Greetings! In an attempt to make my Switzerland trip easier to handle, I'm going to split it up into different posts. Otherwise it would be a full novel (no joke) and include too many pictures for the human eye to fathom at once. So here was my trip itinerary with this post's details in bold:
Day 1: Flew into Geneva, train to Bern then Interlaken then Grindelwald. Explored Grindelwald and camped.
Day 2: Day Hike to Oberer Grindelwaldgletscher (Upper Grindelwald Glacier) and around the Grindelwald First area. Train to Lauterbrunnen, bus to Strechelberg and camped.
Day 3: Gondola to Gimmelwald, Backpacked over Sefinenfurgge Pass and Hohturli Pass, camped at Oeschinensee (see is a word for lake or body of water apparently).
Day 4: Finished backpacking to Kandersteg, train to Visp and then Zermatt, Gondola to the Matterhorn, train back to Visp and then Lausanne, train to Geneva. Stayed in hostel.
Day 5: Geneva, fly back to London.
Pics from this portion of the trip are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/bbergey/SwitzerlandEpisode1
So Day 1 started at 4:30am when I had to get up to take the tube to the airport shuttle stop for an hour ride to Gatwick airport. I flew Easyjet, a discount airline in the UK/Europe. I booked my flight the same week and it was just over 100pounds. Normally a flight like this would be around 50pounds if you book it with notice. After landing in Geneva, I went through customs which I found very odd. The officer looked at my passport for about .5 seconds, gave it back without a stamp, and let me through. I guess they don't really care too much about who comes and goes in Switzerland. I then boarded the train to get to the main Geneva train station. However, since the train I got on continued up to Bern and I knew I could get where I needed to go from there, I just stayed on all the way to Bern. I had purchased a 4 day rail pass by mail before I left which proved to be extremely helpful during my trip. After switching trains in Bern, I got off and spent a couple hours in Interlaken. Interlaken was extremely touristy yet very beautiful. It's a popular hub to access the Jungfrau region of the alps which include well-known peaks such as Jungfrau, Eiger, Wetterhorn and Monch, among literally dozens and dozens of others. All of the rivers heading down from the mountains, and the lakes surrounding Interlaken, were cloudy and a very deep turquoise, showing that it is pure glacier runoff. I then boarded my final train up one of the canyon valleys to the town of Grindelwald.
I should give some background on the country of Switzerland. It's a very small country bordered by France, Germany, and Italy. (and Leichestien, but that doesn't really count). Geneva and the southern parts are very French. It looks French and everyone speaks French. However, not more than a two hours train ride north and everything is German. All of the small mountain villages, like Grindelwald, were German. I was amazed how my two years of German in high school still proved useful! Although everyone did speak English, it was really helpful getting around the train stations, bus stops, road signs, etc.
Grindelwald is also touristy, but amazingly beautiful. I would compare Interlaken to Boulder and Grindelwald to Estes Park in Colorado. But both had even better scenery and views. Grindelwald is one of those towns I immediately fell in love with. I spent a lot of my time there thinking how I would love to learn to speak fluent German and move there, be a ski bum, and enjoy the great summers hiking. I had planned to spend day two hiking from Grindelwald over to Lauterbrunnen which sits in the next valley south through the mountains. In reality, Grindelwald is a rather large ski resort and there were gondolas and chair lifts that basically could have got me to the same place. So instead I decided to spend my day hiking in a more remote area not accessed by any kind of transportation. I also decided my pack was far too heavy to carry with me at this point. It had all of my camping gear (tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, stove and fuel, water filter, food for 4ish days, clothes and other misc. gear) and basically the food just made it too heavy. So I left most everything at camp and packed my pack with only necessary items for the day.
I started walking up the valley wall toward a small peak that I decided would be my destination for the day (it was steep but def. hikeable), but on my way I noticed a small trail that hugged the side of a cliff and then went into a broad canyon toward the top. The map I purchased labeled it as an alpine trail, meaning you needed special equipment (climbing or ice gear), but it looked do-able so I decided to give it a go. The trail was pretty crazy at spots; chains and cables were often bolted into the cliffside so you could hold on to it while you walked across the trail which at times may have only been a couple feet wide before dropping several hundred feet (and prob in some cases thousands) to the valley floor. Sorry mom, just ignore that part. At one point the trail actually went under/behind a waterfall because it had no where else to go! But all in all it was difficult but plenty safe without any gear.
As I started getting near the "top" and into the canyon, the landscape revealed a huge glacier funneling from the top of the peaks down through the canyon. It was like a huge frozen river carving it's way down. Huge waterfalls fell hundreds and hundreds of feet from the canyon walls down into the glacier, and you could see the deep ravines with hues of dark blue in the glacier itself. At one point, I heard what sounded like booming thunder that lasted much longer than I expected. After looking closely at the glacier, I saw tons of tumbling glacier that had broken off and was falling down the glacier. Throughout the day I witnessed this happening a few times, pretty crazy! The further and further I went into the canyon, the higher I got and the more the walls opened up. It was utterly amazing. At times I could turn around and look down thousands of feet at the now small village of Grindelwald. The trail actually led to a hikers hut, situated at 2529 meters (8297 feet) overlooking the glaciers and all the peaks (between 11,000 and 13,000 feet). It was about as high as you could possibly go in the area without climbing ice and cliffs. These huts are very common in the alps. I have no idea how they get all of the food and stuff to them, it must be by helicopter in most cases (I did notice some cables that went to some of the lower/closer huts).
Overall, the entire hike was absolutely beautiful and obviously I couldn't stop taking pictures. I was also amazed how few people I saw considering Grimmelwald sat so close (I hiked from the campsite/center of town). After going back down the trail, I decided to hike up toward where I was going to hike in the first place. I knew I would eventually hit a gondola which I received a 50% discount by using my rail pass. So when I did reach the gondola a couple hours later, I decided to cheat a bit and take it as high as it goes. The highest point it takes you too in called First. I'm not really sure why, but I guess the skiing is decent. Looking at the ski maps, however, there are only a few trails on this entire side of the valley and it seems like it would get quite boring pretty fast. My goal was to then hike to Bachsee (lake) which I had seen on many postcards in town, but it actually started raining and got suddenly cold, so I decided my day had been long enough. I spent some time on top before taking the gondola back down into town. Even the gondola ride was amazing though, and passed an amazing waterfall on it's way.
It was about 6pm, but I thought it best to pack up my stuff and take the train over to Lauterbrunnen so I could start my big hike as early as possible the next day. Once I arrived in Lauterbrunnen, I was blown away with what I saw. The village sits in a much narrower valley towered by massive peaks and a huge waterfall falling from the cliffs above down into town. It was absolutely amazing. I took the bus a couple miles to the end of the road to a very small town of Strechelberg where I camped for the night. It rained off and on during my train journey and that night, but it wasn't that big of a deal. The clouds did hide a lot of the upper peaks though which would have been nice to see more. It was nice staying at campgrounds the first couple nights because it meant I had warm water and real bathrooms with civilization nearby.
In the morning I was faced with the decision to hike over 2 hours up the valley wall to the small village of Gimmelwald where my backpacking journey really started, or take a scenic gondola to the top for free with my rail pass. I decided to take the gondola. :-) I had also eaten enough food at this point to make my pack weight manageable.
I had my route planned for what I thought would be the best part of the next two days. It was to hike from Gimmelwald two valleys south to the town of Kandersteg where I could catch the train back to Geneva. It went over the two highest passes (completely hikeable and glacier free this time of year) along the High Alpine Route of the alps. I figured I would hike both passes, find a place to camp near the top of the 2nd pass, and finish the hike to Kandersteg the next morning/afternoon.
I got to Gimmelwald and started my hike around 10am. Gimmelwald is another amazing place and sits much higher and closer to the peaks than all of the other towns I had been through. However, it is obviously not very accessible and thinking back, I don't think there were any cars in the village at all. In the pics, you'll see the massive peaks surrounding the region, including Jungfrau and the Eiger.
To be continued...
However, I do want to hear what you want to know about! When I write these posts, I leave so much out in the interest of space. So if there is stuff you want to know, just ask! I'll be happy to let you know or include the details in my posts. Thanks!
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