Day 20: Meiringen to Rapperswil

 

We got up at 5:30am and were packed by 6:00. By 7:00am, we had the bikes out of storage and mounted and ready to go. When Andreas saw me he said, "When's your train?" "8:45am" "It'll take you all of 20 minutes to get there.." "But I need to buy train tickets too." "Oh, in that case, we'll have breakfast early for you." By 7:15, breakfast was ready and we were chomping away at it, appreciating the extra time Andreas had made for us.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

When it came time to settle up accounts, we paid with a combination of our Swiss Francs and Euros, since everyone other than I wanted to get rid of their Swiss Francs. I saved just enough for the train ticket to Luzern.

We descended to the intersection with the Lammi restaurant quickly, stopping only once to let the post bus by. At the intersection, a cyclist who was waiting at the intersection looked up at us, saw me, and said, "I read your blog on the internet." "What's your name?" "Sean" "Send me e-mail." "I will!" The funny thing is that I met Jobst Brandt at the very same intersection in 2005 as well, so I guess this really is the corner where cyclists meet.

At the Meiringen station, the ticket machines were busy, but I finally bought my train ticket, and we loaded up on to the train when it arrived under cloudy skies. Upon arrival in Luzern, we said good-bye to everyone else, and then proceeded onto the remaining part of the trip. My plan was still to make it to Austria to ride the Grossglockner highway, something that had eluded me for years due to bad weather. Now, the easiest way to do this was to take the train from Switzerland, but that would be extremely expensive. The cheap way to do this was to ride our bike to the German border, board the train there using the Bayern ticket, which for 32.50 EUR would take us all the way to Salzburg, where we could head south along my original intended route. This had the additional advantage that we'd see parts of Switzerland I had never seen before.

We arrived in Luzern under cloudy skies with a few rain drops. After exploring the town for a bit and finding nothing we wanted, we headed out towards Adligenswil after eating a supermarket lunch. The climb away from the lake didn't take very long, and soon we were descending towards Arth and Immensee. This was a lake I had never seen before, and the bike path along it was very pretty.

Past Arth, we followed signs to Sattel, which granted us nice views of the Lauerzersee from up high. As we climbed up to Sattel we saw another tandem couple come down the hill with panniers, the only other tandem cycle tourists we would see for the entire trip.
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At Sattel, we had a choice, to visit Agerisee, which I had seen in 2005, or take the most direct route towards Zurichsee along the national route. Lisa wanted the direct route along highway 8, which had a bike lane. The road was busy, and not too interesting until we approached Pfaiffikon, where the road suddenly dove towards the Zurichsee in a series of sweeping turns down to the lake shore.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Pfaiffikon didn't look interesting, but there was a long bridge across to Rapperswil that I wanted to ride across to, and ride across we did, arriving at the scenic town of Jona on the other side. A visit to the tourist information office revealed that all the hotels were booked up, but the youth hostel was available. It was the most expensive youth hostel I had ever stayed at, and was a little out of the way, but the town looked interesting so we took it.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

We had dinner by the lake, did some grocery shopping, and walked around town after a quick stop at the hostel to drop off our stuff. Sunset was glorious, and it felt good to be riding again after 4 days of hiking.

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Day 19: Hiking to Grosse Scheidegg via the Romantic Road

 

Phil and I proposed doing Hornseeli backwards from the last time we did it. Kekoa and Cynthia were skeptical, because Hornseeli can be muddy and Kekoa's Five Fingers and Cynthia's sandals were not up for a soaking. We decided to just hike up and then turn around if it didn't turn out to be good, so after breakfast I got a bus pass for 5 people from Andreas and we set off on the hiking trail up towards Grosse Scheidegg. It was still cloudy, and the roads were wet, but we soon ran into cyclists riding up the mountain.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Daniel Gries and his wife were on a month long trip, and planned to do some backpacking as well, so not only did they have panniers on their bikes, but they also had backpacks with gear on their back. That did not look too comfortable to me, but they were willing to get off the bike and walk, which is something I'm not willing to do.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

As we approached Schwarzwaldalp, we found the weather clearing up slightly. At Schwarzwaldalp, we found two signs pointing to Hornseeli, one coming from the way we came, and one pointing up the hill. Of course I chose the one pointing up the hill, thereby missing out on the Romantic Road once again. As Lisa likes to say, I'm not very romantic. The route we ended up on was some sort of cross-country ski path that rose steeply through the woods towards Oberlager. I had a tough time believing that cross country skiiers could tackle anything this steep, but since I'm not an avid cross-country skiier myself I must be under-estimating the amount of grip those skis provide.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Upon emerging from the woods, we walked across a cow field full of cows, and the path kept rising to 2000m from there to the junction with the romantic road, while the scenery once again got better and better. The clouds lifted and we started getting sunshine, which together with the snow covered peaks made for some pretty nice pictures.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

At the junction with Oberlager, we had to decide whether or not to tackle Hornseeli, walk down the romantic road, or walk up to Grosse Scheidegg on the same. Phil and I wanted to do Hornseeli and the romantic road, but we were out-voted by Lisa and Cynthia, who wanted an easier day. I knew if I were to do the romantic road with Phil I would never hear the end of it from Lisa, so I reluctantly agreed to make it a short and easy day.

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Easy day it might be, but it was no less scenic. It was a good way for Phil, Cynthia, and Kekoa to finish their trip, with memories of what is still the prettiest place on the planet I've ever had the fortune to explore.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

We had lunch at the top, took the bus back to Rosenlaui, and the others lounged and started packing while Lisa and I went to the Rosenlaui Gletscherschultz to spend an hour or two staring at the cascades that dug a gorge through the granite.

Dinner was once again another fabulous concoction. We repacked our bags. I wanted to get rid of everything so we only had 2 panniers and nothing hanging out or in between racks. I got rid of the useless Dinotte light, we gave the hiking stick for Phil to bring home, and I borrowed some of Phil's unused SD cards. We filled up our portable shampoo/soap containers with soap from the big bottles and left the big containers in the hotel. Cynthia wanted to catch the 8:45am train, and since Roberto had a ticket with them, we could use that ticket all the way to Luzern with them, thereby only having to pay for one train ticket to Meiringen.

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Day 18: Grindelwald to Rosenlaui

 

 

The hotel's breakfast buffet was packed this morning, since a ton of folks had checked in the night before. Since we had climbed Grosse Scheidegg before, and had too much stuff to bring up the mountain, Lisa elected to ride the bus to the top of Grosse Scheidegg with the panniers, while I would get to ride up Grosse Scheidegg with the unloaded tandem. It was raining lightly as we left Lisa at the bus stop, but by the time we got to where the road became a single lane, the rain had mostly died down and I had warmed up to the point where I had to shed my jacket. We had mistakenly made the division wrong and calculated the grade from Grindelwald to the top of Grosse Scheidegg to be about an 18-20% grade. In reality, the grade varied between 10% and 15%, which was in line with what the other side of the pass would generate. Phil and I rode up steadily, and enjoyed the quiet and beauty of the pass where most of the tourists were scared off by the rain.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Lisa met us at the top of Grosse Scheidegg, having waited for an hour and a half for us to show up. We mounted the panniers onto the tandem and descended to Rosenlaui just ahead of the post bus, which could not possibly keep up with a tandem on these grades. Upon arriving at Rosenlaui, we left our bags in the lobby and our bikes in the wine cellar (though I would learn later that the new wing had a special bike lobby!), and set off for Engelhornhutte. Phil and I had done this hike before the hard way, by going to Kalterbrunnen first, and I wanted to try it the easy way. I also noticed that there was a side trip from the hutte that would take you up to what I thought mistakenly was the glacier.

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Well, going up the route the easy way was pretty steep, but granted us great views of the Rosenlaui Glacier. As we wound up our way on the over-cast and cool day, we got grand views of the valley, including Hotel Rosenlaui far below us. Lisa decided to turn around just before we got to the hutte, and I made my way up the alternate track, which turned out to be just an ice field.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Upon returning to the hotel, we found that our rooms were ready, and Christine had given us first choice of rooms in the hotel, which was very nice of her. Lisa and I ate an ice cream while waiting for Phil to catch up to us and Cynthia and Kekoa to come back from their visit to the Gletscherschultz.

The four course meal that Andreas served was as nice as ever, and it was good to see Cynthia and Kekoa now, right at the end of the trip. They had done several passes I had never done before, including Splurgen, Mallorja, and Julier, and Albula, which I had done before on a previous trip. They didn't have as good a time in Meiringen as we did in Grindelwald, and we exchanged pictures and trip stories. It sounded like they had a good time.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

After dinner we took a walk outside in the cool misty evening. Gentle light from the setting sun filtered through the clouds and lit up the granite mountains around us. It didn't matter how many times I had returned here: it was different every time, and I was every bit as entranced.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

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Day 17: Hiking Bachalpsee

 

We woke up to another clear and beautiful day, and quickly started heading up the First side of Grindelwald. Lisa wasn't sure how far she wanted to go today, but the hiking stick helped her a lot, and soon the beauty of the surroundings inspired her to forget her aches and move up the mountain. Unlike the Kleine Scheidegg side, the First side is completely exposed even at the bottom, and it wasn't long before we started sweating in the morning sun.

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Since this side of the valley got a lot more sun, there were flowers, even at the lower elevation where the other side would have trees preventing low grasses from growing. At Bort, Lisa proposed to take the more shaded flower trail up rather than the direct route to First along the Gondola line, which was more exposed. The flower trail definitely had a lot of flowers, but rarely in a good place for good pictures. We shot lots of flower pictures but nothing I would be happy to show others. Halfway between Bort and Waldspitz, we ran into a bunch of locals on their morning walk. When Lisa asked them if they were locals, they said, "Yes, we are village people." I expected them to break out into a rendition of "YMCA", but I guess they didn't realize what they were saying.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

At Waldspitz, which looked like an almost newly built hotel, we stopped for ice tea and to watch paragliders float up amongst the alps, juxtaposing their brightly colored parachutes against the backdrop of the Wetterhorn, the Eiger, and other surrounding mountains. Past Waldspitz, the trail becomes exposed again, and after a short flat section, suddenly veered off along a stream and took up steeply up the mountain.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

This was where the hike started to get really pretty. The stream wound along a valley while behind us the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau loomed behind us while the green hills around Bachalpsee beckoned ahead of us. At a short rise I ran into a Japanese looking person coming down the mountain. She smiled at me so I asked her, "Nihongjin desu ka?" "Eei, chugokujin desu!" Boy, I was wrong 2 for 2 twice in a row. We chatted for a bit and discovered that not only were we both Chinese, Linlin went to the same high school I went to in Singapore. We exchanged e-mail addresses and then went on, since she was heading down the mountain and we were heading up.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Bachalpsee turned out to be a beautiful tarn, but was over-run by tourists. Most tourists took the First Gondola up the mountain and then walked the short hike over to Bachalpsee, resulting in the place being over-run with people, many of them needing hiking poles to even walk the short gentle stretch between the ski station and here. Nevertheless, the walk between Bachalpsee and First was beautiful, and well worth the time.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

At First, we took a quick lunch, and then proceeded down the steep trail towards Waldspitz that came off the side of the First gondola. While the alternate, more exposed route back to Bort would avoid having to retrace our steps through the flower trail, I was far more intrigued by the steep descent back through the other side of the river valley which had led us up to Bachalpsee. This traverse is not for the faint of heart, as the trail falls steeply on one side, but Lisa had her hiking stick, and I didn't mind at all. The scenery was spectacular as a result, making the effort worth while.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

By this time, however, dark clouds were starting to form up over the mountains, and as we got off the single-track onto the dirt road towards Waldspitz, we started to feel rain drops. Fortunately, the flower trail was mostly under tree cover, so we made the descent towards Bort in a hurry. The rain picked up again, however, within half a kilometer of Bort, and we saw at the gondola station that every car coming up the mountain was empty, while every car leaving the station was full. We ran that least 200m and made it to the gondola station before the thunderstorm really started hammering down. Looking at my Garmin 500, I saw that it was only 3:30pm. "The regularly scheduled thunderstorm was early today!"

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

We were quite pleased with ourselves for having done the hike before the rain, and were happy to take the gondola down. When the rain died down, I did laundry again, and we had nice big dinners in town. I reflected that my avoidance of Grindelwald in the past was really unnecessary. While the town was touristy and packed with Japanese tourists, most of the hiking was done in really nice country where we did not see that many people. And because the town was relatively big, we found lodging at a reasonable price.

That night, a couple of mountain bikers checked in, and one of them, Nina, showed me all the maps she had for her mountain biking trip. It was impressive and inspiring, and led to me wanting to do a more rough-stuff oriented tour next year.

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Day 16: Hiking Kleine Scheidegg

 

The day once again greeted us with sun shine in the morning, with beautiful views of all the mountains around us. We started joking about the Swiss and their regularly scheduled 4:30pm thunderstorms. At 7:00am, we were the only folks at the hotel having breakfast. By 8:00am, we were out the door and heading down towards Grindelwald Grund (900m). I chose to do Kleine Scheidegg today because it was a touristy hike, and I expected even more tourists on Saturday.

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The trail starts off steeply from Grindelwald Grund, winding along the hillsides and occasionally intersecting with the farm road or mountain bike path. I was also clearly over my cold at this point as I felt good and could tackle the walk at a brisk pace, but that was clearly too much for both Phil and Lisa. That was OK, since once in a while I could turn around and stare at the beautiful scenery behind us. At one point, I saw a black hat in the distance. I also saw a big huge backpack, a guidebook in hand, and a giant water bottle sticking out of the backpack. This led me to conclude that the owner must be a Japanese tourist, as she looked kind of Asian. I did not expect to be proven wrong, since my assessment of her pace was that she was going the speed I was, and neither of my companions could sustain that. Imagine my surprise, then, when at a shaded section of the climb I saw her come our way and say in an English accent, "I think the mountain is closed!" "No way." "There's a fence up there and it goes all the way across the road." "It's not closed. Worse comes to worse we can climb over it." She shrugged and walked back with me to the fence. "The Swiss, being the Swiss, if they did close the mountains, would have announcements all the way at the bottom of the hill, not halfway up." And indeed, the fence had a hiker's bypass around it that clearly indicated that we were not intended to be turned back.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

The young lady introduced herself as Flora Liu, and we invited her to hike with us, slow as we were compared to her. She was a student of Economics from London, but was born and raised in Shanghai and on a solo trip through Switzerland before flying back to China for the summer.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

We soon arrived at Blandegg, but it was a little early for the mountain cafe, and we pressed on to Alpiglen, where Lisa and Flora spent some time playing with goats. Flora was tempted to do the hike over to the base of the Eiger from Alpiglen, but decided to stick with her original plan of hiking over the Kleine Scheidegg to Lauterbrunnen. We would separate there and do the classic Panaromic trail, since Lisa had hopes of spotting Edelweiss in the wild, which were typically only found over 2000m.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Hiking in the Swiss Alps is not a wilderness experience. You get to see lots of other people, sign posts, mountain bikers, and even a solar-powered, honor system, cheese vending refrigerator. The flip side of it is that you get water fountains, gondolas and trains to bail you out if you tire, and restaurants at the top of passes that serve ice cream. You can easily hike with just one water bottle, trusting to your ability to get to shelter and train if the weather turns bad. And the old hotels on top of Kleine Scheidegg just don't look ugly to me, unlike many buildings in America that are built in mountains as MacMansions or ski resorts.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

As we approached Kleine Scheidegg (2061m), the views got better and better. I finally reconciled the fact that Kleine Scheidegg was taller than Grosse Scheidegg (1961m), but realizing that Scheidegg must mean saddle, and the "Grosse" part referred to the width of the saddle, not the height. We saw the Eiger's characteristic triangular shape, and I slowly learned (after all these years) to identify the Moench and the Jungfrau.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

At the Kleine Scheidegg train station, I invited Flora to join us for lunch, but she demurred, preferring to look around and then leave for Lauterbrunnen. Phil, Lisa and I ate a quick lunch at the train station and headed along the smooth gentle trail towards Mannlichen.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

The classic panoramic trail from Mannlichen to Kleine Scheidegg exceeded my expectations. Not only did you get the classic view of the three great mountains in the area, you also got grand views of Grindelwald, the First summit (which we would attempt the next day), and Grosse Scheidegg. If you had a panorama feature of the camera, you would spend all day around here exercising it.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

To add to the unfairness of it all, the trail also had flowers galore. We spotted them in all sizes and all colors, and to be honest I'm not enough of a naturalist to identify more than 2 or 3 anywhere, and the variety here just overwhelmed me to the point where I did not even bother trying. All I did was trying to make pretty pictures and wish I had my 5D2, tripod, filters, and the works. I need to make a separate photography-oriented trip to Switzerland.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

By the time we got to Mannlichen, Lisa was tired enough that she refused to hike any more and we took the expensive Gondola down to Grindelwald Grund, where we revisited a grocery store where Lisa had left her arm warmers to find them waiting for us. On the way back to Hotel Alpenblick, we bought some detergent, since I wanted to do laundry. I also spotted stores selling hiking sticks for about 20CHF, which was a bargain if we did 3 more hikes, so Lisa bought one so that the morrow's hike wasn't as painful.

When we got to the hotel I looked at my Garmin 500 and saw that we had hiked more than 20km, and over 1400m of climbing, making this "rest day" a nice challenging walk. I assured Lisa and Phil that tomorrow's hike would be easier.

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Grindelwald

We did have a tour, but was stoped short by rain. We made it to innsbruck bit then were stuck. Never one to fight mother nature, we saw that interlaken was less rainy and so ended up there. We then did grosser scheidegg, grimsel,furka, San bernardino, klausen and sustens, where lisa and I set a new speed record: 129kph according to the Garmin 500.

Cynthia and Kekoa got tired of tandem speed and took off to take in splurgen, mallorja, Juliet, and albula as well. We'll regroup in rosenlaui on Sunday beforee Phil,Cynthia, Kekoa return to the us.

Day 15: Goschenen to Meiringen

 

Having failed to eat at the Lammi Restaurant twice on this trip, I was determined not to make Lammi the lunch spot today. We got up early, had a hearty breakfast, packed our bags, and rolled down the hill to Wassen (930m) where the climb to Sustens Pass (2224m) began. The descent to Wassen was fast, hitting speeds in excess of 45mph.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Sustens pass is the classic Swiss-engineered climb. It has a consistent 8-10% grade throughout its 21km or so, and many consider it boring because you can see the summit from a long way, which makes the gradual approach on the climb an exercise in frustration. On the single bike I had never felt this frustration, because I always moved fast enough to keep boredom at bay. On the tandem, however, it felt like a long grind and I started to understand how others frequently felt. It took us well over 3 hours to make the summit, but we made the summit by 12:30pm.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

After a quick picture at the summit lake we descended Sustens pass. Since we were in a hurry to make the Lammi restaurant before lunch hour was up, we minimized shooting pictures, videos or anything that would slow us down. In fact, after the first set of tunnels and hair pins I over took a white car!

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Sustens pass is spectacular. You get series of tunnels, wide turns, sharp hairpins, waterfalls spraying you as you enter the tunnels, and dramatic, glorious scenery all around you. It is also a very fast descent, and a long one. It took us no less than 45 minutes to make it from top to bottom, and that was with only one stop to wait for Phil who was stuck behind the white car.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Lisa's bike computer read 129kph, while mine read around 79kph. I was delighted, but really should have been skeptical about the 129kph number. That did seem a bit high, and could easily have been caused by the many tunnels we traversed on the descents. We made the Lammi restaurant, and the Bratwurst with noodles was as good as I remembered it. This was the Bratwurst that made all the other sausages I ever had in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland seem sad.

We were in Meiringen Valley 2 days ahead of when we were due at Rosenlaui. We could stay in Meiringen, but I proposed that we would have been better of taking the train to Grindelwald and hiking for 2 days and then riding over to Rosenlaui via Grosse Scheidegg. Both Phil and Lisa were receptive, so we headed down to the Meiringen train station and bought train tickets what seemed like an incredibly expensive set of train tickets.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

It poured as I was in the Grindelwald tourist information center getting housing. All the holiday apartments were taken, and the one place that was available did not answer the phone, so we ended up looking at hotels. Hotel Alpenblick offered us a private room for an exceedingly good price, provided that we stayed Saturday night in shared accommodations. The price was so good that it more than offset the price of the train tickets we had just taken from Meiringen, so we took the offer.

Phil volunteered to ride out in the rain to pick up the room, and Lisa and I waited for the rain to dissipate a bit before making the hotel. After we settled in, the rain storm petered out. We went to town to buy shampoo, shower gel, and dinner. After dinner we discovered to our surprise that the Mont-Bell store was open, and there Phil found a pair of hiking shoes that fit him. They were 120CHF, but I pointed out that if he hiked for 4 days in them, that was like paying 30CHF per day in rent for those shoes, and he would have these really good shoes to bring back with him to Munich. He bought the shoes.

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