Swiss Alps - Days 5 and 6- Alpiglen to Stechelberg

Time to catch up on the rest of our Alps hut-to-hut trip!  Day 5 had us leaving Alpiglen and heading towards Kleine Scheidegg.  Since this is actually a pretty short direct route hike, Scott and I decided to take the long way through Eigergletscher (near the Eiger glacier).  The morning began sunny but we saw the clouds creeping and it soon became rainy.  It was quite a scenic hike, so we were kind of bummed about the weather.

This trail is actually called the Eiger Trail, and we spent most of our hike underneath the Eiger North Face (very famous for climbers).

Don't worry, once we finally reached Eigergletscher, there was a restaurant at the top.  We were excited to have a warm lunch and spend some time drying out.  This is a picture of the glacier...on the Eiger/Monch (hence the name).

Fortunately, we only had about a half hour of hiking left until our destination.  The rain had subsided, but most of the valley was still shrouded in clouds.  We made our way to Kleine Scheidegg ("little pass"... although pretty darn high).  A few minutes past the train station (of course there's a train station), was our home for the night, Grindelwaldblick.

The next day we planned for a rest day.  The weather wasn't looking so good, our hike for the day involved a 4,000 foot elevation loss, and let's face it, our legs were getting pretty tired.  We took the train from Kleine Scheidegg down into the Lauterbrunnen Valley.

We took a little stop at this very picturesque little town called Wengen, also famous for the Lauberhorn Ski World Cup races.  This picture is taken from Wengen, looking down into the Lauterbrunnen Valley.  This valley is SO steep, as you can see by the cliffs on both sides. I became very curious (concerned) about how we were going to hike around here....

From Lauterbrunnen, we made a stop at Trummelbach Falls.  Trummelbach is a waterfall that drains the glaciers of the Eiger, Monch, and Jungrau.  That's pretty cool in itself...but what if you could see this series of 10 waterfalls located inside of a mountain??   Oh don't worry, the Swiss built a tram and stairwell viewing area inside the mountain.  It's pretty amazing to see the power of the water here. The picture is hard to interpret, but just imagine a corkscrew and water gushing down it.

From here, we continued on a bus to Stechelberg. We spent the night here and got good rest for our last 3 days of hiking!

Swiss Alps - Day 4, Baregg to Alpiglen

After a beautiful night at the Berghaus Baregg, Scott and I headed back down the (terrifying, but beautiful) trail to our first stop at Marmorbruch, where we intended to have our lunch.  Unfortunately, as seen in the picture below, the restaurant was closed. (Ruhetag means "rest day")

Maybe it hasn't been totally clear in our previous blog posts, but Switzerland trails are essentially set up with restaurants and/or huts spaced out so that you don't really have to carry food.  Which is pretty awesome....unless, the hut is closed.  But don't worry!  Although we had to divert a route somewhat, another restaurant was only 25 minutes away!

This one was called Gletscherschlucht, and here you can pay a small fee to take a 1km trail into the gorge of the glacier.  This is a very narrow, deep gorge.  The trail hugs one edge of the gorge, sometimes in mind boggling ways.  See the following examples, including the third one (sketchy metal rods holding up rocks).

 After the gorge trail, we continued plodding away to get to our next hut, which meant climbing out of the valley (again).  Of course halfway through we got to a restaurant and it was time for a pastry break!  We came across something called "opfelchuechli".  I definitely butchered the German word when ordering. In English, it translates to apple fritter. In any language- delicious!

We continued up and up until finally reaching our hut for the night, Alpiglen.  Alpliglen is described as being in the "shadow of the Eiger".  A beautiful spot for the night and more hiking tomorrow!

Swiss Alps - Day 3 - Berghaus Baregg

Our third day in Switzerland would take Shannon and I high above the Grindelwald valley to Berghaus Baregg.

We pushed uphill until it was time for our lunch break.  Rosti (fried potato hash brown type things) and a brat were in order at the mountain restaurant we found. Fueled up, we traversed across the south side of the valley to Pfingstegg (an upper tram station).

This would involve hiking through a 400 foot long tunnel that was built through the mountain to prevent us from having to hike through avalanche and rock fall terrain...  a very Swiss piece of trail work engineering.

At Pfingstegg we encountered our first rodelbahn which is basically a mini alpine slide where you ride on a car which zips around turns and bends.  You control the speed with a brake between your legs.

At first, I figured this would be expensive and we would skip it... I asked the guy how much it costs... 5 swiss francs (~6 bucks).  Yes, please!!!!  Here's what I look like in a very happy state... don't let the picture fool you, I let it run through the steep banked turns.

After Pfingstegg our upward hike continued as we entered the Oberer Grindelwaldgletcher valley.  This trail had a little bit of exposure looking back...

Finally we reached views of the Berghaus and mountains behind...

... and enjoyed a great evening of beers, wine, and Swiss food (think cheese, then add cheese).

Swiss Alps - Cow Noises

I really don't think we can adequately explain the alpine cow noise and the beauty(?) of it all... so maybe we'll try a bit with this video!

Swiss Alps - Day 2 - Faulhorn to Hotel Wetterhorn

Shannon and I woke up on the Faulhorn summit and were pretty darn happy to see that the weather turned overnight and we would have clear skies for our hike today.  Our first step was to retrace our steps back by Bachsee Lake.  It looked... a little better in clear weather...

We continued on to First, the Gondola Station we had come up before.  The entire section of this hike we had incredible views of the mountains in this area.  Of note, we can see the Eiger, JungFrau and Monch.  In the climbing world, these are big, big time peaks.  In the Scott and Shannon world, we settled to look at their faces with a pastry stop at the First Gondola station.  That's the Eiger North Face on the looker's right.

We carried on to Grosse Scheidegg... which translates to "big pass".  Here we had great views into the Grindelwald Valley and towards Meringien (you'll note, Shannon is much happier out of the rain)

We headed downhill towards Grindelwald but the views didn't get worse as we lost elevation.  This is about when we burst out with our first "the hills are aliiiiive..."

Now we're in a little spot called Hotel Wetterhorn.  We're supposed to be in a small dorm room, but they weren't that many guests so we have it to ourselves.  SWEET!  This picture is from out our window.

We're resting up after a long day of hiking and excited to head back uphill tomorrow!

Switzerland Alps - Interlaken to Faulhorn

After a great visit in Iceland, we headed for Switzerland.   After an early flight into Zurich, we got our Rail Pass stamped and headed for Interlaken.  Here's how beautiful Switzerland is straight from the train.

On Friday morning we woke up to a familiar Seattle noise... cars driving on wet pavement.  It was raining... and not so good for hiking.  A little tough when you're ready to start an 8 night hut-to-hut trip.  We were able to take advantage of the great transit system (a mountain train and gondola in this case) to shorten our day to 3 maybe 4 rainy miles.

The first thing we noticed about hiking in the Alps was the COWS.  It seems almost too stereotypical to be true, but there are cows all OVER the mountains with bells clanging away all the time.  When you're high above a valley you can here the cows below... and also all around you.  Here's Shannon with some bovine friends... this photo also represents the happy reaction she had to rain.

Eventually, we worked our way up to our destination for the day, the Faulhorn summit and adjacent Faulhorn Berghaus (Berghaus literally translates to Mountain House).

 This beautiful hut is a little rugged from a hotel point of view (no showers) but a perfect place for those used to backpacking (full meal service, beer, beds, shelter, etc, etc.)  We ate a great Swiss dinner and then enjoyed the fading light on the summit to finish our first Swiss hut day.

Iceland! Our Cultural Observations

So... here's just a few more notes from Iceland.

One activity we forgot to tell you about was the visit to the Lutheran Church in downtown Reykjavik.  We managed to get there right before sunset on our last day in town and went up to the top of the steeple for stunning views of the city and the Atlantic.

There is a big Leif Erikson statue in front of the church who is credited for discovering North America... which leads us to some cultural notes we had from Iceland:

-While we emphasize Christoper Columbus for discovering North America, this seems a little misleading since Leif was probably (definitely?) there first.

-Icelanders are really serious about their water quality.  Our AirBnB hosts beamed about being able to drink straight tap water and the quality is as good as anything in bottles.

-The hot water out of the tap, however, is a little interesting.  Since it's geothermal it has a strong sulfur smell.  This results in rotten egg smell showers.  The locals don't seem to mind.. and it's not really that bad... but different.

-With a small population (300K or so) they have a newspaper where all of the obituaries for the entire country are placed.  It's a small world.  Like small as in our host, Hulda, nonchalantly talking about how she had been to the president's house a couple times.

-The sense of humor is really evident and it's clear that people don't take themselves too seriously.

-Did I mention hotdogs?

-Books of Note (if you would like to read for fun or especially if you plan on going to Iceland): The Little Book of Icelanders, The Little Book of Icelanders in the Old Days both by Alda Sigmundsdottir, and Independent People by Halldor Laxness.  The first two are easy reading histories and the latter is an Icelandic literary classic.

Here are our hosts Hulda and Gustav.  We had a great first AirBnb experience and really enjoyed getting to know them!  Hulda is a music teacher and has even made her own children's CD (we have a copy!).  They were so friendly and gave us many tips and explanations about life in Iceland.