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.

June 24th: Devil's Bridge Hike and Natschen Hikes

Arturo left so early that I didn’t have time to say goodbye to him. But his plan worked and his ride went well. We ate breakfast and then drove down to what we thought was one of only 2 chargers in Andermatt only to discover that it was occupied and in use. No matter, we’d just drive down to the public parking lot next to the train station and do our hike first.

The parking lot charged 5 Francs for all day parking, so we paid. After we parked we walked towards where I thought the hike would start, but there were no obvious signs. Fortunately, the tourist information center was right there, so we walked in and asked for both directions to the hike and the availability of charging stations for the car.

It turned out that it was more a tourist attraction than a hike, but the tourist information had no trouble telling us how to walk there. There were multiple charging stations inside the huge parking lot underground at the Reuss shopping center/mall right at the edge of town. However, the tourist information employee confusingly told us it was at the Blu Hotel parking lot when it would later turn out that it had nothing to do with the hotel. The penalty was that the parking lot charged money as well, so we’d be paying twice: once for parking, and once for the charger.

Well, we’d already paid for parking at the train station, so we just opted to walk the extra 500m to get to the start of the walk to the Teufelsbrucke. The story behind the devil’s bridge was that bridging the Reuss river was considered so hard that apparently only the devil could do it. In the legend, the devil promised to do it at the cost of the soul of the first to cross the bridge. The villagers agreed to this and then tricked the devil by sending a goat to cross the bridge.

The hiking approach to the bridge first takes you on top of the gallery that the main road would follow. I’d ridden that gallery a few times and always called it the corkscrew tunnel for the way it weaved and turned as it made its way down to Goschenen. Once the hiking trail got to the bridge, it would descend under the main road through a staircase gated by iron doors. Once there you got as good a view of the bridge as anyone who’d driven or taken the train there, and could walk both up and down the bike path as well! Despite having ridden the road many times this was the first time I’d seen the bike path. While it was still unpleasant (you would still share the gallery with cars once in a while), the bike path did a good job of making the ride up from Goschenen to Andermatt reasonable, as opposed to something only a masochist would do. Riding down, of course you’re as fast as car traffic and would never use the bike path!

When we’d gotten our fill, we walked back the way we came to the car, and then drove the car into the Reuss mall to get the car charged. Once we figured it out it wasn’t bad, and we walked back up only to see a performance of Swiss flag hurling or Fahnenschwingen. It was cool and we made a video before walking down to the supermarket/coop to buy lunch.

After lunch, we started our second hike, which was to go from Andermatt to Natschen, the first train station on the Oberalp. It was warm, a bit too much for Boen in combination with the steepness, so he threw a temper tantrum and started hiking down. Xiaoqin and Bowen would join him and have ice cream at the main train station, but Mark and I would do the rest of the hike, which ironically started being shaded as soon as Boen left!

Once at the top, it was just a few minutes wait before the train picked us up and reunited us with everyone else in Andermatt. Ironically, the reason it was such a short wait was because the train was late!

Reunited with everyone, we went back to the car and drove it over to the supermarket to shop for supplies for dinner as well as breakfasts. We then drove back to our AirBnB, had showers, made dinner and ate it.

After dinner, Xiaoqin thought it was a good idea to see the sunset from Oberalp pass, and since the car was charged we drove up and saw the only lighthouse on top of an alpine pass in Europe, as well as the beautiful reservoir and did small sections of what would be multi-day hikes. By the time we got back to our AirBnB it was 9:00pm. We debated what to do. Mark said he could stand another hiking day to get more rest in. Xiaoqin wanted to ride Furka and possibly Grimsel pass as well.

I did a bunch of research and it turned out that Triftbrucke was not possible because the cable car was down. ChatGPT suggested Gelmerbahn and the attendant Gelmersee hike. The downward Funicular was booked up in the afternoon, but I checked and the descent was quite doable by hiking, so we just booked just the upwards ticket on the steepest open Funicular in Europe and went to bed.