Back on the Air: Leaving Muerren

Blogging a trip can be difficult. So much happens each day and so little makes it into the blog. As things happen, I try to make a mental note to myself “put that in the blog”, but I have a tendency to lose my mental note pad. It boils down to my not having the time to make it any more elaborate than it is and you, my faithful reader, lack the time to read it if I did!

I am typing this on Monday as we drive from one of our activities towards our “home” for the next two evenings. However, this entry will be about Saturday and our departure from Murren. I always think I can get two entires in one evening and get caught up, but it doesn’t happen. The writing is the easy part. Culling through the dozens of photos taken during the day and trying to select the ones that best represent the day and a few photos that I found interesting. Then the speed of the connection impacts how long it takes to upload the photos. A slower connection makes for a long evening. There are always many more photos that you don’t see. I keep thinking that I will have a blog like a blooper reel, or a blog of all the animals that we have encountered. Until then, we’ll keep to the events.

We were able to get packed up and out of the apartment by 10:15 and down into the valley by 10:45. I finally got a video of the bells on the cows.

It was a sad parting from Grace and Marcel. I don’t know when I will see her again. Her life is up in the air right now as she applies for various grants and “post doc” positions which is what one does after getting a PhD. I’ll have to content myself with “seeing” her on Skype in the coming months.  Both cars left in the same direction, but we passed some cars and lost them within the first 20 kilometers. I had forgotten to tell Marcel that an Italian driver is a lobotomized driver and that he needs to be careful on those narrow twisty roads around Lake Guarda.

Since the drive from Lauterbrunnen to Lucerne was a short one, we stopped at an open air museum in Ballenberg which is a town at the head of one of the lakes on which Lucerne sits. This museum has collected examples of buildings from the various geographic regions of Switzerland into one large park set in a forest setting (naturally). Inside some of the larger dwellings, they covered regional costumes, musical instruments, and forest uses as well as taking care of theIt was fascinating to walk through the different farmhouses and barns and see the similarities as well as the differences between the different regions, different decades and different economic standing. We all enjoyed climbing up and down and into the darkened rooms, seeing how they were decorated, looking at the equipment used and even feeding some of the bunnies. The museum claims to have species that are no longer found in Switzerland in the “wild”.

 They hand-pleated these sleeves!

 Six different harmonicas in one spinning device.

An assortment of accordions.

The original double-paned window?

 This is a closeup of a wall.  They used newspaper to cover cracks and for insulation.  When they could afford it, they would cover it with colored wall paper.

We didn’t leave Ballenger until about 2:30 - 3:00 and drove into Lucerne. We had only a 20,000’ view map and a little 3” x 4” map from the Bible according to Rick Steves, but we made it without too much confusion and checked into the room. The room was on the second floor above the restaurant, facing the street and the church across the way. It had four beds jammed into it and you had to take turns standing up and walking around in it. Ok, maybe not that bad, but really close to it. The others dropped their suitcases next to or at the foot of their bed, but if I did that, we’d all die if there was a fire, so I kept mine in the little wall closet. A wedding at the church had just finished as we arrived.  The bells were ringing and ringing.

We rested for a while, before Bob and I headed out. The kids decided to chill in the room, playing cards and eating pretzels when we didn’t show up for a couple of hours. We had arrived in Lucerne as the shops were closing, so we walked across the old Kapelle bridge into the old part of the city, looking into the shop windows and simply getting our bearings. I guess I was heading towards the area where I had stayed when I visited Lucerne back in high school in 1973 because as we came around a corner, there it was in front of us. Hotel de la Paix. To confirm it, the first floor was the Lapin Restaurant with it’s logo of a red rabbit and I had remembered that too. 

At this point we headed back by heading up hill to reach the old town wall with its many towers. We walked back along the top of the wall, going up a few of the towers and taking pictures of the city and outlying countryside.

We returned to the hotel, got the kids and went to dinner at the Taube Restauraunt. Taube means pigeon in German. After the meal we headed back to the hotel and planned our next day before retiring for the evening. Across the street the church bells marked the time all night. Justin says that it doesn’t strike every hour or quarter hour at night, but none of us were awake to be able to contest his statement.

:(

I Just discovered we have no internet access the next 2 nights. I will work on the entries offline and post when I can. Dataplan too small to use my phone. until later.

Gone Hiking

Friday, Grace was determined to get her money from the train pass that she bought for the Jungfrau region.  So once again, down into the valley from our side and up the other side to Wengen.  From there we took a lift from Wengen up to Mannlichen.  Here is a map of the area to give you some context.

Once on top of Mannlichen, we hiked to the top of the "peak" called a gipfel.  This was a climb from 7,306 feet to 7,677 feet in maybe a half of a mile?  It was pretty steep.  The weather was variable with sunshine as well as fog blowing up out of the valleys every few minutes.  

Heidi, coming through the fog.  At last we've found her.  Grandfather must have bought her sunglasses and a camera but they didn't put that in the book.

I stall for time to catch my breath by taking pictures of wild flowers.

Bob started to take a panoramic view, but the clouds were moving too rapidly to make it worthwhile.  

On our way back down from the top, we encountered a young woman setting up to paraglide into the valley.  We stopped to watch as she carefully unpacked her sail and laid it out on the hillside above her.  She kept straightening out her lines as she attached them to her harness.  The wind was not helping her at all as it would blow up the valley towards us and then come back over the top of the crest behind us and roll her sail back down the hill like a big blue croissant.  Marcel offered to help her and she was very thankful.  We had a bit of a wait for the fog to abate and then Bob got involved with helping her with the sail and pretty soon she was running down the hillside and was off the ground.  I caught it on video, but it is way too long to imbed here.  Maybe if I figure out how to clip it.

Waiting for the uplifting moment to occur.

This was one of the highlights of the trip so far for Marcel.  That and the base jumpers that we saw on the hike to the falls yesterday.  As a brief recap of that experience, we were walking along the road next to a big open field when Bob calls out "look, base jumpers" and there in the air above us (approaching very quickly) are two of them.  They look like big flying squirrels.  They landed and then one calls out to us that another one is about to jump in a few seconds.  Sure enough the next one comes plummeting off the cliff to make a safe and graceful landing in the field.  
But, I digress.
We ate our lunch on top of Mannlichen where the "kids" play on the playground equipment close at hand.
Marcel...

Hayley...

Justin...and this bed was too scratchy.

After lunch we took another lift down into Grindelwald.    Some of these lifts are LONG.  Here are a few specs:

• Wengen to Mannlichen: 5,436 feet in length with a 3,106 foot elevation gain with a gradient of 70.8%
• Mannlichen to Grindelwald is a gondola cable car: just over 3.75 miles long with an elevation loss of 4,225 feet

From that station, we were told that the next gondola was a 5 minute walk.  Ok, here's the part where we learned a big lesson.  The time estimates on the little yellow direction signs are for the most part accurate.  It depends on how many times you stop to catch your breath.  Any time estimates given to you by the Swiss people should not be trusted.  Everything is 5 minutes to them.  This little mini-hike consisted of a 20 minute hike with steep elevation gain through town (carrying Bob on my back both ways).  Along the way, we had to brave the hordes of (mainly Japanese) tourists in Grindelwald.  It made us very happy to realize that where we were staying wasn't plagued with all the people that this side of the valley has. Ugh.

The gondola ride to First  (pronounced feerst) had several segments like the ride down into Grindelwald.  I can't find the specs on this lift as i did for the previous ones.  Suffice it to say that it was long and steep.  It changed direction a couple of times, each time "catching" a new cable.  

Midway up the first mountain there is a stop where you can get off and then rent a little standing scooter and ride back down the mountain.   Looked like fun, but our plan was to hike to the Backalpsee ( basically, it means alpine lake) which was described as an undulating hike, accessible with a baby stroller.  The time estimate was 50 minutes (which turned out to be accurate).

We got off the gondola at First and started off on the trail.  Undulating my backside, the damned trail went straight up!  Hayley and I almost stayed behind.  Luckily, the first part was the worst part and after that it did pretty much undulate but no way could we see anyone pushing a stroller on this trail.  Each time we hit a nasty bit, we'd snort "stroller, right".

The orange on the rocks is lichen.  Tough for anything to grow at this altitude.

 Some varmint's domicile.

 We got to the lake as the skies begin to lower to the tops of the mountains around us.  

Justin skimmed rocks in the lake and there were little black goats or sheep up the hillside with their bells tinkling in the breeze.  It would have been really pretty in the sunshine.  We dallied at the spot for 30 minutes or so and the rain drops began to fall sporadically as we set out to return.  Within 10 minutes or so, it's raining steadily and pretty soon we're in a downpour.  We all had rain jackets with hoods, except Hayley who used the umbrella that Bob had in his backpack.  However, the rain runs down the jacket and gets the pants all wet if you are wearing long pants.  If you are wearing shorts, it runs off the jacket, down the legs into your shoes.  Squoosh squoosh or squish squish, pick your sound effect. 

It took us just under 50 minutes to get back to the top of the gondola but not before we entertained thoughts of being struck by lightning.  We're all soaking wet and figured that instead of riding down together, we'd take separate cars so the we wouldn't steam the cars up so badly.

Just as we get into the gondola is when I start doing the math in my head; adding up all of the segments of time we'll need to get back to Lauterbrunnen in time to catch the last tram up to Murren.  A nagging, background worry starts to set in.  After misreading the timetables we spend a costly extra 45 minutes in Grindelwald where Bob and I seize the opportunity to run up to the co-op near the train station and buy rolls, lunch meat a pack of Camembert cheese and some cherries.  It always seems that a nice soft cheese will help what could be a dry sandwich taste yummy. Using the 3 Swiss Franc paring knife that I had bought for just such an occasion, we made some sandwiches that tasted pretty darned good.  Wish I could say the same about the cherries.

We had a 25 minute wait at our first transfer point and made it to Lauterbrunnen with about 5 minutes to spare.  If we had missed the last tram, I'm not sure where we would have spent the night since we wouldn't be able to hike it - too tired and soon to be too dark.  

All's well that ends well. A little light packing in preparation for departing the next morning and then turning in for the night.  

Total step count for today: 22,035

Today is my 20th anniversary of working at Costco (originally Price Club)

Over the river and through the fields...

To Trummelbach falls on Thursday.  The falls are down in the valley so we hopped on the train and caught the tram and set out on foot following the little yellow signs.  
Here is a photo of the garden at the very bottom of the tram.  I was too late to get a picture of the huge lettuces that they must have already harvested.  They were at least 20" across.  They are able to grow a lot of cool season crops, lettuce, peas, chard and kale and there are gardens everywhere.

We didn't realize it until later that there is the way that the signs direct you to go and then there is the short, more direct route.  Granted the longer version was more scenic and we walked along a swiftly moving and very cold river, but since there are no bad views here in Switzerland, the shortcut certainly works.

 Bob is indicating that the water is COLD.  Marcel is smart enough to not put his hands in the water.

 The color of the river is very milky here which indicates it is glacier melt.  Sometimes the streams are pale green and after a storm, they run milky gray as they carry away suspended grit from higher elevations.

I have discovered that Justin likes to stand on things.  Stumps, poles stuck in the ground, little stakes.  You name it, he'll balance on it.  He walked along this fence for awhile.

 This is a boring picture of gorgeous scenery, but look, what's that in the upper left of the picture?  It's a helicopter airlifting supplies to one of the mountain top restaurants.

Trummelbach falls are a series of 10 glacier waterfalls inside the mountain.  They have been made accessible by some enterprising Swiss gentleman who drilled out enough of the mountain to install a lift that takes you up about 2/3 of the way to the top.  The rest is reached by clambering up and down a series of stairways.  The falls drain the glacier defiles of the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau mountains and carries about 20,200 tons of boulder debris per year.  It's total drainage area is about 14.5 sq. miles.  Half of that area is covered by snow and glaciers.  The rate of flow is over 5,000 gallons/sec.  They are claimed to be the only glacier waterfalls in Europe that are inside a mountain and yet still accessible.
In the picture below, the displaced air from the rushing water causes Hayley's carefully coiffed hair to be blown to smithereens.  Those with short hair were not affected.

 Of course all of that pounding water sent up quite a mist.  We all kept dry by wearing our rain jackets.  The cameras were not so easily kept dry.

Inside the mountain.

And nothing quite conveys the experience than a video.  Turn up the volume!

After we finished at the falls, we took the "shortcut" back into town, stopping for a picnic lunch on the way.  Along the way we saw a sign at one of the little houses announcing that they were selling cheese.  We stopped and bought some from this nice little old lady.  

We stopped at the co-op market in Lauterbrunnen for supper makings (Marcel and Grace treated us to a great spaghetti dinner with our fresh alp cheese) and Bob and I hit the bakery where we picked up a variety of goodies to share; plum kuchen, something like a Napoleon and a slice of apple kuchen.  All of it yummy.

  

Evening was kind of laid back watching TV in German and having Grace and Marcel translate some of it for us and me working on the previous blog post.  We also planned out our next days travels which would involve a lot of tram travel.  The weather won't last forever, but we sure are enjoying the sunshine.

Total Step count for Today:  17,896.  

Update

Ever since the night in Normandy when the Internet was not available, I have been behind one day.  It's the end of the day on Friday and I have a Thursday post to create and we are all very tired.  We had a very long day taking trams and trains and hiking to alpine lakes (and walking back in a downpour).  I am going to take my book and do some reading and crash as soon as possible.


So that you didn't come here in vain, I'll share something that shows that there are somethings about my camera that I may never figure out.

Snow fun and hard work

Today we visited the Jungfraujoch at the staggering altitude of over 11,000' above sea level.

This involved an early departure from the apartment (7am) to catch the train from Murren to Grutschalp where we caught the 7:30a tram down to Lauterbrunnen.  A few fast and furious minutes at the ticket booth to purchase tickets and then we hopped on the train that would take us back up out of the valley on the other side to Wengen and beyond.  Way up the mountain, we changed trains at Kleine Scheidegg for the final leg to the top.  Along the way there were 2 stops that allowed us to get off the train and go look out some large windows at the various snow capped peaks and glaciers.  
We arrived at the top about 10:30.  The whole affair is much fancier than the first time I was there in 1973.  We first took the elevator to the lookout point called the Sphynx.  You walk around the observation deck that is made up a heavy duty metallic grid so the wind is coming at you from all different directions.  Looking down is dizzying as the whole thing seems absurdly poised on a rock ridge with the sides dangling over basically nothing.  (They kept telling me to not look down.)  

One of the glaciers with two morains.

There were a lot of holes in the snow.  They were a bit creepy to me as I imagined someone falling down one and landing who knows where.  It was even a little creepier to look at the virgin expanses of snow and wonder how many holes lurked under the surface.

This video was Justin's idea.

From this viewpoint we could see the path in the snow that led up the mountain and around the edge to the Monchsjochhutte. The work joch means the pass that runs between two mountains.  So we took the elevator back down and walked out through the tunnel to the snow.

It was sunny and blinding as we trekked off up the trail.  The sun was quite warm and felt good, but the wind could be quite brisk.  In spite of the wind, the exertion kept us plenty warm and we were wearing either a light windbreaker or our fleeces.  15 minutes along the path, we find a sign that says 45 minutes to the hutte.  We have since come to the conclusion that the estimated trail times are clocked by mountain goats.  They are never accurate for those of us that need to stop and catch our breath in the thin atmosphere.  This was a heck of a workout.
Here is a photo with Justin way out in front with Bob and Hayley in the foreground waiting for the laggers to catch up.

The scenery was incredible.  In fact Bob and I agree that everywhere you look is a postcard shot.  Here are several.

We had lunch in the hutte; mainly soup or goulash and were fortified for the trek back down.  Everything that they serve there is brought in by helicopter and the prices reflected the extra expense.  
Since coming up, the sun had turned the trail to slush as the temperature hovered between 32 and 35 degrees.  So while it meant that the trail wasn't as icy, it also made it similar to walking in sand.  At one point, I got the notion to try to slide down the trail on my back in my windbreaker.  It worked pretty well on the steeper sections.  On the more shallow (?) sections, it was too slushy, but Bob, Justin and I all tried it with Hayley doing the video portion.  The other hikers were not amused.

 

At the bottom of the trail, there was a snow park where you could inner tube or sled and a ZIP LINE!  Bob and Justin took a whirl at this and both deemed it to be great fun.  
We then headed to the Ice Palace.  This is really more like a cave and tunnels that have been bored into the ice at the top.  

 Striations and sediment in the ice.

 I found a Yeti in the Ice Palace.

The return trip was a simple reverse of the outbound trip and it started to rain a little bit as we got back up to Murren.  We dragged ourselves down the main road of the village and back home.  Along the way we had the great idea of buying the take and bake pizza from the co-op market and had that for dinner along with a salad.
One of the things that we are noticing about Murren is that it is full of Americans.  I think it is possible to take the whole Rick Steves thing too far.  We're hosed as tourists when they start translating his books into other languages.  I just checked the website and so far we're good.
Until you visit here, you don't realize how dependent these alpine villages are upon the trains and trams.  Here is a photo of the track showing you the "teeth" that are used to ensure safe arrivals. 

The trams also have a shelf underneath the part that holds the people where they load supplies going up and haul out the trash or parts going in for service as I saw today.
Once you are up here in the village, there are a few little mini-trucks with a half - flatbed behind that they use for hauling things back and forth.  At one end of the town is the train from the valley and at the other end of the town is the tram to the top of the Schilthorn.  This is probably the route used to get supplies to the restaurant that is at the top of the Schilthorn.
After the mini-trucks the locals use the same mode of conveyance that they have used in the centuries that man has inhabited the area. 

It is really difficult to convey how steep things are here with a photo.  Unless I can get Justin to go stand on the side of one of these hillsides for some point of reference.  Just outside of the back of the village is a long tall slope that is used by the grazing cows.  When it is quiet up here, you can see the cows waaayyyy up the hillside and hear the music from the cow bells hung around their necks.  It's very charming.
Tomorrow we will travel down into the valley and visit the Trummelbach Falls.  Good old Mr. Steves refers to them as "God's bandsaw grinding through the mountains."  God or the Swiss, they both seem to like to drill tunnels in solid rock.


Step count for today:  15,008