5 July 2015
After a good rest and lunch at the restaurant inside the Edelweiss Hotel, we continued our walk into Murren to look for the funicular railway that would bring us higher up the mountain to Allmendhubel, at 1907m above sea level.
The Allmendhubelbahn was easy to find. We could not miss the sight of the rack rail going up the side of the sloping mountain.
A model at the entrance of the station showed the inclines and technology used.
We managed to get a seat at the front of the car and had a nice view of the journey up.
It was 3 PM when we arrived at Allmendhubel.
We were in no hurry to start on our hike as the views were so stunning. Fields of green and plenty of alpine flowers in bloom, against the mountain backdrop.
There were quite a few trails starting from the station and we were taking the Northface trail.
One of the markers for the trail, painted in white-red-white.
We stopped often to enjoy the views.
Having a cable car zooming past above our heads at one point.
One of the rest points with benches.
We had to pass through cattle gates along the way.
Before long we came upon the Schiltalp restaurant.
We stopped for drinks and met a nice friendly dog.
We could see gliders floating overhead.
More animals were spotted along the trail.
Pigs!
For city dwellers, pig sty is not a common sight and worth stopping to take a photo.
We came to a part of the trail that was one of my favourite. This was where it seems like the trail was leading us up the mountains in the distance. Just a visual illusion.
At one point, we left the marked trail to take the right hand path towards a forest path leading to the Sprutz waterfall. It was steep going down this trail that led us to a bridge across a stream.
All of the family crossed the stream using the wooden bridge, except one.
This hero decided it was more fun to walk across the stream using the rocks.
We passed through more farms and met more friendly farm animals.
A path led us into the woods and down a switchback trail that descended until we could hear the sound of the waterfall in the distance. It was a comforting sound as it meant we were on the right trail.
There was a bench where we sat to watch a group of boys and girls playing dangerous near the waterfall. The trail led underneath the Sprutz waterfall before continuing uphill on steps cut into the rock face.
More hiking through forested trail and we emerged to get this view.
I figured the village below is Gimmelwald (1367m above level), the end point of our hike.
This was one of my favourite places on this trail. We spent quite a while posing for photos with the mountains as the backdrop.
We made our way down to the village below. A friendly cat came to greet us along the trail down to the village.
Just as we arrived at Gimmelwald, we could hear the rumble of distant thunder and felt a few drops of rain. This was an example of how fast the weather can change in the high mountains. We speed walked to the gondola station before we were caught in the approaching thunderstorm. The fastest walker in the family when there was any sign of danger was the one who was usually the slowest.
The Gimmelwald station actually has gondolas going down to Murren or Stechelberg. The gondola station was unmanned. Tickets could be bought using a self-ticketing machine. We chose to head down to Stechelberg located in the Lauterbrunnen valley and then took a post-bus back to Lauterbrunnen. We could use our half fare cards on these yellow post-buses too.
In summary, our first day out hiking the Swiss Alps turned out to be one of the longest but very enjoyable hike in this trip. We started out from Wengen at about 10.45 AM. Took a 15 minutes train ride down to Lauterbrunnen to transfer to a gondola to Grütschalp to start our easy 1.5 hour, 4.3 km hike to Murren. From Murren, we took the funicular to Allmendhubel where we began our afternoon hike to Gimmelwald. This second hike was more gruelling as it involved several ascend and descend but the views were stunningly beautiful. We took about 5 hours as we stopped many times to enjoy the views and take photos. By the time we arrived at Stechelberg, it was 8 PM but it was still pretty bright in summer.
All in all, a great day out.
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