Wearing holes in our shoes

Thur, Jun 11
Our goal in the Alps has always been to make it as high as we could --which is the Jungfraujoch at ~11,400ft in the Berner Oberland/Interlaken region.

We woke up in the Alps near our Staubbach waterfall to overcast skies and some drizzle. A check of the webcams on the top of Jungfraujoch showed a complete white-out. Doh. The weather called for partly cloudy skies in the afternoon, so we decided to do some hiking early on and check out the webcams again around 2pm.

We caught a 10:30 cog train up to Wengen (4180ft, Lauterbrunnen is 2612 ft) and then walked over to the lift that takes you to Mannlichen at 7317ft. Believe it or not, wasn't a scary ride at all...very smooth. The scary part was standing at the top platform and getting blasted by the wind sweeping up the mountain and across the summit. We quickly threw on some additional layers so save ourselves from freezing. From Mannlichen, we had originally wanted to do the hike directly to Kleine Scheidegg, but the trail was closed due to snow coverage. Instead we did a slightly longer hike (~2hrs) that took us a little lower into the Grindelwald valley than the other, and then back up to Kleine Scheidegg. The path was pretty narrow in spots, and little streams of melted snow criss-crossed their way down the mountain to the valley below. The scenery was spectacular--views of the town of Grindelwald (3393ft) below and the towering Eiger and Monch peaks ahead of us.

The first hour and 15min was fairly easy--some terrain was rough & wet, but it was mostly downhill. Then came the hard part. As we drew closer to the Eiger, the trail came to a head and the eastern route took us up the hill to Kleine Scheidegg. I figure the trail must have dropped at least 1500 ft into the valley since we reached the treeline. This meant that we had to climb about 1000ft back up to Kleine Scheidegg!! Ugh...we're all going to have Odie calves after this trip. We literally had to lean forward as we trudged along. However, we found some unique snow features to photograph along the way and knowing we were hiking in the shadows of the Eiger & Monch made the trek a little easier.


Finally at the top right around 2:30, we checked out the webcams again and the view from Jungfraujoch was the same as in the morning. We decided to wait an hour and check again. We grabbed some sausages and hot chocolates and then checked back --no change. Since the trip to the top costs $110sF and the last train back down is 5:50, we made the executive decision to try again the next morning in hopes of clearer weather. This is where I found Birkley Kryder's kin... a 19week old Rhodesian Ridgeback. Mr Kryder said that they had roots around Bern...this is the closest I found. Way to go Birkley! He must have travelled alot in his first year before Sara got him. This little puppy was almost the spitting image of Birkley, only smaller and with a little ridge on her spine. Her coloring, tail, and ears were almost identical, but her head and paws were smaller.

So, at this point we debated whether to try to make it to another peak across the valley, the Schilthorn (at a meager 9748ft), take the train all the way back to Lauterbrunnen, or hike part of it. The Schilthorn also closed around 6:00, so we crossed that off the list. I wanted to keep hiking, Joe and Kevin were ambivalent, so I convinced them that we could stop at two locations along the trail and pick up the train if we were tired. We ran into Birkley's kin again, and I caught a picture of her just before she jumped on me and licked my face. Ha. Cute dog.

Well, we never ended up catching any trains along the way, we hiked all the way down to Wengen, over 3500ft down. If you think downhill hiking is easy, I used to agree. Not anymore. I was so tired of going downhill, that I actually stated outloud that I wished we could hike uphill again. We were absolutely beat by the time we made it to Wengen, and it was past 6 o'clock. Ughh.



There is actually another path down to Lauterbrunnen, but we intelligently opted for the cog train. We stopped at the COOP (a grocery store) and picked up some .50L Tell beers which were only .90sF each!! BEST BEER PRICE OF THE ENTIRE TRIP! The conversion takes you to about $.75USD. Crazy. We're not going to beat that unless Italy has something special in store for us. After changing clothes, we had dinner at the same place as the night before, each choosing a different form of Rosti. That took us to 9:30, we trudged back to the hotel and shut it down for the night. Our plan was to wake up early Friday, pack out, and hit the Jungfrau, no matter what the weather.