It’s hard to describe the thrill of the cable “hike” along the cliff under Mürren and over the Lauterbrunnen Valley. I hope these photos help take you there.
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Via Ferrata — Scared Silly on the Iron Cableway from Mürren to Gimmelwald
I’m very careful not to list something in my guidebooks that might encourage our travelers to do a physical activity that’s out of their league. My favorite valley in the Swiss Alps has a new outdoor experience called a Via Ferrata, or “way of iron” — and, while locals were saying, “It’s great…no problem,” I decided to check it out personally.
I enlisted my B&B host, Olle, to join me. We hired a local guide, put on harnesses, and set out for what proved to be the highlight of my entire trip — and one of the biggest scares of my life. For the next several nights I awoke clutching my mattress. Here’s how I described it for the upcoming edition of our Switzerland guidebook:
Klettersteig Via Ferrata—Mountaineers and thrill-seekers enjoy a 1.25-mile steel cable essentially running from Mürren to Gimmelwald along the cliff. A Via Ferrata (literally “way of iron”) is a cliffside trail made of metal steps drilled into the cliff with a cable running at shoulder length above it. Mountaineers equipped with helmet, harness, and two carabineers make the three-hour journey always clipped to the cable. While half of the route is easily walked, several hundred yards are literally hanging over a 3,000-foot drop. I did it and, through the most challenging sections, I was too scared to look down or take pictures. Along with ladders and steps drilled right into the cliff, the trip comes with three thrilling canyon crossings — once by zipline (possible with guide only), once on a single high wire (with steadying wires for each hand), and finally over the terrifying hanging bridge (which you can see from the Gimmelwald-Mürren gondola ride, just above Gimmelwald). For a peek at the action, search “Via Ferrata Switzerland Murren” on YouTube. While experienced mountaineers rent gear (25 SF from the Gimmelwald hostel or Mürren’s Intersport) and do it independently, most should hire a licensed mountain guide (95 SF per person including gear and donation to the Via Ferrata, in small groups of 4 to 8, tel. 033-821-6100, www.klettersteig-muerren.ch, info@be-je.ch).
Euro Experiences from NW to SE — Part III
Let me stoke your travel dreams for 2009 by sharing some of my favorite European experiences, roughly from northwest to southeast. Maximizing the experience is a dimension of smart budget travel that’s just as important in challenging times as saving money. Imagine these…
High above Interlaken in the Swiss Alps, hike the narrow ridge from Schynige Platte to Faulhorn. As you tightrope along the ridge, lakes seem to stretch all the way to Germany on your left, and the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau cut like broken glass into the sky on your right. Listen for the haunting legato tones of an alphorn just ahead, announcing that the helicopter-stocked mountain hut is open. It’s just around the corner, and the coffee-schnapps is on. That’s enough to make a Lutheran raise his hands and holler hallelujah.
Pump up your adrenalin in the same Swiss Alps on a rented mountain bike. Tiny service roads, paved smooth as a mansion’s driveway, are designed for the little hay wagons of farmers. While these scenic lanes are off-limits to cars, they are wide open for (and a hit with) bikers.
At the bottom of the Lauterbrunnen Valley (just south of Interlaken), drop by the rough and not-very-inviting Pub Horner. It’s the unofficial clubhouse for base jumpers—the hangout for those daredevils who exasperate local farmers by jumping off sheer cliffs, miscalculating with their little parachutes, and smashing messily into the fields below. Have a beer with these guys, begin to understand their passion for an adrenaline rush, and gain some appreciation that life may be short, but it’s not cheap for these amazing thrill-seekers.
Get as high as you can mechanically in Europe, riding the cable car from the French alpine resort of Chamonix to Aiguille du Midi. Up there, at 12,600 feet above sea level, just climbing a few steps gets you winded. The air is thin. Perfect strangers do the halfway to heaven tango, and people are giddy as they marvel at Europe’s tallest peaks around them. You can almost reach out and pet the white head of Mount Blanc just across the way.
Base Jumping In Lauterbrunnen
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I’m in for the night. I’m on the valley floor. From my balcony, the view matches the 19th-century etchings I enjoyed earlier today. The bright moon gives the cliffs an edge. New floodlighting sparkles on Staubbach Falls — a waterfall tall as a skyscraper that bursts over the cliff. The arc of water, so riled up from its trip down the mountain to this climax, seems to go in slow motion as it flies gracefully away from the mountain and tumbles to the valley floor. Ever since I was kid, I’ve imagined I could follow an individual drop.
At the foot of the falls, just beyond a smooth cone of land built by centuries of rocks hurled as if the river loses its grip on earth, the only bar in town glows with activity. Its old-school neon sign says “dance.” This is Lauterbrunnen Valley’s only spit-and-sawdust pub. It’s also a gathering point, famous throughout Europe, for the ultimate daredevils — the guys who make Johnny Knoxville look like a pansy: cliff-leaping base jumpers. While farmers slump at the bar, base jumpers from around Europe share stories and lessons learned.
All week I’ve nodded my head sadly in agreement with locals who rail against the crazy base jumpers who come to this valley to own the cliffs. This is beyond thrill-seeking. This is foolhardy playing with death…just asking for a “road kill” joke. It’s a nuisance when they keep dying upon landing in the otherwise peaceful farms (as if it traumatizes the cows).
Realizing I need to get out and experience this base jumpers’ bar, I shut the lid on my laptop, put my clothes back on, and went over for a beer. Angie the wiry bartender drew me a local draft and walked me through the photos around the room showing off the best departure points. Outside, a guy in a “bat suit” (wind suit) spread his arms and legs to demonstrate the aerodynamic webbing that let him actually fly rather than fall.
I met Pauli from Finland. Frank is his base-jumping name, but I wanted his real Finnish name. (He’s a data systems engineer in Tampere, north of Helsinki.) After 25 years of skydiving, now he spends his vacation base jumping. He’s here for a week, and will probably make 20 jumps.
When Pauli said something interesting, I’d pull out my notebook and jot it down. A couple from Oregon interrupted to get my photograph, and Pauli realized I had a following among travelers in the US. He explained about this international fraternity of base jumpers. Their common passion transcends any cultural and language differences. Lauterbrunnen offers about the best jumping in Europe. It’s legal (more and more places are saying no), the access is quick and easy (allowing 3 or 4 jumps per day), and jumpers from all over congregate here at Hotel Horner. Base jumpers respect host communities. Here, in a valley busy with helicopters shuttling material to remote construction sites, they are sure to be in good with the pilots. After all, if you jump into a helicopter…end of vacation.
In the last three years, “tracking” pants and jackets — which fill with air in a way to give the jumper more surface for a slower flight with more control (or “tracking” ability) — have become popular. Pauli plans to learn tracking…but you do your learning from an airplane first before cliff jumping. The bat suits are a completely different skill. He’s not going there.
Pauli was a bit shy. He was pleased I knew about the great ski jumpers of Finland. I didn’t get the bravado I expected in this bar. For many jumpers, it’s a personal thing.
Pauli agreed jumping is never completely safe. “When you are no longer nervous, you should quit. There are uncontrollable risks. It’s a matter of risk management. We say, ‘Shit happens.’ We also say, ‘Angels don’t protect you against stupidity.’”
He shared his log book. Each jump over the years was logged with an assessment (great tracking, rough landing, and so on). As I left, Pauli asked me to sign his log book. He joked that if he survived this adrenalin-seeking stage of his life, this book would be a great conversation piece for his grandchildren. I signed it, hoping he was right. Walking back to my hotel, I was thankful I had left my balcony an hour earlier.
Flying with Fritz
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Swiss people are expert at living with nature. Their land, long a mountain fortress, is now a play round… “for big boys,” my friend Fritz adds. Fritz, a dynamo who runs my favorite little hotel in Interlaken, recently broke his collarbone. For the first time, I can keep up with him. He climbs a mountain on his bike just to see the sunset. I’m forever thankful to Fritz (who’s nearly my age) for alpine mountain-biking my son Andy into the ground — and then taking him “flying.”
Parasailing is Fritz’s passion. He is forever nagging me to “go flying.” Flying with Fritz (tandem parasailing) is his sideline. Andy still talks about his exhausting and exhilarating day with riding and flying with Fritz.
As a hotelier, Fritz is tuned into the phenomenon of Indians coming to the Alps in droves. “We love Indians — but they need to learn manners when staying in European hotels. We rent them a double, you turn your back, and you have seven people in the room — cooking curry on the carpet.” Fritz finds you can get out the smell, but not the stains. On regional buses, Indian tourists are so loud they even drown out the Americans.
Fritz explained that Indians are a huge part of Interlaken’s business. They come to see mountain scenes made famous in their movies. Kashmir is now too dangerous for movie production, and romantic Indian movies need mountain wonderlands for lovers to swoon with the maximum melodrama. (There’s even a restaurant now on top of the Jungfrau called “Bollywood.”)
I was with Fritz when a freak hailstorm pulverized Interlaken. It had been really hot. Locals — like squirrels before a storm — sensed it and were nervous. Something big was clearly coming. It got dark. Then…bam! Typhoon in the Alps. I parked my bike just in time to take refuge in the hotel.
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Standing on my balcony, I watched flower gardens hammered into pulp. The road became a river of flowing hail balls, leaves, and flower petals. Fifteen minutes later, we went out to survey the casualties: Fabric on chairs was ripped, an entire wall of old windows was left jagged, birds were stripped of their feathers and knocked silly. Car rooftops were blanketed in dents, and windshields were alligatored. I helped Fritz shovel the hail out of his basement before it melted. He joked, “A greeting from George W. Bush.” And then said it’s no problem–we Swiss are the most insured people in the world.
Of course GWB didn’t cause the violent weather and this is not the first hail storm to ruin a city’s cars. But, to people living close to the weather here in Europe’s Alps, the strange and changing weather is a troubling reality. There is a growing frustration with people who confuse their short term economic needs with the long term needs of the environment.
The next morning, Fritz and I went on a hike. Riding the lift to Männlichen, high on the ridge above Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, we stepped off and into a visual symphony: Before us towered the mighty Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. Fritz, who worked at this mountaintop restaurant as a kid and bikes here for a little fresh air a couple of nights a week, talked of the changes he’s noticed here in the last decade. They’re subtle. Walking by a glacial pond, he recalls how, during his childhood, there would be hundreds of frogs singing. Now there are none.
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We studied a new ski lift being built. Before, they would just build a few towers. Now, a swath is cut right up the mountain as each lift is plumbed with snowmaking gear. Big water pipes stuck out of the concrete foundations seeming to trumpet a new age. You won’t have ski resorts in the future without manmade snow.
Today the Swiss ski industry is in crises: A third of the lifts are losing money, a third are in trouble, and only a third are good business. I pulled out the postcard Fritz gave me. Wiggling it, I saw the glacier come and go. The valley in 1907…filled with ice. The same valley in 2007…dry, with a shrunken glacier hanging like a hot dog’s tongue over the top of the valley high in the distance.
Gazing up at the North Face of the Eiger, Fritz tells me of speed climbers, leaving Interlaken on the early lift, scaling this Everest of rock faces, and getting back to Interlaken in time for a late-afternoon business meeting. Then he gets back onto global warming. As the permafrost thaws, there are more falling rocks, and mountain guides are abandoning once-standard ascents that are no longer safe.
Fritz is typical of Europeans who enjoy Americans enough to be comfortable challenging us with a political discussion. As I send them a good percent of their business through my guidebooks, they are careful not to upset me by angering my readers.
I tell him I believe part of the joy most Americans find in their travels is to be challenged by people who see things differently. I think one thing the Swiss and we Americans have in common is a self-assuredness that can border on arrogance. I asked Fritz how the American guests reacted to his interest in politics and if he saw a change in arrogance. He said there was a spike in arrogance a few years ago but that’s less so now.