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If you live in München, what do you do for a vacation? Our German friends go further afield to places like Crete...

Hiking tour in Switzerland [1]

Dave Hood
2004-02-22 18:10:16

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on my bicycle poster. Unfortunately, a fairly cloudy day. Cool is nice, but it’s a shame not to see more of the high mountains. Ate our munchies at Schwarzwaldalp, where the trail left the road.

This is Wetterhorn from some distance.

We kept crossing the road back and forth as we climbed to the pass. Mixed sun and cloud, warm going uphill. Jacky even got down to tee shirt for a while, but as we approached the pass, a cold strong wind got us both back into jackets.

The pass was right at the snow line; a little fresh, wet, soft snow, but not much. Surprising how fast the weather improved once we started down the west side and got out of the direct wind.

This is the view my poster shows, just east of the pass itself. The mountain is Wetterhorn. Too bad the upper third is hidden by cloud.

We heard several rockslides over the course of the day, but this was a big one. At first we weren’t sure whether what we saw here was a slide or a waterfall, but big chunks of stuff flew out into space, and after everything was over, there was not even a trickle down the cliff, just a fresh black stain on the snow below. Not sure whether it was a glacial snowslide from above, or a rockslide – couldn’t see over the top. Impressive. Glad we weren't under it.

In her German class, Jacky learned the word Sauschön, pretty-as-a-pig, which can be applied as slang to any situation. The high meadows are home to a lot of cows, but we also saw a handful of pigs today. Sauschön, and no slang. There were signs on a few of the farms advertising Ziegenkäse, but we saw no Ziegen. Sounds like a good idea for lunch one of these days.

These mountains are limestone, true, but marble is also mentioned in the paperwork, and we saw a lot of slate. The trail descends along a knife-edge, or hogsback, of slate, very steep on both sides. To the right, a vigorous stream. We could see the Seilbahn to First off that-a-way – pretty country.

No doubt whether this is a glacier or not! It wasn't the only one we saw.

Grindelwald is a large town – geographically. As we came into town, we met the guided tour group, two guys plus the guide (it turned out there were four in the guided group; don’t know where the other two were). All of us staying at the same hotel, he invited us to walk with them. Paved roads, steep descent, and our feet took a pounding trying to keep up with them for a walk that turned out to be an hour, further than we had anticipated.

Cold, gusty wind, black clouds going over, a little rain. Glad we’re not still up in the high country. The Alfa is again a Minotel – turned out all the hotels except the one at Griesalp were Minotels. Bare bones, but fine. We only wish they had one bed in the room, a little larger, instead of two side-by-side with a gap we have to bridge to keep warm and friendly.

Our room had a balcony overlooking the Seilbahn that goes toward Wengen. The halb-pension menu was pup-dog stew. What!? Well, how would you translate Kaninchenragout? (It’s actually rabbit, but the idea of pup-dog stew is much more fun!) It was fine, but too salty.