charismatic megafauna since 1985

Switzerland, days 1 and 2

(If you’re reading this directly from Tumblr and not through an RSS reader, you should go to the next page to read my post about Munich)

I’m writing this towards the end of my second full day here in Gimmelwald. Gimmelwald is a small town (about 100 people) high in the Swiss Alps. There’s a hostel here, aptly named the Mountain Hostel that’s also pretty small.

To get here, you take a train to Interlaken, then another train to Lauterbrunnen, then a cable car to Grütschalp, then a train to Mürren, then walk down the road to Gimmelwald. (There’s also another way, but it’s not any easier). I got in around 1700, then walked back up the hill to get groceries from Mürren since there isn’t a grocery store here.

It’s a pretty small hostel, and it wasn’t full. There were about 10 people here, all roughly my age. I shared some dinner with them, and we spent the evening chatting and playing cards. This was pretty much the first time I’d really interacted with anyone at any of the hostels I stayed at and it felt good to have some legitimate human interaction again.

That was Monday. Tuesday, 5 of us decided that we’d try to summit Schilthorn, the tallest nearby peak. The hostel sits at a high, but comfortable, 1400m (4593ft). Schilthorn is 2791m (9747ft), not counting the horizontal distance we’d have to travel. The signs said it would take about 5.5 hours which we thought was a bit high, but we left at 1000 anyways to give ourselves plenty of time to get up and back before dark.

Around 1200, we’d gotten up to Gimmeln, maybe half way up the mountain. Unfortunately for us, two complications were arising.

1. We’d taken a wrong turn at Schitalp; the trail up to Schilthorn was on the other side of a valley
2. It was starting to snow. This is an extra complicating factor because it makes seeing anything (especially upwards, say towards a summit) significantly more difficult.

We tried to walk sideways along the side of the mountain to get to the trail, but we got about halfway across before one of the girls and i decided to turn back before the snow got worse. The three other decided to keep going. It was still snowing when we got down to Gimmelwald and continued to snow all afternoon. It was beautiful to watch it out the windows with the Alps in the background.

That evening, two of the guys and I played German Scrabble. The board looks the same (although the labels are in German) but the letter distribution is totally strange, along with the points. Z is only worth 3, and there are two of them. However, there’s a Ü worth 5. Even with the crazy points I managed to beat the two of them, but I couldn’t make any bingos.

Today (Wednesday) we decided that since the weather was entirely changed (sunny, no clouds in the sky) we’d try once again to get to the top. Having learned our lesson, we took a left turn at Schitalp and worked our way up. After about an hour, we lost our way in the snow. We could see a sign at the top of a ridge and tried to work our way up, but the snow was up to our shins making progress difficult. We ran into two other hikers from the hostel who’d given up, but getting up to them allowed us to see a trail across that would lead us up to the summit.

I thought shin-high snow made the walking difficult, but when it turned into knee-deep snow the trip really became an adventure. No one had hiked here since it snowed, forcing us to post-hole our way across. When it became knee-deep snow and a 70 degree incline, it became a test of will. We worked our way, painstakingly, up the incline to a snow-covered lake roughly 500m below the summit. After 5 hours, we’d gotten 2/3 of the vertical distance to the top.

Starving, we crammed down our lunches and decided to head back down. With the sun setting around 5, there was no way that we had the time or the energy to make it up the summit. It took us less than 2 hours to get back down.

Tomorrow, my plan is to take the train/cable-car/flying saucer across the valley and up to Jungfraujoch. Called the “Top of Europe” it’s as close to the sky as you can get by train in Europe. It’s at 3454m (11333ft) and it looks up at Jungfrau (4158m/13642ft) and Mönoch (4107m/13475ft). I doubt that I’ll be in any condition to hike up to the tops of either of those mountains, but hopefully I’ll be able to hike around a little. I haven’t been up that high (that I remember) since hiking Baldy at Philmont back in 2000.