30 Jun 2022 Hiking in the Swiss Alps

Background

For our 30th an­niversary in 2020, my wife and I de­cided to go hik­ing for a week in the Swiss Alps. We’d got­ten en­gaged in Switzer­land, we’d hon­ey­mooned there, and of course I’ve spent much of my per­son­al and work life there.

On the re­com­mend­a­tion of friends, we booked a hik­ing tour with Alpine­hikers . They have many kinds of tours, with vary­ing loc­a­tions, dis­tances, and guid­ing op­tions.

We ar­ranged for a week of hik­ing in the moun­tains around Grin­dle­wald and Lau­t­er­brunnen, a re­gion we know well. We de­cided not to hike with a guide, but just to take a self-guided tour where Alpine­hikers would provide us sug­ges­ted hikes, ar­range for ho­tels for each night, and deal with the lo­gist­ics of send­ing our bags from one hotel to the next. That way, we could just do day hikes on each day, not hav­ing to hassle with heav­ier overnight bags. And we could go at our own pace.

It was a great plan. We were ex­cited. Seemed like a great way for us to cel­eb­rate 3 dec­ades of mar­riage.

Then, you know, 2020.

Now, two years later, with the pan­dem­ic either mostly over or mostly ig­nored, we de­cided to take an­oth­er shot at cel­eb­rat­ing our 30th, for our 32nd. For­tu­nately, Alpine­hikers stayed in busi­ness through the pan­dem­ic and honored our de­pos­its and plans.

Off we went.

Itinerary

We flew from Bo­ston to Zurich on Swiss, a con­veni­ent flight that I’ve taken lit­er­ally a hun­dred times be­fore. It was a bizarre flash­back to my days at No­vartis - both un­set­tling and in­cred­ibly fa­mil­i­ar.

We spent jet lag re­cov­ery day tour­ing Zurich with a guide, then took the next day to travel by train to the start of the hikes at an alpine lodge above Meirin­gen.

Our next 5 days were the day hikes that took us from one end of the Grindel­wald re­gion to the oth­er:

• Schwar­zwaldalp to Grin­dle­wald
• Grindel­wald to Wen­gen via the Ei­ger Route
• An as­cent of the Mann­lichen peak be­hind Wen­gen
• Wen­gen to Mür­ren via Marchegg
• A day hike south­w­est of Mür­ren to a re­l­at­ively un­known but spec­tac­u­lar wa­ter­fall

Thanks to weath­er (it stormed on us a bit), our speed (we were tak­ing it easy, just en­joy­ing be­ing in the moun­tains), and our own pref­er­ences (we de­cided to take a down day while in Wen­gen), we didn’t ex­actly fol­low the routes provided to us by the Alpine­hikers crew, but it worked out fine.

From Mür­ren, we took a series of Swiss trains and a gon­dola to make our way back to Zurich and fly back home. We wanted to take more time while in Switer­land to con­nect with old friends and tour a little more, but I only had a little time off from work, so we had to head dir­ectly back to the US.

A Few Notes

• It was a total lux­ury to day hike from one spot to an­oth­er while our lug­gage was trans­por­ted via the Swiss rail sys­tem.
• The ho­tels var­ied from a small lodge with re­strooms down the hall to a 4-star hotel with amaz­ing views from our own bal­cony. They were all great.
• The hikes and views were fant­ast­ic.
• It felt great to get out of the US after sev­er­al years of be­ing here. Re­mem­ber­ing that there’s a big­ger world out there, wal­low­ing in a dif­fer­ent cul­ture, ap­pre­ci­at­ing dec­ades of memor­ies we’ve built up there, think­ing about Switzer­land’s place in our life – all worth­while.
• Alpine­hikers was great. Highly re­com­men­ded. We needed a little help dur­ing the trip as lo­gist­ics shif­ted, and they were al­ways re­spons­ive and on top of the situ­ation. The ho­tels, routes, and de­tails were all per­fect.
• That said, when they say that a route is “strenous”, they aren’t kid­ding. This trip isn’t for in­ex­per­i­enced hikers.
• We really en­joyed hik­ing to­geth­er. This wasn’t one of those ath­let­ic trips I have with my cyc­ling and back­pack­ing friends - it was a great way to spend time to­geth­er ex­plor­ing a gor­geous part of the world. We’re likely to ar­range a sim­il­ar va­ca­tion like this in the fu­ture - per­haps some­where else in the Alps, or per­haps some­where like Scot­land or Spain where we can get to know a new place to­geth­er.
• Best mo­ments: Wa­ter­falls. Goat swarms. Chocol­ate. Sun­sets. Raclette.

For more pho­tos, see the photo al­bum: Photo gal­lery