiss cows. The cows all wear enormous bells, so a herd of cows sounds somewhat like a field of windchimes.
Saturday, July 19
This was another full hiking day with a similar length and elevation profile as Friday, except that instead of dropping all the way back down to 6000 feet, we dropped only to 7200 feet before climbing another 500 feet to our hotel.
Swiss toad.
Swiss panorama.
Swiss sheep.
The Meidpass.
I was feeling stronger, so we didn't actually go over the Meidpass but instead took the longer route over the Borterpass and the Pas du Boeuf. A significant portion of Switzerland uses French as its native language, and indeed the standard hiking greeting switched to "Bonjour" somewhere around here.
Hotel Weisshorn sits on the end of a ridge and has a view.
Sunday, July 20
We started with ambitious plans, but rain caused us to turn around and find the shortest route to a bus stop.
It wasn't all bad, however, as the route took us along a steeply flowing creek.
The bus took us back to Visp, where I reclaimed my luggage. We then took the train to Thun, where I got off while Greg and Andrea continued home to Basel.
This was the only hotel I picked myself off the internet. As promised, my balcony directly overlooked the river and a picturesque covered bridge.
Monday, July 21
I don't know how common this is, but my hotel let me borrow a nice bike, helmet, and lock, with no charge. The bike was a 21 speed, but due to maladjustment it could only reach the bottom 15 speeds. That was still fine for riding along Lake Thun and seeing the sights.
Since there was still rain in the forecast, I returned to Thun around noon. But the rain continued to hold off, so I headed up the hill to Goldiwil. Once again my camera failed to capture its steepness.
When I'd had enough, I took the train to Mürren to meet my Alpinehikers group.
My hotel room had a cow theme. However, the oddest part was the floor, which looked like hardwood (including knotholes and nails), but was actualy carpet.
Tuesday, July 22
I don't have GPS tracks for the Alpinehikers hikes, but here's an overview of the area. Yes, those cliffs are really that impressive. You'll see later.
Our first guided hike started with the train and gondola down to the bottom of the valley, where we hiked along the river from Lauterbrunnen to Stechelberg and then back up through Gimmelwald to Mürren.
It rained most of the day. It didn't stop us from hiking, but it did prevent me from taking as many photos. In particular, I didn't take any photos of the Trümmelbach falls
. So I'll just have to tell you about the inclined elevator built into the mountain and about the viewing platform that was closed because the river was spitting fist-sized rocks onto it.
Three separarate glaciers feed into the Weisse Lütschine river that runs through the Lauterbrunnen valley. On this rainy day, the river ran strongly enough that we could hear the rocks pounding against each other as the river pushed them along. That has nothing to do with this collection of stone men that was built on the riverbank.
The rain let up just in time for the climb up, which made it a lot more pleasant.
The other people on the Alpinehikers tour were Barb and Steve...
... and Jane, Stella, and Matt.
Matt was the official guide, while Stella was the guide trainee. That was everyone, so the guide to client ratio was very good.
Wednesday, July 23
This was another gloomy day, but it stayed mostly dry. On every gloomy day, the clouds would form layers at different altitudes. This was often quite pretty.
The dry weather was lucky for me, as I'd totally underestimated the length of the self-service laundry cycles, so none of my rainy day clothes were ready to go when our group met to go in the morning.
We headed up the hill and then took a relatively level path along the hillside above Mürren.
After taking this photo, both the horse and goat snuck up and tried to eat my pack while I was putting my camera away.
Pigs.
The final leg of the hike paralleled the railroad tracks leading into Mürren.
Thursday, July 24
An early break in the gloom allowed a pair of helicopters to deliver materials to the gondola station above Mürren.
The rest of the day was quite rainy. We hiked down to Gimmelwald and then back into the hanging valley behind it. This river was also making pounding rock noises, which didn't stop me from terrifying our guides by trying to find a way to boulder-hop across it. However, I only succeeded in crossing various minor diversions, never the main channel.
Because the only road to it is a restricted gravel path, Mürren has only a small amount of local vehicle traffic. One of our group members was wondering whether they plowed the roads in the winter. I managed to answer the question by finding the plow (cleverly hidden under flowerpots) ...
... and the plow vehicle.
The rain stopped again in the evening, so I took another long-exposure photo.
Friday, July 25
This day was entirely clear.
Once again we took the train and gondola to the bottom of the valley, then took the cogwheel train up the other side to Wengen. Wengen is definitely a ski town, so it looks a little odd in summer. But we left that behind as we hiked around the Männlichen ridge to Kleine Scheidegg.
We saw parasails everywhere in Switzerland, but they were particularly prevalent in the Lauterbrunnen valley on this day.
A view from above.
Turning the corner.
Approaching Kleine Scheidegg.
Kleine Scheidegg was on the same cogwheel track that we'd used earlier, so we recaught the train to continue down the opposite side of the ridge to Grindelwald. Here's the view from the Grindelwald hotel.
"It is important to note that the official 'blazon' specifies that the tongue, claws and penis are red -- and by extension it is important to always depict the bear as male." "The maleness of Bern's bear was officially established by law in 1957."
Saturday, July 26
We took a bus to Grosse Scheidegg, then hiked to First for lunch at the ski lodge, then continued to Bachalpsee. Bachalpsee is normally a very picturesque lake that Grindelwald uses for its tourist promotions, but this day was so miserably rainy that I got no photos at all. Most of the group trudged back to First to take the gondola back down. But I needed to hike some more, so Matt agreed to accompany me down to Bort where we took the gondola for only the last half of the descent.
Google Earth thinks the places we visited were too minor to show all their names at once, so enjoy this map.
Sunday, July 27
Saturday was the last guided tour day. I don't think I would have had the motivation to go out again on a rainy day, but fortunately Sunday was dry. I took Matt's suggestion and hiked past Pfingstegg to Bäregg, overlooking the Unter Grindelwald glacier.
Unfortunately, all of Saturday's damp was causing my camera to freak out. It recovered later, but the first few pictures have goofy color balance.
Boy, Grindelwald looks really far away, and I haven't even reached Bäregg yet.
From Bäregg, what is left of the glacier is visible. Apparently 150 years ago, the whole valley was filled.
It didn't take me that long to get to Bäregg, so I wanted to go further. One option would have been to hike the long way down, but on the map that appeared to be a little too long and half of it would be on a main road. So instead, I decided to continue deeper into the glacier valley on the narrow path I could see. I hoped to reach the end of the ridge where I could see around the other side.
I briefly reconsidered at this sign, but decided to continue.
I also passed this sign.
And crossed this rushing cascade.
I finally reached the end of the ridge. Not only was there a great lunch spot on a large boulder, but the sun even came out.
Apparently Switzerland breeds curious sheep.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that after taking each panorama, I took a photo of sheep.
