Review: Kindle Scribe Colorsoft

 For as long as the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft has been available for purchase, I'd wanted one. While I did enjoy my Kindle Scribe a lot, I wanted color for comic books. I didn't use it as a note taker very much, as it was a little too bulky to carry around casually, so the device mostly stayed at home. Of course, at $630, it was a steep ask, but I knew that it would eventually go on sale.

During this year's Prime days in July, it finally got discounted to $480. You get another $96 off if you traded in your old Kindle, which I promptly did. Having learned my lesson about storage, I knew I didn't need the 64GB model and just went for the 32GB basic model. The Cobak Case had a separate compartment for the pen which ensured I wouldn't lose it, which happened to all the kindle scribes in our family's possession, so I bought that instead of the official case.

I've used it to read multiple comics, and to be honest, it's still a little disappointing. The colors are muted, looking more like old-school newsprint rather than a bright display. Now, if you're outdoors this is still way better than any tablet, but for anything other than that, the muted display occasionally even makes reading text in colored dialog boxes difficult.

Having said all that, it's still a big improvement over no color at all, compared to the old kindle scribe. The screensaver page looks fantastic, and certain books have colored fonts for their chapter titles, and every time I look at it it looks great.

The battery life is not so good. If you're reading standard text, it'll last about half as long as the Kindle Scribe. That's plenty. But if you're downloading and reading comics? I've drained the battery in as little as 3 days of 3 hour per day of reading. Now I do have the brightness turned up, but it's clearly not a device that will go a month without charging like my older Kindle Scribe.

I used it to take notes recently, and the handwriting recognition isn't great. Expect to have to clean up the text if you use the handwriting recognition feature to deliver your own handwriting. Obviously, my handwriting has deteriorated over the years, so if I actually practice writing by hand a bit I expect I'll get better results. I'm not an artist, so I can't comment on how much it is to draw or color or anything like it.

Now, anything that will get you to read more is always a good thing. But this is the first Kindle I've bought where the value proposition was no longer a slam dunk (especially at the undiscounted price). Overall, for me I think it's still a good device. I'm not sure it makes sense for a lower volume reader. Obviously, the price will go down. I'd say at around $400 you should definitely consider it!

June 29th: Nessental "Terrace" Hotel to Hotel Rosenlaui

 Breakfast at the Nessental was good, though not to the standards set by the hotel’s rosti. The kids were very excited, since they loved Hotel Rosenlaui as much as I did. Finishing the descent to Innerkirchen without the customary headwind, we climbed the 4 switchbacks of Kirchet pass before turning left immediately after the now permanently closed Restaurant Lammi.

Xiaoqin and Bowen passed us in the car soon after the intersection on the way to Rosenlaui. The climb up Grosse Scheidegg without a load is straightforward, though to my surprise this time we didn’t hear the postbus bugle before the bus appeared around the corner, forcing a sudden stop and then the requisite walking to the next flat section before resuming the climb.

It was early in the morning, and we stopped at the Kaltenbrunnen restaurant to see if Andreas was there but he wasn’t, so we climbed into Rosenlaui to see Bowen and Xiaoqin walking along the main road to take pictures and greet us. Xiaoqin asked what our plan was and I said the best thing to do was to get to the hotel, change into walking clothes, and go for a hike!

It took us next to no time to get to the hotel, where we met Jacob, the new owner/manager of Rosenlaui, who showed us where to park the huge tandem. He also told us how dry it had been: “The lawn turned brown last week! I’d never seen that before!”  I had paired my phone to the car ages ago, so we just walked over to the car, unlocked it, unloaded mine and Boen’s luggage and hiking shoes, parked those in the Rosenlaui left luggage lobby, and changed into hiking clothing. When Bowen and Xiaoqin showed up at the lobby minutes later, so did Andreas! We hugged, chatted, and I asked him if Hornseeli would be good today. “It’s always a good day for Hornseeli, I think.” said Andreas.

With that reassurance, we filled up water bottles, used the bathrooms, grabbed the bus passes, and waited at the bus stop. The bus took us to Schwarzalp, where we would transfer to the Grosse Scheidegg bus (no more than a 5 minute transition), and get off at the top of Grosse Scheidegg. We ate at the balcony of the Berghotel Grosse Scheidegg, since while Grosse Scheidegg was at 1962m, Hornseeli was even higher at 2147m.

Suitably fortified, we set forth first on the Romantikweg, which leads from the top of Grosse Scheidegg towards First along a ridge, granting us panoramic views of the Grindelwald valley. The weather was warm but at 2000m it was a very comfortable temperature. At the fork, we turned right away from First, and followed the hiking trail down. Now we started getting a view of the wall across the valley: Wetterhorn, Engelhorn, Dossen, and Mittelhorn.

The kids went ahead, complaining as usual about how slow adults are because adults want to take photos. But of course, that also meant they missed the Hornseeli turnoff. When we got to the exit I wondered aloud if the kids had missed it. I then texted them and it turned out that they had missed it. We gave them permission to follow the trail all the way back down to Rosenlaui, but they elected to turn around and run back up the hill. We got to watch them make a great impression of Sir Lancelot from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The trail up to Hornseeli was challenging, with a lot of climbing in very steep situation. However, due to how dry it was it wasn’t muddy at all, even though the grass around us was still lush and green to our California trained eyes. When we got to the top, however, it was definitely a shock to me—the lake looked so small compared to previous years, because it had shrunk so much! The others didn’t mind, since they had no comparison, and in fact, Boen managed to catch and release a tadpole!

From the lake, it was downhill all the way to Rosenlaui. There were a couple of choices, and Boen opted for the shorter easier hike while the rest of us went on the longer one. It turned out not to make much difference in scenery, but then the skies clouded up and we started feeling raindrops. The rain jackets were all in my backpack, so we gave Boen’s rain jacket to Bowen, had him wear his rain jacket, and then he went off down the hill in search of Boen. When going downhill, no adult can beat a kid or teenager. Better joints and lighter weight makes the speed difference too much to overcome, especially at the end of a long day.

Regardless, we all managed to make it to Rosenlaui before it started pouring. Mark had already made it back to the hotel, but he was in the room and had assumed that he had no cell connection. In practice, cell towers had recently been upgraded so while data coverage was intermittent, if you put your phone near the window or let it sit still over time it would still get messages.

We eventually got all the luggage in the room, got everyone showered and ready for dinner, and caught up with Mark. “The adventure route was a bit too much adventure for me!” he declared. When we compared his tracks to my tracks from 2016 later on, it would turn out that I had mis-routed him or he had somehow missed a turn and ended up on a much less rideable path. Nevertheless, we confirmed several things: one was that the cable car was happy to take bikes and was a very viable alternative to 90 minutes of riding up a 90% grade. Second was that it was a scenic route, but I should have just given him my route from 2016 instead of drawing a new one on RidewithGPS. Mark also noted that now that he was here he realized that he’d previously stayed at Rosenlaui before with his sisters! He had also figured out how to take the bus from Meiringen to Rosenlaui, because he wanted to save his legs for the next day’s ride.

Dinner was fantastic at Rosenlaui as usual, but with the new “no devices” rule, we couldn’t take any pictures of dinner. We made plans for the next day over dinner. Mark was still up for the classic Rosenlaui loop tomorrow, and since Xiaoqin hadn’t done it before she should go with him. I would take the kids up the Englehornhutte hike the next day, which should be plenty to occupy us.

June 28th: Hospental to Nessental "Terrace" Hotel

 By a miracle, Boen, Mark and I all managed to get up, eat breakfast, pack up the car, get the bikes out, and get rolling by 6:17am. It was still cool enough to wear a jacket and descend the gallery from Andermatt to Goschenen, but by the time we got to Goschenen I need to take off my jacket.

The climb starts from Wassen at 800m, and immediately hits an 8% grade, which we were grateful to be climbing in 75F weather rather than 80F. It was overcast at the start but the sky quickly cleared. However, the surrounding mountains were high enough that we were in shadows all the way until about 5km from the summit, at which point the heat danger was minimal.

The thing about Sustens is that unlike many other passes in Europe, there are next to no services on the road. In fact, once past the village of Meien, there’s not even a water fountain to be seen until you get to Sustenbruggli, where the house before the restaurant is owned by a mountain club and has a freely accessible tap outside for you to refill your water bottles.

Boen and I got a steady climbing pace, and with two of us I could have Boen open up food packages and feed me while climbing. We also both consumed significantly less water than Mark. When we got to Sustenbruggli, the amount of water we had left was so much  that we eschewed the stop while Mark stopped to refill and ended up also buying a snack. Because of the lack of need to stop for water, the coolness of the morning, and the deliberate resting we did the day before, my Strava entries said that this was the fastest climb of Sustens for many segments that I’d ever done—it’s also a testament to how strong Boen is that we were beating previous times when I was riding the single bike!

At the summit tunnel entrance, Boen and I stopped for a photo, waited a few minutes and realized we couldn’t see Mark anywhere, so we elected to wait at the other end of the tunnel. On the other side, we rode to the summit sign for a photo. A woman stopped and took a picture of us and said: “Are you riding the alps on that tandem?” I told her yes. “I was just hear last week riding my bicycle but never thought that it would be possible to do it with kids. I had her send herself e-mail from my phone so I could send her a link to my blog with trip reports of all the trips my two kids have been on on a bicycle.” Mark rode up just in time to make it into the picture.

We then descended the Sustens highway. The Sustens highway is one of the most spectacular descents from the summit down to Meiringen. There are multiple straightaways for maximal speed, but the corners are frequent enough to give you changes in perspective. On a wet year, the roaring waters going over the tunnels give the descent a feeling like a driving video game, except of course bicycling is way more fun than any video game.

With Mark’s agreement, we decided this time to eschew trying to take photos but instead to enjoy the descent maximally in a flow state. The dangerous part for us would be missing the hotel by having too much fun and riding past it! Indeed, the descent was as much fun as we expected. The corners were exciting, and the road was actually very recently paved. In addition, because we had started so early and was descending at 9:00am, the expected headwind did not arise and therefore we were not slowed down!  We easily set a Strava PR for the top part of the descent but since we didn’t descend to Innerkirchen there were no other segments that we covered.

Arriving at the Nessental Terrace hotel, we realized that it wasn’t even 10:00am. We obviously couldn’t check in, and besides the car wasn’t here yet! Nevertheless, the owner made us feel welcome, told us where to park the bikes, and we ordered coffee. He then bragged about how good his Rosti was, and we asked him when the kitchen was going to open. “11:00am!”

Xiaoqin and Bowen arrived 15 minutes before the kitchen opened, and when they opened we ordered the Rosti as recommended. The Rosti was amazing. I could believe him that when he says the Rosti is the best in the world, he might actually be right! When lunch was over, our rooms were ready and we moved in. I realized that since the hour was so early, we could drive to Hotel Engstlenalp and hike part of the famed Jobst high country adventure path that he started his tours with every year. I had already hyped up the ride to Mark, but knew that it would not be feasible with the tandem even if the cable car could take it, since the section where you had to carry the bike over the electrified cattle fence would not work.

The drive up the Gental was amazing, passing a group of cyclists on a one lane highway, and seeing waterfalls and beautiful pastoral farmland. I pointed out to Mark where there was cow-poop on the road that would make the road slippery. By the time we got to the Engstlenalp Hotel parking lot, paid the parking fee, and got out the hiking sticks for the hike it was 12:40am.

Rather than opt to go the reverse of the Jobst route, which is optimized more for downhill cycling than for hiking, we decided to go around the Engstlensee, which I mistakenly thought that I had never seen, despite having ridden that adventure route thrice, once in the wrong direction. The hike around the lake was pretty, though rather crowded. It being a Sunday, folks were picnicking around the shoreline, some swimming, some merely dipping their feet in the water.

Since I hadn’t even planned on doing this hike, I had no route in mind, and pretty soon we ran out of trail and ended up at a cable car station that told us the cable car went up to Jochpass. Now this was truly territory I’d never seen, so we took the cable car to the top. Jochpass was a really happening place, with cable cars running up both from Engelberg/Obwalden, Jochstock, and Engstlensee. The ski area had dining, hotel, and plenty of places to sit and look at the scenery, which we proceeded to do.

We looked at the map, and realized that we really only had one route back to the hotel if we didn’t want to take the cable car back down, so off we went. Boen was unhappy that we’d tricked him into taking a hike in addition to climbing Sustens pass, but the entire thing was only 4.85km.

The hike back was very pretty, and necessitated many stops for photographs, starting high on a ridgeline and then climbing some more so we would have views of the Tannensee and Melchsee, across the Canton border! Mark would later say that he had to go do the Jobst high adventure path having seen the scenery on this hike.

By the time we started heading down towards the hotel the skies had clouded up and we’d started feeling drops of rain on us. This sped us up quite a bit, but when we’d caught up to Mark and the kids it had already started raining. There was a little bit of drama where we found the bus stop where you would take the bus down if you were on a hike, but then when we went back to the car we’d lost Xiaoqin, so we turned around and looked for her. By then it had really started pouring and the parking lot was noticeably much emptier than when we had arrived.

Once everyone was in the car the pressure was off. With the rain, it was unlikely that there would be any traffic up the mountain, and we knew the last postbus had already left ahead of us, so we could take our time and stop for pictures here and there.

We got back to the Nessental Terrace hotel at around 5:00pm and here in Gadmental it was still sunny and had been the entire time! The bad news was that this meant the room was incredibly hot. In fact, so much so that Xiaoqin sent me off to spend the night with Mark rather than having so many people crowded into one room.

We had dinner at the Nessental Terrace, since nobody felt like driving somewhere else to get food. The after dinner walk was a walk along the Nessental backroad to the Triftblick B&B. It was nothing special despite being “top rated” on Google maps. We made plans for the next day. Boen and I would beeline it for Hotel Rosenlaui, but Mark would take advantage of his Swiss Half-tax card to ride to Meiringen, hop on the train to Sarnen, and then ride to Stockalp where he would again use his half-tax cut to take the cablecar to Tannalp, and then come back down the Gental. The hotel would serve breakfast at 7:30am, but that was plenty early enough for him to catch the 9:30am train.

June 27th: Hospental to Airolo

 We didn’t have to be in a hurry, but we’d been getting increasingly efficient over the course of the tour, so today, we left the house at 8:00am, riding up the cobblestone street onto the St. Gotthard highway. The weather was clear, and even at this early hour there was a lot of traffic, it being a Saturday, so by the time we got to the intersection with the old road, we decided to take the cobblestone path just to avoid dealing with traffic.

We went up the old road slowly—rushing a cobblestone road just gives you even more of a butt massage than going up it slowly, and we knew we hard a hard ride the next day. The cobblestone road has better scenery, taking you directly past a lower lake (Lago di Rodont) before getting to the summit lake where the St Gotthard museum was. It being early enough, we had plenty of time to visit the St Gotthard museum, which I would never visit any other time, since on a typical tour I’m in a hurry to get somewhere else before the day heated up. But today, we knew that we just had a descent to the train station and a train ride so we could take our time and watch the very well done film about the history of the St. Gotthard pass and all the various tunnels that had been drilled and built up beneath the pass.

The exhibits would then be exposed to us with all the context such that even if all the displays were in German we could still understand what they were for, and which tunnel they were for!

When we were done with the museum, we headed back down the pass. Before setting off, I gave Mark critical instructions: “Ignore all bike path signs. The only sign you want to pay attention to is the one that says “Police.” That’s where the exit is. Don’t stop just roll the entire descent.”

With that, we proceeded to take the St Gotthard at full tandem speed. This road is effectively a car highway, so at bicycle speeds if you’re wearing a jacket, you can tuck and then ride the entire thing at terminal velocity. We easily hit 40mph and were passed only by a few cars on the descent, a testament both to how well engineered the road is and how polite swiss drivers were. At no point did we feel unsafe despite the speed, and the whole thing only took 15 minutes or so. Boen proclaimed it the beset descent of the entire trip.

At the bottom, we found the exit that said “Police”, and proceeded to exit, find a place to slow down and stop, and then took off our jackets, since it was warm! When Mark caught up, we proceeded to follow the directions towards downtown Airolo and then the directions to the train station. Along the way, having learned from yesterday, we decided to stop to buy lunch at the huge coop in town before descending all the way to the train station. We bought sandwiches and rolled down to the train station.

The train ride from Airolo back to Andermatt wasn’t as scenic, since it went through one of the Gotthard tunnels that we had just went to a museum about. Once in Goschenen, we switched again to a cog railway to take us up to Andermatt. Once in Andermatt we would just ride it since switching trains was more of a hassle than actually riding back to Hospental.

In Andermatt, Mark decided that he would just ride down to Goschenen again to get to experience the tunnel bike path (since tomorrow we would be in a hurry and so would take the car road). Boen and I rode home and ate lunch. When we were done with lunch I realized that we had nothing left for dinner, so after taking a shower, drove back to Andermatt to shop. To my surprise the place was packed! It turned out that there was a car event that closed the Oberalp highway, which meant that the supermarket was jam packed! Fortunately, I did my shopping and could leave before things got too crazy.

In the meantime, Xiaoqin had been riding the Sustenspass. She successfully rode to Gadmen, and then to her surprise was nearly rejected from taking the bus with her bike by the post-bus driver! There was no one else using the bike racks, the bus was not full, but the driver insisted that you needed a reservation to ride the bus with your bike! It boggled my mind that a bus driver would rather abandon a woman with a bike rather than let her on without a reservation. Finally, some other passengers (presumably Swiss) interceded on her behalf and she was allowed to board on the condition that she get off at the top of the pass! At the top she probably could have ignored the instruction, but the bus was so stuffy (the windows could not be opened) that when the time came she was glad to get off so she could be on a bicycle instead of being on the bus!

When she got to Goschenen she pinged me on signal, and I drove the car over to pick her up. Her story shocked me (I’d always thought of Switzerland as being bike friendly), but all ended well. We finished out last round of laundry (we wouldn’t have laundry until we got to Lauterbrunnen), packed as much as we could, and planned to get up early tomorrow so we could avoid the heat on Sustens, which I remembered as usually being one of the hotter passes on previous tours.

June 26th: Hospental to Donat Elms

 We weren’t in a hurry today, only leaving the house at 8:06am. The roll down to Andermatt from Hospental was easy, and the ride up the cobblestone street to the start of the pass even that late in the morning was quiet and traffic free. Oberalp is by far the easiest climb in the area, and two days of hiking and given us sufficient rest that the climb didn’t feel at all challenging.

At the top, we took pass photos and agreed to meet at Disentis/Muster to decide whether we would rather do Lukmanier. The warmth even at 2000m in elevation made me relatively certain that we would end up riding down to Ilanz. I also realized that from Donat-Elms, we didn’t have to take the train all the way to Andermatt! We could get off 2 stops early, saving some money, and then ride down both sides of Oberalp! Coming back from Biasca, however, would be a longer train ride and wouldn’t give us that opportunity.

Riding down Oberalp pass was fast and easy. Unlike many passes, this one is designed such that you get a clear view of the road for miles as you descend, letting you plan your braking around visible traffic. We zipped down very quickly before the road flattened out and descended to Disentis. In Disentis we regrouped and ate some food—it was warm that there was no doubt that we were going to ride down to Ilanz and then take the adventure path to Bonaduz.

Riding down from Disentis to Ilanz is about 30km along the highway. We didn’t want it to get any hotter than it had to be because it was already warm and Ilanz was low, so we took the main road. At first this was fine as the downward trajectory meant we were keeping up with car traffic. After about 20km, however, we stopped losing elevation quickly, but Mark had caught Boen and I by that point so we just drafted him. Both the GPS and road signs kept trying to get us to try the Swiss bike route, but I knew from past experience climbing in the opposite direction that the Swiss bike path had a tendency to turn into dirt, while the road tended to be smooth. We did have to turn off and use the bike path here and there to avoid construction on the main road. I did notice that the last 5km into Ilanz the bike path started looking more reasonable and made a note to try it next time.

Once in Ilanz we stopped at the water fountain at the same time as several other touring cyclists, one of whom was dipping their head into the water. I guessed that they were from some cold country and weren’t used to the heat but I was wrong—they were from South Africa! It turned out that one of them was planning to do the entire EuroVelo 15 route as a fund raiser. They had started in Andermatt, and planned to ride to Chur today, and then to the Bodensee and henceforth all the way to the North Sea. They were going to immediately ride on, but upon seeing that we next made a stop at the supermarket for ice cream they joined us.

We weren’t as fast as they were at eating, but once on the bike we quickly caught them and then passed up on the climb—we weren’t carrying as much weight as they were, and we were much more used to climbing as well. The canyon ride from Ilanz to Bonaduz has been a highlight in the area, taking you away from the busy main road and snaking up the canyon. To my surprise it wasn’t very hot, and once past the initial unshaded climb from Ilanz actually had a reasonable amount of shade.

“I’ve always wondered whether there are places where you can get a good view of the river canyon that we’ve ridden through, and it looks like this is it!”  Indeed, after we passed Versam, the road took us through a narrow spot in the river Canyon where a quick walk to a viewpoint gave us grand views of the valley and the other side of the river.

After that, the road descended swiftly into Bonaduz, where we followed the bike path signs to Reichenau-Tamins. Unfortunately, even though I’d asked if we wanted to stop in Bonaduz to buy food for the train ride, nobody heard me and we ended up at Reichenau-Tamins train station having just missed the train—the next one was not for an hour. Google maps told us that Tamins had an open grocery store where we could buy lunch, but when we headed there it was a stiff hard climb. In fact, once at the bike/ped tunnel we gave up riding and just hiked up the stairs and bought lunch and then went back to the train station to eat it.

The Rhine scenic train that picked us up was late, but that must have been according to plan. Because many of the stops along the route were “on demand” stops—passengers or would be passengers have to push a button at the station or on the train for the train to stop. Otherwise, the train would just barrel past the station. I don’t know how the SBB planners decided how much time to allocate, but by the time the train rolled into Disentis it was on time. The transfer to the Andermatt/Oberalp rolling stock was directly across the platform, so it was a very easy switch. This switch was necessitated by the requirement for cog railways to climb the pass, so this next train was a lot slower. We joked that we would have a race with the train to see whether the bikes could descend faster.

In fact, when we got out of the train and started riding, they actually had to hold our train so that the train climbing from Andermatt could reach the station first. We rolled down the pass and never looked back—the train never caught up to us. Once we rode through the summit gallery and the descent started in earnest, the train never came within sight. At the bottom of the pass we rode down the cobblestone street and back to Hospental—it was clear that not only was skipping the last 3 stops beneficial for saving money, it was also far faster!

Once back at home, we took showers, did laundry, and chilled out. Bowen and Xiaoqin returned but nobody felt like cooking, so we ate out at the same restaurant we ate at when we first arrived. After dinner, I took the kids out to the Hospental tower for a look see.

The tower (or Turm) had its own beautiful hiking trail around it, as well as stairs all the way to the top where we had views of the surrounding mountains. After the descent, the kids ran off with their much faster descending speeds and I was left walking after them. The path back to the house led past several residences, and in one of them there was  man sitting in his backyward. He saw me and told me that my kids were fine, and that American parents hover over their kids too much and he’d been here in Hospental for many years and never saw a kid got lost or get into trouble.

We then chatted for several minutes about the heat, the dangers of cycling in the heat, and how the Swiss had rejected a referendum to keep the population of the country under 10 million the week before, which he thought was a good thing. “The crazies always want something. The good news is that here in Switzerland they can’t bring this up for another 10 years or so.”

Review: A Second Chance at Eden

 I'm always wary of Peter F Hamilton's novels. They're long, bulky, and while they're frequently full of hard science fiction concepts, they always feel like the publisher cheaped out on the editor or just couldn't be bothered to rein him in when his books went into digressions that didn't have payoffs.

A Second Chance at Eden is a collection of Peter F. Hamilton's short stories that are set in the Confederation universe where Hamilton's novels are set in. The fact that they are short stories automatically rein in Hamilton's worst excesses. By contrast to his novels, these stories are tightly plotted, don't have irritating digressions, and you don't need to have the entire back story of the Confederation to understand them.

The titular story, in fact, is about the origin of the Edenists faction, and is a tightly plotted murder mystery that rivals the best of Alastair Reynolds. It shows that when Hamilton is given a short word count (or page count), he can actually write. The plotting is great, the characters are well fleshed out and have reasonable motivations, and the conclusion is more than satisfactory.

The other stories in this collection are perhaps not as memorable (sometimes the endings are abrupt), but they are all similarly well done, with the science part of the science fiction maybe occasionally hand wavy, but never devolving into outright fantasy.

If the length of Peter Hamilton's novels put you off (and well they should), this collection ought to convince you that he can write. He just always needed a much better editor than his publishers gave him.

June 25th: Gelmersee Hike

 We woke up, had breakfast, and drove back over the Furka pass, and at Gletsch, turned right and drove up the Grimsel pass. It was gorgeous that early in the morning, and we would have stopped for pictures but of course we had bought 9:40am uplift tickets so we were on a time crunch. I probably shouldn’t have worried as we made it to the parking lot  by 9:00am. While the parking lot was quite full it wasn’t overflowing and we didn’t have to resort to driving around to find parking.

Walking to the Gelmerbahn station, we made it so early that the operator gave us 9:20am tickets, giving us time to look at the suspension bridge before boarding the Funicular. At 107% grade, you abstractly know that this is going to be a steep ride, but nothing prepared me for how steep it felt. As the grade steepened, I thought I was going to fall out of the Funicular, making the retention bars around our lap not just perfunctory safety devices but necessary for psychological safety as well. I kept holding on to my backpack which was placed next to my feet just because I felt like it could fall out of the funicular as well.

When we were at the top I was quite relieved that we hadn’t booked the ride down. Gelmersee was at 1850m and therefore higher than Hospental was. It was a testament to the strength of the heat dome that Europe was experiencing that it still felt very warm. Part of it was that the air was completely still! We proceeded to do the hike around the lake. The hike reminded me a lot of the Hetch Hetchy backpacking trip we did back in 2020. Like the trip back then, it was very hot, despite walking near and around a body of water. There were flowers occasionally which were beautiful, but the constant exposure would only be interrupted by places where we actually went right next to the water.

Bowen and Boen were unencumbered by the desire to want to take pictures. Mark and I let them go ahead while we took our leisurely pace. Of course, this meant that they were well ahead of us when we got to all trail intersections. We simply assumed the kids would be OK and that we would eventually catch up to them. What we did not count on was that we got lost! When we look at the Garmin track after the hike, we would see that at one point where the hiking trail was supposed to take us along the rim of the lake, we instead walked onto the now dry lake bed instead! The drought in the alps had finally affected us directly. Either that, or we could post our Garmin track and claimed that we’d learned to walk on water.

We eventually figured this out and bee-lined for the nearest trail. Once there, the trail would lead us (finally!) into shade, and we got a chance to take pictures of streams running into the lake. We only caught the kids at the intersection where we could either walk back to the Gelmerbahn (which we had no intention of taking), or hike back down to Hotel Handegg.

The hike down was interesting enough to be worth the extra walk. While it was steep, it granted us views of the Grimsel road as well as several lakes along the way. The trail then intersected with the road, whereupon we had to cross the road and then follow the signs towards Hotel Handegg. While this section didn’t have the grand views the earlier section had, the trail actually crossed a waterfall which looked really nice. Then as we approached the hotel the trail gave us views onto the open road where we could see the parked car.

Since it was already 1pm, we stopped by the hotel restaurant and checked their lunch menu. Since it was acceptable, we stopped and ordered lunch. While waiting for the food to be delivered I noticed they had an EV charging station! I asked if we could use it and they replied in the affirmative. I grabbed the keys and ran over to the car, drove it over, and plugged it into the charging station. It was slow, but so was service at the hotel, and we weren’t looking for a charge to 100%. We just wanted enough to get over Sustens pass on the way home.

After lunch, we completed the loop back to the suspension bridge before turning around and getting into the car. From there, instead of retracing our drive earlier, we kept going down to Innerkirchen, where we made a quick stop at the supermarket for more food, and then drove up the Sustenspass to give a preview of Sunday’s route. I’d never actually seen the climb from this direction before, and it looked dramatic, though full of tunnels. At the summit we got off and took a walk up to the hospice which I’ve never visited, and took a few pictures of the stream running through the area.

Coming back down the Sustenspass we drove the car back up to Goschenen and through the car tunnel. We then went back to Hospental where Bowen had kept himself entertained all day. Xiaoqin was still far from home and told us to eat dinner without her. Boen was still on an Asian noodle kick and the car needed a charge, so we drove back to the Reuss mall and charged the car while we ate. Mark had noticed that as long as we stayed under an hour (and the charger was fast enough to give us a good charge during that time), the parking garage was actually free!

The Asian noodle place was a fast food for family place, and we had gotten there early enough to be seated right away, get served fast, and then leave all inside an hour. Xiaoqin came back about an hour after we returned (once again) to Hospental, and she ate the instant noodles I had bought in Innerkirchen along with some other food we’d bought the previous night.

We planned the next days’ rides. My idea was to ride the Oberalp pass the next day all the way down to Donat-Elms, and then take the train back to Andermatt. Then on Saturday we could ride St Gotthard and then take the train back as well. That would give us a half day of riding so we weren’t wasted on Sunday for the hard ride up the Sustens. I looked again for hotels in Meiringen, noting that nobody had AC there. Since the heat wave was still intense, I looked for a higher option. When I’d booked that hotel in Meiringen the thought was that we’d leave the car parked there and take the bus to Rosenlaui. However, the cost to park a car in Meiringen was no lower than the cost to park in Rosenlaui! I noticed that the Hotel Terrace at Nessental was available, had great reviews (especially for the Rosti at the hotel), and was considerably higher at 1000 meters. So I booked that and cancelled the Meiringen hotel instead.

Xiaoqin decided that she could take the bus with Bowen up to the St. Gotthard pass, and then hike back to Hospental the next day, which would be a pretty substantial hike, even if it was mostly downhill.