Chasing Views and Escaping Cows in the Swiss Alps
A scenic journey through Grindelwald First and beyond.
After completing our first hike to Oeschinensee on Sunday, it was time for the second one on Tuesday. The weather forecast predicted beautiful, sunny weather, so we were looking forward to this day.
Today’s hike took place around Grindelwald First, a mountain located in the Jungfrau region. A beautiful place with a great viewpoint and cliff walk.
We had to get up early that day, not as early as last year (5 a.m.), but still, compared to other days, 6:30 was quite early.
We arrived at the Kandersteg station at 8 a.m. and took the train to Interlaken to catch the train to Grindelwald.
In Grindelwald, a cable car was waiting for us, but we had to walk 20 minutes to get there first. We expected a quiet place with a cable car that we could board right after buying a ticket, but that turned out to be different.
It was incredibly busy there at around 10 or 10:30 a.m. Unbelievable.
We saw many people standing until, at one point, a woman who worked at the cable cars came to announce that there were two queues: one for people with a valid ticket, and one for people who did not yet have a ticket.
We didn’t have a ticket yet.
But we quickly decided to buy a ticket online so we wouldn’t have to join the back of the line again once we got off the ticket machines. Smart of me, huh?
Once we arrived at the cable car, we boarded with 4 other people and our journey up began.
After about 30 or 40 minutes, we arrived at the top, at the Grindelwald First. Pretty high at 2,168 meters (7,113 feet).
We couldn’t see anything because of the clouds, and it was pretty cold. There were restrooms, which we used first for a while, and then started the first part of the hike: the cliff walk.
Normally, the highlight of the trip here, but not for a while because of the cloud cover. It had something cool about it, but you didn’t see that much.
It was like a loop where you eventually came back to the beginning. There were also some nice cows there, as seen in the pictures.
A fun fact about this cow, Sanne, my sister was taking a picture of this cow, after which the cow, probably overexcited by all the tourists, started running a little wild towards her.
She was startled by this and ran to the back, and then she fell and hurt her ankle (Since then, she has a fear of mountain cows on the trail).
After she took some painkillers and was fully patched up again, the hike began. After all, we still had 13 kilometers to go.
The first part consisted of the way towards Bachalpsee, an incredibly cold mountain lake, but also incredibly beautiful. Initially, I planned to swim here (I already had my swimming trunks on), but this turned out to be too cold.
We started walking; we had to go up quite a bit, and despite the clouds, the view was beautiful. It was reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands.
After about 3 kilometers, we arrived at Bachalpsee.
Usually, this water should be very blue, but of course, due to the disappointing weather, it was a bit gray, and the temperature was about 7 to 8 degrees Celsius. Really incredibly cold, and also the primary reason for not taking an ice bath this time.
I also had no warm clothes with me to warm up again, so it was quite risky.
We stood by the water for a while and then decided to move on. After all, we still had to hike back down to Grindelwald Village.
Pretty fun hike, but I couldn’t initially check out the route we had planned because there was no service at all. So we decided to follow the sign toward Grindelwald.
Here’s to hoping everything goes well.
We did notice that it immediately became a lot quieter.
Here, the hikers separate themselves from the tourists who only walked to Bachalpsee and then went back to the viewpoint. Lovely that peace.
After walking for a while, we came to a stretch where we had to cross a hill, behind which we found a fantastic view of the mountains.
After which, not very long after, we also encountered another paved road. This felt nice, solid ground. It did start to rain then, and we had to walk past some farms here and there, overlooking the village, deep in the valley.
The last part of the hike consisted of a section through the forest. It was raining, so the shelter of the trees was nice. We walked downhill the whole time, very hard on your legs. I’d rather go up then.
Every bit we were “allowed” to walk up felt like a blessing. Then you know it goes down very hard.
When we arrived downstairs, the first thing we did was to find a terrace and drink a delicious cold Coke. A fantastic conclusion to this hike of more than 13 kilometers!