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| Hiking The Swiss Alps by Shirley-Dale Easley | 3/20/2006 |
Time and again it has seemed to me that I must drop everything and flee to Switzerland once more. It is a longing, a deep, strong, tugging longing – that is the word. -Mark Twain
It is late afternoon when I first see the mountains. I step from the train in the village of Kandersteg, Switzerland and the great, majestic Bernese Alps, both beautiful and terrifying, rise before my eyes. No words, pictures or travel brochures could have prepared me for the sight. The sun is a spotlight on the wild and jagged peaks creating shadows that stretch and move continuously in the upper valleys. Glaciers drape like frosting on the monstrous pinnacles that completely surround the village. Red, yellow and blue wings of paragliders hang in the air. The villagers are going about their daily tasks, shopping, gardening, chatting, seemingly oblivious to the magnificence that is literally taking my breath away.
I am part of an Eastern Canadian tour group arriving for a two week hiking vacation in the Swiss Alps. Spirit Adventure, a Nova Scotia-based company, directs our tour. Our guide and company founder, Kathy Didkowsky, meets us at the airport in Zurich and travels with us to Kandersteg. We are transported to Chalet Onyx and welcomed with open arms by the owners, Heinz and Elizabeth Nagel-Hari.
We take a 'wanderweg' past flower-decked chalets, through gates, across bridges and meadows to the village. Kandersteg, at 1200 meters, is in the heart of the Bernese Oberland. The village boasts 350 km of rambling routes and mountain paths, a mountaineering school, a paragliding school and a riding school. It is at the north portal of the Loetschberg Tunnel, served directly by rail connections from most international cities on the European continent. The road ends here.
Later, at a table laden with food and wine, our hosts tell us the stories of the mountain peaks, which they call 'horns'. It is here we learn that each mountain has its own personality. Through the dining room window we can see them: the Gellihorn is 'the old man sleeping' and the Fiscistock is sometimes called a castle. They point to a hut at an impossible height on the Doldenhorn and tell us we will be climbing there. The Balmhorn is the highest peak in sight and the Bier slopes into the pasture behind the house. Eventually, snug under down comforters, we sleep with these silent giants looming outside.
We awaken to sunshine, the smell of coffee and the tinkle of cowbells. Once more our table is weighted down with cheese, yogurt, cereals and fresh bread from the bakery. Then, Kathy begins our gradual acclimatization to mountain travel, knowing it is impossible to fully train for such heights in Eastern Canada. Our climb the first day is to Oeschinensee, a blue-green glacial lake 500 m above Kandersteg. Our entire group participates from the youngest, a seven year old bay, to a 75 year old grandmother. The trails are switchbacks, trod for a thousand years. Water catapults off the mountains, bringing small stones and gravel on the way. We stop often to fill our water bottles from the icy streams and to gaze upward. The grandeur is astounding.
We reach a mountain inn easily accessible by trail and chairlift. The glacial clad mountains feed into the water of the lake. To the right the trail leads to the Frundenhutte (2562 m.), one of the eight huts in the mountain test sponsored by the village of Kandersteg with medal rewards. A three-hour climb from Oeschinensee, the trail is classified as difficult. To the left of the lake the trail leads to the Blumisalphutte (2837 m.), almost a four-hour walk over moderately difficult terrain.
Riding the chairlift down the mountain is much like flying. We pass within touching distance of a group of women in long skirts making hay on the steep slopes using wooden rakes and carrying hay in bundles to a weathered shed.
After the evening meal, as Elizabeth administers foot care, she tells us of her childhood in Kandersteg. She and her father took the cows to the mountains in summers, returning in the fall, hauling the cheese down on long sleds. "There are a few pockets of the old Switzerland left," she says, "And this is one of them". Just before bed Heinz tells us that it will rain at twelve minutes past four tomorrow. It is best to stay at a lower level. Our guide tells us that he can predict the weather to the minute from the winds and is seldom wrong.
Walking the Gasterntal Valley early the next morning, we find many mountains shrouded in mist. We hike through a tunnel and skirt the edge of the charging Kander River, its gritty waters pounding through the gorge on its way to the Thunersee. As the fog lifts, the mountains startle us with their ominous presence. What forces of nature could have churned these great hunks of rock, these striated masses of granite out of the earth?
Kathy is invaluable, knowing our needs before we do. She watches our exhaustion level, our intake of water, the sun's glare, our foot comfort and loose patches of rock. Although unaware of the gradual climb, we have come up to the Selden Valley, past farms and hillsides covered with wild delphiniums. Bluebells grow from cracks in rocks. Edelweiss has been over-picked and now grows far up the mountain out of reach.
An easy hour from the Selden Valley is the Gfallalp Hutte (1850 m.). Passing a waterfall and on to the top provides a magnificent view of the Gasterntal and up over the Kanderfin Glacier. From here it is possible to hike the demanding route to the Lotschenpass (2690 m.). It is necessary to cross one of the main routes to the Valais used by travelers before the Lotschenburg Tunnel was built.
A storm is brewing so we choose to turn back in the Selden Valley and walk down to Kandersteg. Two hours later we are sitting on a bench outside a bakery eating cookies fresh from the oven. We have hiked 29 kilometers. On our way through the village the rain begins. It is 4:12 p.m.
In the days that follow we have occasion to walk the Hoh Woods in the rain, to visit the Simmental Valley with its medieval churches and to attend folklore night. The villagers dance, yodel and demonstrate the alpenhorn, a long, curved wooden horn used for signaling over the Alps. Walking down the main street, we browse in tiny shops where they sell Swiss Army Knives, bells on embroidered ribbons, watches, cuckoo clocks, chocolate, toy Bernese dogs and music boxes shaped like chalets.
We travel by train to Thun and take a boat ride on the Thunersee to Interlaken, a popular tourist spot. Here we glimpse the Eiger, The Monch and the Jungfrau (the ogre, the monk and the young woman). The north face of this mountain has been called the greatest mural precipice in the Alps. Black, in perpetual shadow and battered by avalanches of snow, it is considered the most difficult climb in the world.
At Interlaken the streets are teeming with shoppers and tourists. As the train climbs back up to Kandersteg in the evening, we are once more in the Switzerland of our dreams: cowbells jingling, people working in fields, wildflowers and peaceful huts in the high pastures.
Morning dawns; it is a brilliant day. We set out for the Allmenalp, taking the gondola near the end of the village to get a head start. We share it with a group of paragliders from various parts of the world who sail down from the high pastures all day long. Soon we are climbing in alpine meadows and can see the interminable spaces. It is a bird's eye view.
At the first chalet cheese is being made. Kathy, speaking in German, finds the farmer and arranges an impromptu visit. He takes us to his kitchen with its massive pots hanging over the stove. The back room holds floor to ceiling shelves of aging Bergkase cheese. He demonstrates the alpenhorn, still used by these farmers to call one another over the mountains, like long slow hymns.
We climb higher. Here stone huts are built into the hillside for avalanche protection. The shepherd and the sheep are higher yet. We stretch out on the grass and live an old story in our minds. This could be the alpine meadow of Joanna Spri's Heidi. Walking home by way of the Ueschinental Valley, Kathy tells us that some mornings in winter the snow is covered with a pink dust. It is sand from the Sahara Desert picked up by the high winds and carried across the Alps.
"There is fresh snow on the Doldenhorn", says Elizabeth the next morning, looking through her binoculars. She is constantly watching the mountains. As the organizer of the climbing school, she is scanning to see if her guides are there. She knows how long it takes to reach a peak or to cross a glacier. In the evenings, she watches for tracks in the snow and for people who are stranded there. She knows every step of the way.
Kathy tells us to dress for winter weather, as we are ready for our first hut test. It is rated as a moderate to difficult climb. On the gondola to Sunnbuel we see Steinbeck, a type of mountain goat. This is a rare occurrence, as they graze on the edge of glaciers where new grass and flowers are just sprouting. Cows graze on the same terrain and that causes their milk and cheese to be rich and sweet.
We hike to the legendary Schwarenbach Hotel, for centuries a refuge for travelers who are crossing the Gemmipass. Alfred Werner, Mark Twain, Matthew Arnold and William Wordsworth were just a few of the guests who stayed here. Guy de Maupassant wrote a haunting winter story entitled The Inn, based at this auberge in the mountains.
We reach the Daubensee. In July, this lake is the site of the yearly Sheep Festival. Salt is poured around its edges and sheep by the thousands come springing out of the mountains to the lake. A ceremony is performed as people gather to celebrate. Eventually, the sheep are driven back up the mountains. This morning we hurry past in our winter attire and arrive at the Gemmipass at noon.
Now we have choices to make for our trip back down the mountain. We can hike to the Lammernhutte (2,548 m.) and climb over Lammernboden, we can walk back the way we came, we can take the cable car to Leukerbad or we can walk the path that Maupassant describes as 'one that twists and turns continually, zigzagging fantastically and strangely along the steep side of the mountain as far as the almost invisible little village at its feet'. We choose the latter.
We climb down that fantastic trail, holding to the sides of the mountain for balance. Two and a half hours on the rock face and we have descended to Leukerbad, a sunny alpine village known for its natural hot springs and holistic healings. We take a bus around the hairpin turns to Leuk, the train to Brig (once more along the Rhone) and through the tunnel to Kandersteg. We have been hiking steadily for nine hours.
It is dark as we walk through the village. We take the short-cut past the 15th century stone church, through a field, over a style and to the chalet where Heinz has a hot meal waiting.
The trip is drawing to a close but for one last hike to the hut that clings to the cliffs on the Doldenhorn. At breakfast, Elizabeth tells us that the sun shines into her house through a hole in that mountain for one moment of the year. We set out in a light rain. We walk through the woods and climb up the steep trails, arriving at the hut by noon. A German shepherd greets us. We warm ourselves and have a bowl of hot soup.
As we start back down the mountain, we pause to view Kandersteg from above one last time. The sun is shining on the horns that surround the village, lighting up the spires of the 'castle', sending shadows in long arms down the Bier and the Almenalp. The old man is still sleeping, surrounded by white clouds. We have come to know all of these mountains, we know their names and we know their stories. By now they are our friends. |
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