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Estimate 20 km, 770 m vertical, 6 hours.
A pleasant, clear dawn, a whole flock of sphinx moths out harvesting nectar from the geraniums on our balcony.
Not many we recognized at breakfast. Sleeping in? We were the first – and only – people at the Seilbahn station. 8 AM. Some kind of schedule said 10 AM. Oh great – we sit here for two hours while everyone else sleeps in, goes shopping, whatever? Moomph!
But more people started to arrive. One of them was the attendant, who drove up with his cash box and unlocked the door. He said there was so much wind he wasn’t sure whether he could even run the car. Called his friend up top somewhere, concluded it was ok, and we climbed aboard. Never did figure out what the 10 AM schedule was all about.
This is a suspended cable car, rated for eight people. By the time the couples had paired off, there were seven of us, and it was SRO. We launched into space, our weight on the catenary causing us to move almost horizontally toward the cliff, rising gently past a really pretty waterfall. Close to the cliff, we began ascending almost vertically, passed with a bump over the rollers to horizontal again at the top, crossed the upper part of the waterfall’s stream – very pretty – and we were there.
We hadn’t noticed any swaying in the wind during the ride up, but for the final docking, we went to dead slow, inched our way in; there was enough wind to bang the car against the guard rail a couple times.
One of the other trekkies had come up with us. Jacky says his luggage is marked Dr, but of course that doesn’t necessarily mean a medical doctor. I guess his wife took the day off (I think Jacky was the only one of the women who hiked every day). We hiked up a moderately steep meadow. Great views back the way we had come. Across the valley we could see the Öschinensee, deep in shadow, said to be beautiful. Had we taken the originally planned route instead of the alternate yesterday, we would have seen it close-up. One for next time. Our friend pointed out what he thought was Eiger, away back there.
Not much snow – maybe a total of a hundred meters in little strips along the trail. Our friend found a frozen salamander in the snow; picked it out and put it back on the grass where it could thaw out.
A fairly steep climb up the last hundred meters to the top of Bunderspitz (also shown as Bonderspitz on both maps and signs). Great views in all directions.
Very windy. I pulled the chin-strap thong tight on my hat, and it broke. The hat blew to the edge of the summit plateau where, unbelievably, it waited long enough for me to retrieve it. Stowed the hat in my backpack – no way I can wear it in this wind without a chin strap.
As downhills go, this one wasn’t bad. Scree, then steep meadow. Our friend has a good eye – spotted a couple herds of wild mountain goats (chamois in French, Genseln in German), each with a dominant male well upslope, keeping an eye on things. The second herd was perhaps 20 animals, a lot. Our friend could see them with his binoculars; I brought along the telephoto lens for my camera, but they were just too far away. No chance. Jacky saw quite a bit of detail – antlers, for example – but my eyes are so bad that they were just brown spots to me.
Even down off the peak it was windy. Tried the hat again, gave up. It was warm enough to shed the jackets, but there were clouds rolling in – it may be unpleasant later on. Glad we got an early start.
I have wondered why people put rocks on their roofs – you see this fairly often. Best theory I can dream up is that it creates local turbulence that keeps the snow from piling up.
Farms here tend to be very small; frequently too small to justify much automation. We saw a number of fields where the hay was being raked by hand. I especially liked this one, just below Adelboden. The dog is clearly a Manager!
Rain started, not heavy yet, but time for the jackets.
During the day, we stopped a couple of times for granny bars, but really didn’t eat enough. No mountain restaurants along our route. Ended up tired and hungry. Jacky was badly bonked, stupid with fatigue. We had to climb a steep trail from the river up into the town of Adelboden; every time we crossed an intermediate street, she tried to turn, and resented bitterly my insistence that we had to keep climbing. When we finally reached the main street, the first building next to the trail was a hotel with a restaurant. Jacky collapsed on the front porch, out of the rain, and prepared to die.
I shoveled her into the restaurant, where a few calories made a world of difference! The waitress told us how to find our hotel, five hundred meters down the street. Raining pretty hard; in that five hundred meters we got good and wet. The Huldi hotel is on the left; the Waldhaus is on the right. They’re connected by an underground passage. Nice room: a corner with two balconies. Town out one window, Seilbahn out the other. Maybe even mountains if the weather clears up. Big room, lots of space, and the heat was on!
Our luggage had not yet arrived, so we really couldn’t change clothes yet. Napped until the luggage showed up about 4:45. Nice to get out of the wet clothes and into a hot shower.
One of the extra amenities of the hotel was a little sewing kit. I actually sewed buttons on a couple of my old beat-up hiking shirts. It’s been a long time since I sewed anything!
The cows came home – three of them, clanking their way down the middle of the main street.
Dinner was good; more than enough to eat. We ordered a white Bordeaux, which had enough body to hold its own in competition with the rare beefsteak. Then we went out for a short walk around the town until it started raining again. Life is pretty good.
Estimate 18 km, 600 m vertical, 5:30.
This morning a herd of about twenty cattle strolled down the main street.
Breakfast was only available at 7:30, so we felt a little late getting started. But they say today, our last day, should be easier than the others. And since we left directly from Adelboden town, rather than taking a train or cable car or elephant safari, we were actually on the trail earlier than usual. Started off clear and sunny. As we entered the wood at Gilbach, we saw three folks with wicker baskets harvesting mushrooms.
Everything went fine until we came to the outskirts of Geils, where one trail sign said Hahnenmoos, and the other trail sign said Hahnenmoospass. Well, we wanted to go to the pass, so we went that direction. Besides, it got us off the road, and it was a steeper uphill – must be the right way.
We climbed all the way to the top of the ridge, came to a trail junction marked Nassberg, with direction signs that told us nothing useful. Went in the direction that had to be right; turned out to be a trail along another of these knife-edge ridges. On our left, one of the scree valleys we saw yesterday; on our right, the valley we had climbed out of. Very strong wind blowing across the ridge, clouds coming in. This could turn out to be less fun than a sharp stick in the eye.
Studied the map, debated whether to go back or go on. I simply could not force my head to believe that we had been at Nassberg, given the direction we had come, the direction we had turned, and what I could see. What we saw looked very much like a pass, Hahnenmoospass we hoped, with two big buildings that could well be the mountain hotel we expected to see at the pass.
Based on the preponderence of evidence, we decided the map must be wrong – brave conclusion – and went on. It looked as if the ridge trail ended on a plateau at the top of a ski lift, and we should be able to swing around toward the pass. It wasn’t all that far, but it was disappointing to reach the plateau, only to learn that there was yet another hillside to traverse before we could turn toward the pass. At least we were off the crest, out of the worst of the wind.
When we reached it, we found that indeed, it was Hahnenmoospass. I guess the official route just went through Hahnenmoos, then to the pass, and we had taken the long way around.
Time to start down – after a granny bar break that gave us a chance to watch the RC glider folks taking advantage of the wind. More nice views on the way down, though there were only one or two points that were obviously glaciers. The walk down was fine – moderate grade, unpaved road – until we came to the edge of the world at Büelberg and began the descent via steep trail into Lenk. Slow and muddy.
Came into Lenk, saw a pizza restaurant, went inside just as the rain started in earnest. Are we living right, or what? I kept burning myself on the pizza – Jacky was ok. I figure I must be more delicate, more sensitive, than she. We heard the waitress talking with some other customers about Americans who come here on Urlaub. Now, how do you suppose she knew?
And by the time we had eaten our pizza, the rain had quit, so we wandered the town for a few minutes before catching the train. Met one of the trekkies who’s staying here tonight instead of going back to Thun. Good-bye, good luck. Stopped at a sporting goods store, where they sold me a single long yellow bootlace for my hat. Looks funny, but then so does the hat. And the guy wearing it, too, for that matter. After a while it will just look ratty, and that will fit right in as well.
And there was a high-resolution topo map of the area on display at a kiosk. There are two Nassbergs! Five kilometers apart! And my topo map only shows the name for one of them, the wrong one of course. So we were right – the map was wrong!
Bought a loaf of Nußbrot to have munchies on tomorrow’s train home. We’d rather not pay the prices at the dining car.
We saw a blue heron from the Lenk train, which is more an extended streetcar than a train. It makes an hourly milk run to Zweisimmen, where we changed to another milk run that took us to Spiez, where we got onto the milk run that took us to Thun. The valley from Lenk to Spiez is full of lumber mills. From the piles stacked in their yards, they would seem to produce a lot of rough-cut lumber – but maybe the finished lumber isn’t stored outdoors.
We each have a single train ticket, with a long list of destinations and transfer points. The train from Lenk was, de facto, honor system. On the train from Zweisimmen, the guard studied the tickets and punched them. On the train to Thun, the guard looked at them, his eyes crossed, he shrugged, smiled, handed them back, went on.
Thun was familiar – a town we remember visiting once before, many lifetimes ago. The desk clerk at the Elite hotel recognized us when we came in, and gave us the same room as before. Swiss attention to detail. Dinner was good: more pup-dog filets for Jacky. They garnished the entrées with onion sprouts – what a great idea! Said good-bye to those of our other hiking companions who happened to be in the dining room, and went out for a slow peaceful stroll around the town.
With a 7:44 train, a 7:00 breakfast was a little tense. We went down at 6:45; all the food was there, and we did fine. Same train, same seats, all the way to München. No adventures. Nice to be home.
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