Wengen - or the highest railway station in Europe

Underneath the Eiger

The next day it was time to walk to our next hotel.  That was it for Grindelwald, it was on to Wengen, at 1300m we would be sleeping a bit higher tonight.  But first there was a long days walk ahead of us.  We had noticed the previous day that the morning was pure blue skies but by the time the afternoon had rolled round the clouds were gathering.  So we thought it best to try and get an early start today to try and take advantage of the clear skies and views in the morning.

It was still a long hot morning, starting at 1000m in Grindelwald, we had to get to Kleine Scheidegg at 2061m first.  On the way there we also passed Alpiglen, for those who are interested in the Eiger summits, this is where most people camped before attempting the climb.  And Kleine Scheidegg was where people would watch through telescopes as the climbers died as they tried.  The whole morning was spent walking under the north face of the Eiger.  It's almost impossible to get a sense of scale, it's just so incredibly big.  It is standing another 2000m above you at this point and those sorts of vertical distances just seem so hard to judge.

Our walk the day before

Looking down to Grindelwald

This was probably the hottest I've been through the whole week, it was just this never-ending uphill over 6km climbing 1000m.  We could see across the Grindelwald valley to where we had walked the day before, even catching a glimpse (we think) of our lunch spot.  This was a much easier walk than the day before, and also a lot greener.  It's hard to capture but all the wildflowers were out.  It was not so much meadows that you were walking through, but more carpets of flowers.

The flower explosion

Again there were hardly any other people on the trail.  We kept leapfrogging with one cyclist, he would have to go round the switchbacks and we would take the more direct route along the path.  It seemed like we had reached the gradient where it was quicker to walk.  He would pass us when we would stop for a drink, but then we would overtake him later on.  Though he would have got down the other side of Kleine Scheidegg much faster than us.

The Eiger in blazing sunlight

When you arrive at Kleine Scheidegg it's a bit of a central train station, which is a bit bizarre since nobody lives here.  It's literally just restaurants and some hotels.  But there are 3 lines ending here, so it was all really busy.  We did take the train from here, it was the train up to the Jungfraujoch.  This is the train line that goes through the Eiger, there are 2 viewing stations on the way up and these are where various rescue attempts were launched for people dying on the climb up.  The trip takes an hour up, which is pretty long, but that includes various halts to let trains going the other way go past.  Jungfraujoch is also at 3454m, so there is a fair elevation gain for the little train.

Jungfraujoch

On the other side of Kleine Scheidegg

Again it was a bit of a shock to us, since this is seriously touristy, compared to walking through wildflowers with nobody around.  Being surrounded by so many people who were losing their minds over the snow was a bit of a shock to the system.  I would recommend taking the trip up though, it's expensive but you don't get many chances to get that high, not without a few years of mountaineering practise and a serious amount of gear.  It is a completely different world that high.  And you are right between the Jungfrau and the Monch, they are only about 500m further above you, which at that point doesn't look that high at all.

The unbelievable north face of the Eiger, looking all the way down to the walking paths below

The ice palace with strange sculptures

The stops along the way are amazing too, you get a real sense of how inhospitable the north face of the Eiger is. It's just a sheer drop thousands of metres, it's incredible people even managed to climb it in the first place, or that they now do it in a bit over 2 hours!  The launching of rescue expeditions from this point must have also been something else, since I'm not sure how you even get the first foothold in.  You also get a feel for how the weather conditions are actually different here.  It's hard to appreciate in Grindewald or walking around, since the sun is blazing, and there isn't a cloud in the sky.  But stopping off at this gallery, you can see that it is in total shadow, and what's more there was just a constant fall of rain, though I suppose it was more the melting snow from above.

Those tiny black dots are actually people heading off down the glacier

Dave at Jungfraujoch

I love that when they started constructing this railway all the way back in 1896, they had the forethought to provide these little intermediate gallery points.  And you think at the time the Swiss government is building the highest railway station in Europe, Sydney was struggling to build a few metropolitan lines.

When you get to the final station you can tell there has been a lot of thought put into containing the tourists.  It's not a normal train station with just an open platform.  Instead it feels a bit like a survival dome built on another planet.  They really try to corral you inside.  I can only imagine the troubles if they just let the tourists wander around where ever they wanted up there.  I guess the Swiss guides would probably get a lot of rescue practise in at least.

So they try and have other little attractions for you, rather than getting outside.  There is this weird mural section, which you travel past on escalator, then there is an ice palace, which are these rooms all made of ice, with ice sculptures. There is also a movie and a little on the history of the construction.  An awful lot of people died whilst building it, the labour relations were pretty bad back then.

More flowers on the way to Wengen

Whilst we were up there we actually spotted a couple of teams of people heading off down the valley.  I'm not sure how long it would take them to reach civilisation from that far up, but it looked like it would have been a lot of fun.  Too bad I don't have any snow skills.

A rougher path than the morning - with the clouds building

The trip from Kleine Scheidegg onto Wengen was a bit of fun, as soon as you leave the train at Kleine you are again completely alone, the trail was a bit wilder in the afternoon as well.  The clouds really started building at this point.  This was the only day we got rained on, at one point it was actually hail, that was a pretty bizarre experience.  It wasn't cold and we were at maybe 1400m, so not high, and the rain suddenly went to little hailstones, before turning to bigger ones and really hammering down.  Luckily it only lasted about 5 minutes, and that my raincoat is quite thick. 

Total walk 18.5km, total ascent 1100m, total descent 850m.

How Swiss is this!