Let me digress, briefly, to talk about Valley Hostel, which is, currently, my favorite hostel in the world. It’s got all the basics of what you need to be a hostel. It’s got good clean rooms, it’s got low prices that it subsidizes by having you do some stuff for your own darn self, it’s got shared bathrooms, the whole nine yards. But it’s got so much MORE, too! For starters, it’s got this whole locker room area downstairs where, if your bathroom is being used, you can head down and use one of three bathrooms or three showers that are never full and always available. It’s got a drying room for your wet or recently-washed clothes. It’s got a nice, clean communal kitchen area where we ate breakfast from stuff we could buy and families of chinese tourists made dinner every night that smelled pretty fantastic. Three of them, even! It had a window view of the waterfalls that was nothing short of magnificent at any time of day or bent of weather. And a cat! He was adorable, and very friendly, even though he doesn’t get enough attention, based on how much fur I got off him. Cute! Best hostel in the world, so far.
It was a little cold in the morning.
After acquiring breakfast, we noticed the coat shop was open, and they seemed to sell some quality-looking coats. So we stroll in and start looking. The first coat I look at is $740. Holy mackerel! That’s crazy! They’re no way we’re going to be able to--oh, wait, the rest of them are all totally normal, nevermind. We shopped around for another protective outer layer, something waterproof to go over my regular coat because we can see up in the mountain that we’re planning to hit up later in the day and thar be snow up there. So we find the coat, looks and feels and works great (and us Alaskans know our coats). Then we gear up with our gloves, our hats, our long johns, our coats, our day pack filled with trail mix and water and we HIT THAT MOUNTAIN.
First up was a gondola ride up to the top of the cliff that cast all of Lauterbrunen and the valley into beautiful relief. Then we ended up in the clouds for most of the rest of the ride and arrived at the top of the gondola. The traditional route is to take a train to Muren, but we didn’t want to take a train. We wanted to hike. So we did. The trail said it was about 1.5 hours long, and we weren’t even taking the direct route. We took another path that went pretty much straight up the foothills of the mountain and while we didn’t require any climbing gear or anything, it was a heck of a workout, especially with the altitude. Within just a few minutes we were walking among the snow with our coats around our waists and sweating.
Up and up we climb, periodically turning around to marvel at how much freaking altitude we’ve gained. The snow was just a light dusting for a while, and the path was a little thin. And then, after a little while, the trail got thinner and the snow got thicker. Sure, there were some footprints, but we didn’t know the area and we were the only people on the trail. I really didn’t want us to get lost or injured up in the snow following some adventurous quack by his footprints alone onto some trail we’ve never seen before. So, like smart people, we turned back. Luckily, the trails are pretty easy to navigate; we’re walking along the ridge of a cliff, more or less. As long as you don’t fall off the cliff or ‘accidentally’ walk over the mountain, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be going the right way.
Behold! Nature!
We walked around for a while and then we passed a waterfall streaming down the hills behind us and Jess got a really big smile on her face. That was really nice. We wander through forests and meadows and up and down really skinny trails cut into steep hillsides for a couple of hours, and then we get to Murren. It’s a tourist hub for the skiiers in the winter and the hikers in the summer. In the middle, when we were there, it’s *empty*. We did manage to track down one restaurant that was open and we refueled for the rest of our day. Our plan was to take the tram (really steep tram) partway up the mountain and then sort of hike back down, but the train was down for repairs so instead, we just got on a tram directly to the summit of the Schilthorn. The live camera on the top indicated that the clouds sort of broke up with enough altitude, so great for us! We got tickets and ascended to the top of the mountain via gondola. Nearly 3000 meters high. Much of the trip was made in the clouds, but that just made it more dramatic when we broke through the clouds and saw the summit and the cool visitors center. It’s a pretty cool place to visit.
We checked out the viewing platform, seeing little mountaintops here and there among the slowly shifting clouds. We also got really entranced by these little black birds that hung out around the platforms and would sort of cavort and dive through the unpredictably shifting winds. The interior of the center held a gift shop (of course) and this weird area where they showed a video with info and history about the mountain and especially about the James Bond movie they filmed up there. It wasn’t one of the good ones, though. When I pushed the button to start the video, all the shades in the room came down automatically. Pretty Bond-esque.
Us on top of the Schilthorn.
We spent a little more time up at the top, marveling at the views (which kept getting better as the clouds slowly cleared) and watching the birds, then took the gondola back down to Murren. We considered walking around on top of the cliff some more, but instead we decided to head back to the valley floor via another gondola, a good 1.5 hour walk from Lauterbrunen. So we did. Back on the valley floor, we took a bus halfway back to Jessie’s favorite sight of the entire vacation. Trummelbach falls.
Trummelbach falls is the results of presumably millions of years of erosion as this river that carries all the water from three glaciers up in the mountains has worn a furrow in the side of the mountain and populated it with a series of spectacular, underground waterfalls. So they built a series of tunnels between the underground waterfalls and lit the whole thing so that you can go inside and see. Let me tell you, it is a sight to behold. Each waterfalls is more spectacular than the last, and they’re all hidden inside this mountain. It’s dark and moist, the sun is visible only through a tiny crack in the stone overhead, and the sound is deafening and refreshing at the same time. We spend probably an hour just wandering through and staring at all these falls and doing our very best to try take pictures in the darkness. It was really cool.
Sorry the lighting is so bad, we were *inside a mountain*.
After that we had some extra time and energy so we walked back to Lauterbrunen. Only about an hour, and thankfully flat. We walked by some cows on the way home and fed them grass and let them lick our hands. Okay, I let them do that. Jess thought it was gross. We met a fellow american traveler there who was nearing the tail end of three months of travel. We helped her take a picture of a cow tongue. City folk.
Back at Lauterbrunen we had fondue for dinner. Jess was super-pumped about this all day, and the cheese was pretty great. We like more variety of stuff to dip in it, they mostly gave us potatoes and bread, but it was still mighty fine cheese. Good beer, too. And ice cream. Heck, anything tastes good when you’ve been hiking all day.
The view from the balcony of our hostel. Best hostel in the world.
We relaxed in our room for a while and I went out on the porch while Jess went to take a shower. Well it turns out that the other great thing about the hostel is that it has very thick windows, so Jess got stuck outside the room for about 15 or 20 minutes while I sat on the balcony and wrote. She got pretty nervous because she couldn’t find me until she thought to yell outside and I heard her from the balcony. I felt bad about that, but no harm was done. We cuddled just fine and slept really well.
-N
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