Sojourning in Switzerland

Half-way up Zugspitze Olly decided that we should make the detour to Switzerland that we had been discussing.  It happened that two sets of our friends were on holiday there and it wouldn’t be hugely out of the way for us to make a detour to visit them. Once we were off the cable car the next conundrum was whether to purchase a Swiss vignette or not. These are quite expensive (approx 30 euro) as they last a calendar year. After much discussion we payed for both an Austrian and Swiss vignette (which was going to massively decrease our driving time) and set off west.

We split the journey by staying a night at a motorway services. We hadn’t done this before but had read good reviews about free hot showers and modern toilets. The facilities exceeded our expectations, there was free drinking water and hot showers with inbuilt hair dryers and the craziest modern toilets I have seen outside of Japan.

The toilet seat folded down to prevent people from peeing on it and the soap and water are over the toilet bowl. It even flushes itself when you open the door!

We had just settled in for the evening when we started to hear loud banging noises. I began to wonder if we were parked next to a military firing range. On closer inspection it was fireworks. It turns out that it was Swiss national day, which apparently is quite a big thing.

In the morning after our free hot showers we headed in the direction of Gstaad to meet up with Tom and Grace. They were staying here in between some guided mountaineering days in the Swiss alps. 

We had a catch up over a picnic, neither Olly or I had thought to check the exchange rate and therefore we accidentally spent £9.40 on 8 slices of ham. Oops, we had forgotten how expensive Switzerland is. In the afternoon we went for a walk around Lauenensee. It rained a little but we managed to get back to the car before the biggest downpour.

Tom and Grace had had a booking.com issue and although their hotel was meant to had a communal kitchen when they checked in they found it didn’t. Instead, we cooked the ingredients in the van at our campsite and made some via ferrata plans over some beers.

Both Grace and I were a little concerned over how hard the via ferrata was going to be, especially after my last grade D Austrian via ferrata experience. However with Olly planning to pack a rope in case it was as bad as the last one we headed off to Leysin in the morning.

We got the cable car up the mountain and had a short walk in to the Tour d'Aï. Even coming up in the cable car the via ferrata route looked impressive but also imposing. We decided to have some lunch before starting and we managed to slot ourselves perfectly in between two groups such that we didn’t catch up with the people in front and those behind us didn’t catch us up. It’s always so much more pleasant climbing like this.

The route was very vertical, even slightly overhanging in places and very exposed. Although unlike the other grade D via ferrata there were many well placed stemples. This made it much more fun as I didn’t feel like I was going to die. I would highly recommend this route if you are in the area.

At the top we had an awesome view of Lake Geneva and could watch some paragliders flying past. The walk off the top back to the cable car was also pleasant with an extra bonus section of via ferrata. 

Back in the valley we had an explore around Leysin and an ice-cream. Tom and Grace went to check into their hotel whilst we went to check out a potential parking spot for the night. We found a car park with some easy climbing routes, some picnic tables and a good view over the valley.

That evening we went out for burgers, most of the restaurants seemed to be closed as if the town was on a summer holiday. This seemed odd as there were quite a few tourists around in the daytime. Again we were shocked by the cost of food in Switzerland, £22 each for a burger and chips! After dinner Tom and Grace came back to the van for a few drinks and we formulated a climbing plan for the following day.

Tom had located a crag in the guide book about half an hours drive out of Leysin. This turned out to be incredibly narrow and at some points we thought we might be driving down a bike track. This crag was great as it had 50+ routes of climbing grade 3-6. All short single pitch, and the even better despite the rock being limestone and the grades being easy the rock wasn’t horrendously polished.

We tackled a few routes which were quite different to everything I have climbed before, there were lots of small channels which often required having both hands and both feet in line. After some lunch in the sitting in the sunshine in pleasant surrounding with good company we headed back to the cars and said our goodbyes.

Tom and Grace are off to spend a week climbing Swiss 4000m peaks which sounds amazing.

We headed towards Grindelwald where we were going to meet up with Adam, Cat and baby Eddie. That evening we had some drinks (thanks to Adam and Cat for supplying Italian alcohol), admired their new van — which is now baby safe — and discussed both of our recent van adventures. They had just driven up from Rome. The great thing about van life is you can have such flexible plans, the downside is the logistics of organising to meet up with anyone when everyone has such flexible plans. Adam and I have been monitoring each other’s location on Google Maps for a few weeks to work out if or when our paths might cross.

Eddie has grown a lot since we last met him at the UBSS annual dinner when he was four days old. He is now approximately one third of my body length tall despite being only 5 months.

After a reasonably late night for us and quite a few drinks we returned to our van next door. We had rough plans of a walk from the car park up the canyon and then to traverse around the base of the mountains following the Eiger trail. 

In the car park there was a sign saying the Grindelwald glacier used to extend as far as the car park but has hugely receded in the last 50 years. It also described how ice from the glacier used to be harvested and a one meter cube size block was sent to the Mayor of Berlin for advertising purposes in 1977.

We headed up a steep path in the woods for a couple of hours. We passed the Coca-Cola shelter which unfortunately did not sell Coca Cola but was set up as a free shelter with BBQ facilities, a supply of wood and even a sharp axe for chopping up logs. We saw a couple of these shelters around Switzerland and I think its a really great community facility.

Eventually we emerged out of the woods but not before Cat had shown off her foraging skills finding heaps of wild strawberries, raspberries and bilberries.

We were now on the Eiger trail and could see the top of the peak was enshrouded in cloud. The North Face of the Eiger is steeped in mountaineering history. The most famous story is that of the tragedy of the 1936 expedition to climb the north face. The whole four person team were killed whilst trying to back off their climbing attempt, with Toni Kurz hanging from a rope perishing only feet away from the rescue team. This earned the North face the name “Mordwand” or death wall. The north face has claimed the lives of a further 60 climbers since it was finally summited in 1938.

Not wanting to get too close to the actual mountain we continued along the trail to the Berghaus Alpiglen hut where we stopped for a beer. Here we sat and admired the views and were reminded of the dangers of the mountain when we witnessed a big rock fall on the upper slopes. 

I was pretty excited as the hut sold a kids ice cream which was served in a plastic snail. I think the waitress thought this was ordered for Eddie but lucky for me he hasn’t developed a taste for ice cream yet. Suitably refreshed we decided to save some money and walk back to the vans rather than ride the cog train. Again we avoided the rain and had a pleasant walk back down to the valley. In the evening we went our for more burgers which weren’t as extortionately expensive as the last ones then retired to Cat and Adams van for more drinks. They have a great set up for socialising with the front passenger seats swivelling and enough room to put up a table.

In the morning we said our goodbyes and headed back east to climb some more peaks.