Hard to rank days, but this one has to rank right at the top. We awoke and had breakfast at the hotel, mostly bread and butter and yogurt. Judy wanted a day of rest and so stayed behind and spent the day in the town while Phyllis and the girls and I set out.
We first stopped at an outdoor clothing store where I got a red jacket and Phyllis a nice pink one. Then we headed to the cable cars, the Firstbahn. I had scouted these out the night before and so knew that they looked good. We bought one way tickets to the top and headed for the cars. The four of us fit perfectly as we climbed in and headed up. They were very modern cars, smooth and fast and silent. The ride up carried us up the side of the valley, over a network of Swiss chalets on the grassy slope below. After about five minutes, the cable car automatically disengaged from one cable and then engaged into a second cable, all without any human intervention at all. We then continued up the mountain on a new cable and at a new angle.
After another five minutes or so we entered a station, where the doors automatically opened, but we stayed in the car, which again automatically disengaged and then reengaged to a new cable to take us up to the next stage. Five minutes later it happened one more time and a total of 20 minutes after we started, we emerged at the very end of the line, at First.
It was mostly cloudy, with spots of blue, and clouds swirling past us, over us, and under us, all amongst the mountains. The really tall snowy peaks still towered above us, but we were still several thousand feet above the valley floor. The landscape around us was mostly alpine meadows and grass. Hundreds of streams and waterfalls were visible everywhere, and two large glaciers were in sight in the mountains across from us.
We started walking up further into the mountains on a well marked path, sometimes paved, sometimes gravel, sometimes dirt or mud. Every junction was marked with little yellow signposts, and there seemed to be dozens of different destinations.
We headed for Bachalpsee, a lake up in the mountains. After a bit, clear skies above us filled in with clouds, and soon we were walking through a dense fog. A bit farther on, it started drizzling, with little ice pellets mixed in. The temperature was cool, maybe low 50s, high 40s, cold enough to nip your fingers and ears, but not too bad once you started moving.
The girls’ initial excitement over the cable cars faded, and first Kaitlin and then Amber refused to walk and needed some encouragement and coercion to get going. I was able to get them going for a while by bribing them with chocolate and cookies, but it wasnt until we actually reached our first destination that things smoothed out.
It mostly rained until we reached the lake. It is amazing how quickly weather changes in the alps, though, because you could usually watch as a dark gray cloud would scuttle up the side of the mountain, wash overhead around you, get you wet with fog or rain, and then blow past. Amazing. I felt like I was watching the weather being born, just as the streams and waterfalls are where rivers and lakes are born. Everything seemed newly created.
At the lake we paused briefly for photos, and Kaitlin and Amber ate the last of the cookies and chocolate. We had no other food with us, foolishly, so Phyllis and I went without.
We then turned and started the long walk down the mountain, by a different route than we had come so far. The first stage took us through a long alpine valley. This was sort of like a giant grass bowl, surrounded by mountains on three sides and steep drop off on the other side, with towering white mountains peeking through the clouds on the other side. There were no trees anywhere, but grass and flowers and streams and running water everywhere. It stopped raining as we walked, and the sun peeked through at times.
As we descended through the valley, we came upon cows that were set to pasture for the summer in the mountains. Each cow had a giant cowbell around his neck, and the cumulative sound was quite loud, even though there werent that many cows, maybe 50 total, and they were spread through an enormous area. A few cows had climbed their way up some pretty steep slopes. The overall effect was pretty funny. We also passed a few goats, also with bells.
At a couple of points, the clouds opened enough to let us see the peaks of the mountains across from us. They were very tall and jagged, covered in white snow and ice at the top. And below the peaks were glaciers that descended through the valleys between the peaks and then reached partway down the sides to where they ended in crevasses of rubble.
After perhaps an hour or more walking through the grassy valley, we reached the end with the steep drop off. The streams that ran through the valley plunged here in huge waterfalls to the next valley below. Perched along the side of the drop was a restaurant, Walzspitz, I think, where we stopped for some food and to recharge.
From there, we descended down the steep slope through a sort of mountainside wildflower garden that featured a zig zag trail with wooden steps, that wound through fir trees and through wildflowers of all different kinds, all in full bloom. Not many birds this high, but bees were buzzing. We collected a bouquet of flowers for Judy.
It took us about another hour or so to descend to the next stage, where there was a cable car station and a jungle gym. The girls played here for a while, until it began to drizzle again, and we descended to the final stage by a narrow paved trail. This took about another hour or so, and led past dozens of chalets scattered across the landscape. They were almost all uninhabited, but most had stacks of wood cut and ready for burning. Some looked new, but most looked pretty old, and a few had signs suggesting that they had been built more than 200 years ago We puzzled over whether these were summer homes, or winter homes, or what. It was hard to see how they could be accessed in winter. At one point, we saw a red brown fox race across the trail.
Eventually the path reentered the town of Grindelwald, taking us past actual homes, and finally back to our rooms. I took Amber to the store to buy bread and cheese for dinner, and we then had dinner at the hotel dining area. After, we watched part of a movie, and went to bed to the sound of rain falling.