Interlaken, Switzerland

We arrived late our first night in Interlaken after a long day on 5 different trains to get here from Nice.  It was dark, but a nice quiet town with hardly any vehicle traffic.  Our big event of the first night was to go to the small grocery store that was open late to get some food after we had checked in at the hostel. We noticed on the walk there was a large light way up in the sky that appeared to be floating in the middle of nowhere, which we assumed had to be some restaurant on the top of one of the mountains, that were invisible at night.  It was a very weird feeling as we could feel that the mountains were all around us but we couldn't see them.

The next day we decided to do our first hike on the nearby mountain, Harder Kulm.  Although the lady at the front desk advised us against doing this hike without proper footwear and equipment, we decided it would be a nice challenging hike to start out.  The morning had very poor weather with rain and lots of clouds and fog which provided poor visibility, so it was better to wait for the biggest mountains for the next day which was supposed to be clearer.  We ended up hiking to the top in a couple hours over a distance of 4.1 km and an elevation change of 800 m.  The weather was very weird as it started off chilly but we ended up shedding all of our extra layers by about half way up.  We imagined the hike would be similar to a rainforest hike as the humidity was so high and we were surrounded by fog the entire climb.  There was one opening on the way up where we travelled through ranging cows with staring problems. This was a messy leg of the trip as it was muddy and full of cow pies.  I also got a nice little boost of energy when I decided to jump over a small fence that turned out to be electrically charged. The top of the mountain was at elev. 1322 m and was almost completely immersed in clouds at the top, clearing up a bit later so we could get some views and cool pictures.

Kev at top of Harder Kulm - Elev. 1322 m ASL

View of Interlaken from the top of Harder Kulm - Elev. 1322 m ASL

Today, we decided to head into the Jungfrau region where the "Top of Europe" (Jungfraujoch) is located.  We took a couple trains up into the mountains and got off at the Alpiglen station to start our hike of the Eiger Trail, which is located under the huge Eiger North Wall and leads up to Eigergletscher and an excellent view of the glaciers on Monch and Jungfraujoch.  This hike was a bit longer than the previous day at about 2.5 hours and we travelled from elev. 1615 m to elev. 2320 m above sea level.  The hike was came with the warning of "For well-equipped and experienced hikers only" as it was fairly steep at some points, however, we managed with our running shoes once again.  It was an excellent workout as we did it uphill, when it seems that most prefer the downhill option.  The weather cooperated and gave us some clear skies up until the very tips of the highest mountains so we managed to get some incredible views.

Kev and Holly at start of Eiger Trail - Elev. 1615 m ASL

Holly at Eigergletscher with glacier between Monch and Jungfraujoch in background - Elev. 2320 m ASL

We got access to a computer today so we were able to upload some pictures as well as type on an actual keyboard to provide a little extra description.

Kev