Camping in Switzerland: The North Face Trail

A picture by our campsite before we headed up the mountain for the day…

  

THE PLAN: Hike the North Face Trail

Chris read up on the hikes and picked a great one for us. When we were here last year with Amy and Chris we did a hike on the mountains and peaks EAST of Lauterbrunnen so they year we wanted to check out the WEST side. In short we walked from the Camping Jungfrau to the main streets of Lauterbrunnen. Took the cable car from Lauterbrunnen up to Grutschalp. Took the train from Grutschalp to Murren. Took the Funicular from Murren to Allmendhubel. Hiked/walked the 4 mile North Face Trail  from Allmendhubel  to Gimmelwald (adding a detour to see the Sprutz Waterfall).  Took the cable car from Gimmelwald down to the Schilthornbahn Cable-Car Station and then a bus back to our Camp ground.  It was a pretty amazing day.

LAUTERBRUNNEN

Walking out of our camp ground we spotted this guy doing a little yard work… on his roof.  Some of the roofs are covered with grass and hay.  I don’t know if he was adding more or just fluffing up what he already had.

 

Absolutely everywhere I go I am amazed by the fact that “People live here.”  This guy lives right in the middle of paradise.  What a breathtaking view to wake up to every morning.

The Lauterbrunnen Chapel and graveyard…

 

Walking into Lauterbrunnen’s ‘downtown area’...

We took the Cable Car up to Grutschalp and immediately jumped onto the train.  The views out our train window were immediately impressive… The big 3: Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau.  This view is from on top of the other side… so you can’t even see the steep cliffs, or the Lauterbrunnen valley floor 2,267 feet below us.

MURREN

The first trains pulled into Murren in 1891.  That’s just amazing.  We got off the train and headed straight for the cliff to just take in those beautiful mountains.  Then we enjoyed wandering all though Murren.

 

From Murren we took the funicular (steep train below) up the mountain to Allmendhubel.

  

ALLMENDHUBEL

View of the Jungfrau from Allmenhubel… I think it was one of my favorite views of the day. 

 

Switzerland has some pretty great slides.  The kids loved this playground steps away from the Funicular at the beginning of our hike.

NORTH FACE TRAIL

 

   

We were carefully following the marked path when we turned around one of the few alpine farms along the way where our pathway went straight into a gated meadow of grazing cows.  We turned around and double checked, not knowing exactly what to do at this point.  Owner of the summer hut/little restaurant gestured for us to open the gate and go right on through. 

Notice the white and red marks on the rock right there? That’s the sign that we’re on the right path – and that they’re standing right in the middle of it. 

The jingle of their cowbells in this beautiful mountain scenery is just about the best sound ever. Add some mooing and squeals from the kids and it was perfect.  Pretty surreal.  I love Switzerland.

Looking back – we made it through!  As we climbed up the next hill we watched a man and his dogs try to walk through the cows.  One dog did ok but one dog was scared to death.  We just couldn’t go on with our walk until we saw the dog get through safely.

A lot of the walk was just like this – right along a ridge.  I loved it.

Views of the city of Murren below…

Yep, that would be Matthew peeing in a bush…

The girls had huge nature collections of things they wanted to keep but instead we took a picture and then left their treasures in a big pile so they could have free hands for a snack.

 

It was about this time that we started playing the ABC game making an alphabetical list of things we’d seen on our walk… Emily and Megan loved it and were my biggest helpers.

A – Alps

B- Blue sky

C – Cow bells

D – Dandy lions

E – Electric fences

F – Flowers, Flags

G – Goats, Grass

H – Hills

I – Inns

J – Jungfrau

K – Kinder

L – Lambs

M – Mountains

N – North Face Trail

O – Ogre (English for Eiger – one of the peaks)

P – Pigs, Peaks

Q - Quiet

R – Rocks

S – Sheep, Snow, Stream

T – Trail, Trees

U – Unbelievable…

V – Views

W – Waterfalls

X – eXtreme sports

Y – You and me

Z – ?

 

The Jungfrau Mountain Peak…

We walked through several gates just like this.  The trail just wandered through fields, along ridges and now into the forest.

HIKE TO SPRUTZ WATERFALL

    

Here we are getting out of the forest and spotting the town of Gimmelwald way below us.  Steep ‘hard on your knees’ switchbacks took us all the way down into the town.

GIMMELWALD

 

Love this:  The sign says “The Honesty Shop – Europe’s First unattended Self Service Village Shop”  Inside was some food and household items for sale.  So interesting.

 

Love these signs which tell you how long it takes to get to each nearby town – walking of course.

This was the town’s cheese hut… on stilts to keep the mice out although I’m not sure why that would really help.

Gimmelwald was a small quaint Swiss town.  One school, 2 teachers and 17 students.  One main road that we wandered through from way up on the mountain right down to the Cable Car Station.  Right at the bottom was another Switzerland slide that the kids used over and over until the hourly cable car came to take us back down to the Valley Floor.  Hard to believe the kids still had energy after such a long trek but of course they bolted up the stairs for a slide.  What a great day.  We love Switzerland! 

Back at the campground we made dinner, took turns showering in the ‘family bathrooms’, and took the whole family to the games room.  Ya, a game’s room with big tables and chairs.  Chris, Ryan, Katie and I played Carcassonne.  Emily and Megan played  ‘WhatchamaDRAWit’ (which they love) and Luke and Matthew took turns playing and watching games on the iPad.  The games room was a big perk to this already fantastic campground.

We didn’t get another ounce of rain after the first big storm the first night, which was awesome, but it still got pretty cold at night.  Luke, who is the hottest sleeper in the family was in one of the warmest sleeping bags.  When I went to bed I said to Chris, “If I’m cold in the night I’m taking his bag.”  Sure enough, I was cold and didn’t think twice about pulling that little heater out of his sleeping bag and switching places with him.  He didn’t even move the rest of the night and kept Chris nice and warm.  Finally I was warm.  Camping is so great if you’re warm at night.   It was a great couple of days.  So glad we made the effort to squish that into our summer.