Wednesday 4th September : Weather:15°C Grindelwald:12°C Kleine Scheidegg:18°C Lauterbrunnen: overcast
Grindelwald Lauterbrunnen: 17.6k walk from Grindelwald to Wengen: Cog Train Wengen to Launterbrunnen
Ascent and Descent: Ascent 1,122m, Descent 892m,
Time: 8.30am to 3.30pm: Walk Time 5hrs 50 min + 30 min coffee Alpenglen + 40 min lunch Klein Scheidegg
Accommodation: Hotel Steinbock, Lauterbrunnen
Views to Grindelwald
Coffee at Alpiglenn
Lunch Kleine Scheidegg
Eiger,Monck and Jungfrau in clouds
Pretty Swiss Chalet & flower boxes
3D view Eiger, Monck Junchfrau
Highlight was climbng from Grindelwald at 945 metres to Klein Scheidegg at 2,061 metres to see the Eiger Monck and Jungfrau on an overcast slightly misty day. We’ve been there twice before, once with our exchange student Luca in 2005, and the with our friends Graham and Jenny on the Via Alpini in 2015. I’s still a spectacular place to visit and was the setting in 1974 for the movie the Eiger Sanction with Clint Eastwood and George Kennedy.
It’s dark when we wake at 6am, and the forecast is for rain between 9am and midday. Not good for viewing the Eiger from Klein Scheidegg. But we’re going anyway, even if it’s raining, then we’ll catch the train down to Wengen and Lauterbrunnen. That was the plan. We have our morning cup of tea in our room, shower and pack before heading down to a nice breakfast buffet at 7.30am. There’s cereals, yoghurt, cheese and cold meats, plus really hot fresh bread, butter and jams. There’s a coffee machine for hot milky coffee.
It’s 8.30am and a cool 15°C when we leave and there’s no sign of rain as we walk down to Grindelwald train station in the valley before the ascent. There’s open forest and meadows and views back to Grindelwald for most of the climb. Ahead, Klein Scheidegg is shrouded in mist. The gradient is very steady so we make good time and after 2 hrs and six kilometres, we reach Alpiglen at 1600 metres, Time for a coffee sitting on a bench seat beside a cheese barn selling cheese from a small fridge with an honesty box beside it. Still no rain as we enjoy coffee with a view down the valley to Grindelwald bathed in patchy sunshine.
At 11am we move on. There’s hikers coming up and down the mountain, mostly day walkers, with just a few through walkers carrying heavier packs. We reach Klein Scheidegg at 12.30pm after an 11.8 kilometres 1,100 metre ascent on a good grade. Still no rain! We can see the Eiger, Monck and Jungfrau intermittently through the hanging cloud. It’sa busy place, and the Jungfrau Express is doing a roaring trade. Most of the tourists are Asian and when we sit down to lunch of yesterdays bread, cheese, ham and tomato, there’s a couple of Japanese tourists sitting next to us eating instant self-heating noodles bought from the shop at the top of Klein Scheidegg!
We both feel good after a relatively easy well graded climb and it’s not raining, so we decide to continue to walk down to Wengen at 1,274 metres,a one hour forty minutes descent of almost 800 metres. There’s a group of school kids with their teacher playing tag with us down the mountain track which mostly follows the cog train running between Wengen and Kleine Scheidegg. We reach Wengen at 3.30pm, just in time to buy tickets at 7 CHF each, and catch the 3.42pm cog train down to Lauterbrunnen. The packed train slowly descends into the steep valley and as soon as we leave the station, we see the Steinbock Hotel and it’s right across the road from the Coop, which is next door to the Murren Berg Bahn combined Cable car/cog train we hope to get tomorrow. The hotel is in a perfect location for us.
Our twin budget room 23 is very clean, with the shower and toilet up the corridor. We have a balcony, so first up we have a shower and wash our clothes to drape over the chairs on the balcony to catch the last of the sun going down behind the mountains. I blog for an hour then at 6pm, it’s time to go to the Coop to buy dinner - fresh bread (toss out the old loaf from two days ago), gruyere cheese, a bag of sliced lettuce (we haven’t had greens for a few days), unbranded mayonnaise to go with the lettuce, but NO ham - there’s enough protein in the cheese, plus 2 x beers. Sum total 20CHF.
Back to our room to enjoy dinner on the balcony and discuss tomorrow’s walk. We’re planning to take a combined cable car/cog train to Murren then walk over the Sefinenfurke Pass at 2,612 metres to Griesalp. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, but it was supposed to rain today too and it didn’t. So we’ll see in the morning. Our exit plan is to take a bus/train via Interlaken to Griesalp if the weather is bad. We’re in bed at 9pm after a gerat day.