Saturday 31st August : Weather: 18°C to 20°C: Sunny blue skies, a little hazy, no rain, no wind
Altdorf to Engelberg: Cable Car up to Brusti, walk 13.8k to Furenalp, Cable car down + bus to Engelberg,
Ascent and Descent: Ascent 1036m, Descent 749m,
Time: 8.15am to 3.45pm: Walk time 6hrs 10min: + 2 x 30 min stops, + 2 x 10 min stops
Accommodation: Pension St Jakob, Engelberg
Cable car to Brusti 1525m
Start of Via Alpini at Brusti
Coffee stop on way to Surenen Pass
Surenen Pass 2291m
Lunch beside church Blackenalpe
Glaciers opposite Furenalp.
A fabulous blue sky day for our start on the Via Alpini. We took a cable car up 1000 metres from Attinghausen to Brusti, walked 13.8k over the Surenen Pass at 2,291metres, then took another cable car down from Furenalp to meet a bus taking us to Engelberg.
We’re awake again at 4am having a cup of tea while it’s still pitch black outside. Time to make sure we have everything we need in our back packs, while putting aside airline clothes and extra coffee tea etc in 2 small cabin bags for when we return to Altdorf on September 21st. Rotem, our Air BnB Host, has kindly offered to store them for us until then. Breakfast of meusli and yoghurt, then a quick shower and last minute clean up of our little studio, before taking the rubbish to the bin up the road and checking out the bakery which luckily didn’t open until 7am on a Saturday - we would have loved an apple strudel but our back packs are already chocka.
Rotem’s husband Karl has offered to drive us to Attinghausen to the start of the cable car, and we’re ready to leave at 7.30am. He takes us to the middle cable car station, avoiding the base station which is unmanned and would have required us to telephone the operator - in German - to start the cable car once we were in. It’s 11CHF each and we’re soon crammed in with 6 other hikers hurtling 1,000 metres upwards to Brusti at 1,525metres. At 8.15am we’re out into the coolness of the mountain air ready to start the first leg of our Via Alpini to Engelberg.
The sign says 2hrs 50 minutes to Surenenpass, so that means well over 3 hrs for us, allowing for a coffee stop. Today is Saturday and there’s many hikers heading our way. Immediately we’re climbing through forests then open meadows on a warm 20°C day. It’s a steady slog, not Mt Cotton steep, but our packs are full of warm clothes that we don’t need yet, but will by the end of the week when the temperatures are forecast to drop by 5°C to a low of 8°C above 2000 metres. At 10.15am, after 2 hours and only 4k, we’re ready for coffee and find a quiet spot near a dried up patch of water sprinkled with cow poo.
There’s a warm haze hanging over the alps but the views are still amazing, with patches of snow here and there. It’s now only an hour’s walk to Surenen Pass, and there’s a choice of routes - return downhill to the valley and up a track beside a stream, or cut across a scree slope. We follow a group in front across the scree, picking our way over boulders and rocks and several patches of snow turned to ice. Finally, at midday, we join the throngs of hikers already perched on Surenen Pass at 2291 metres. We stop for a 10 minute break to admire the views on both sides. The track down the other side is not so steep, and there’s time to look around and enjoy the sloping meadows dotted with cows weighed down with large clanging bells.
Down, down until we reach Blackenalpe, where theres a large flock of sheep fenced in a paddock. There’s also a self serve bar with many hikers imbibing a drink or three. It’s 1.30pm and we spy a small church on a knoll with a shady side - perfect for lunch of bread and cheese with a cup of tea. Soon after there’s a junction in the track - one goes steeply down to the valley, the other winds around the side of the mountain towards Furenalpe. We choose to walk to Furenalpe but had forgotten since we last walked that way in 2015 that there was still a lot of down and up on this track. But it was worth the extra climb to see the glaciers on the other side of the valley.
At 3.45pm we arrive at Furenalpe, where there’s more throngs of people enjoying a perfect view of the glaciers from the restaurant. We go straight to the ticket machine and punch in 2 x over 64’s one way tickets down to the valley. It’s a busy time, and with only 8 people at a time allowed in the cabin, we wait 20 minutes. The cable car down is steep and just as we arrive I spy the bus at the bus stop with a dozen people boarding. We run and luckily the bus driver waits for us. Ten minutes later we’re in the bustling town of Engelberg and hop off the bus at the train station. Google maps directs us to Hotel St Jakob, a further 1k to walk, and it’s a bit of a coincidence that it’s directly opposite the Youth Hostel where we had stayed in 2015. The YHA was available on booking.com, but very expensive, so I chose Pension St Jakob’s because I had a $150 bonus applied by booking.com for all the hundreds of bookings I had made over the past decade, making the price seem cheaper at $250, including breakfast.
Our room is in the attic, but very clean and we can see the YHA through the window. Ian trots off to the Coop store back in town to buy 2 beers to have with dinner - nuts, followed by a packet of Ben’s rice and Continental pumpkin soup that’s we’d been carrying for an emergency. After a shower it’s bed at 8.30pm. We’ll sleep well tonight!