Zermatt

When we first arrived, it was a cloudy, intermittently rainy afternoon…

view from our hotel

… so we went on a short hike in the surrounding area. Practically every river we saw was raging -

Along the way I found these gorgeous Martagon Lilies (Turk’s Cap) -

We passed through some quaint villages…

… with several abandoned buildings -

We were aiming for the Gorner Gorge -

I loved how close the walls were, and the sinuous curves sculpted by the water -

That evening, the Matterhorn peeked out of the clouds very briefly -

Very nicely, the next day (our only full one in town) dawned clear and cloudless…

… for our train ride…

… up to Gornergrat -

We wandered around up top for awhile…

… marveling at all the glaciers…

… and trying to avoid the crowds as much as possible -

The next is a panorama, so it’ll look best on a full screen -

We spent the next few hours hiking down to a small town where we could pick up the train again, to get down to Zermatt. The views were really stark at first…

… but it was interesting to see various aspects of the Matterhorn as we descended -

The lake you can see at the bottom of the photo above…

… is called Riffelsee, and it gave spectacular reflection shots of the Matterhorn -

As you can see, we were blessed with perfect conditions that day -

It was really hard to tear myself away from that beauty…

… but we had several miles of descent to go…

… and wildflowers to admire -

As we got closer to Zermatt..

… we had still another view and aspect of the Matterhorn revealed -

This interesting juxtaposition made me smile -

The next morning at 0530, it was me and about 100 Asians waiting to capture sunrise on the Matterhorn -

This was literally the second that color appeared…

… and it very quickly brightened…

… and spread -

It was really interesting to see how different the light on the mountain looked by the naked eye, vs my regular camera, vs the cellphone.  The cellphone pics definitely accentuated the Alpenglow.  As you may already know, I use no filters or post-processing on my photos here.  If I catch the photo in natural light, then I share it.  If not, there will be another one next time...hopefully.

I’ll end this post with one last sunrise shot, but pulling back to show the moon joining in -

The Oberland continued

Steve joined me on our next adventure in Mürren, which was to “hike” a Via Ferrata. This is a mountain route along a fixed steel cable and utilizes metal rungs, ladders and suspension bridges. Your gear consists of a helmet, a harness and 2 carabiners attached to a shock-absorbing lanyard -

Steve will demonstrate how you remain safe while being attached to the cable at all times. (video alert - open the post in your browser by clicking the link at the bottom of the email) -

It was less than a mile and a half, but took us and our group of 8 over 3 hours to complete!

The views were literally jaw-dropping…

… along with the descent down the cliff face -

Every time I pulled out my cellphone to snap a shot, I worried that I might drop it, and that made my hands even sweatier! Our nephew who had recommended this to us, told us later that he had bought a special cord to attach his cellphone to him while he was climbing. Thanks for not telling us ahead of time, Josh!

We got to do a zipline…

… climb down a series of ladders (by this point we were really noticing how much of an upper body workout this was!)…

… walk a tightrope…

… and traverse a very long, bouncy suspension bridge -

Did I mention the epic views??

That night there was an Alphorn concert on the patio where we had dinner, and I got a much better video of it this time, as I had promised earlier -

For our last big activity in the area, we took a train to a neighboring valley, and then boarded a cogwheel train to take us up into the highlands to start our 10 mile hike. On the way up, I caught views of misty mountains -

For those who might be interested, we hiked from Schynige-Platte to First. After the first ascent we were overlooking Interlaken…

Thunersee (Lake Thun)

… and the lakes it lies between -

Brienzersee (Lake Brienz)

And the views kept rolling on…

… and the flowers blanketed the slopes -

These next two pictures will give you a sense of the height and scale we enjoyed. This was our first peek at this lake and “pointy” hill (I have no ideas of their names; they were just very cool to see, and quite distinctive) -

As we got closer and climbed higher, the perspective changed -

That photo above was taken near the top of our hike, over 8,500 ft, and the variety of flowers present at that elevation was really neat to see -

enlarge the picture so you can see all the different colors in the tiny flowers

This was our lunch spot on the other side of the pass we crossed, and you can see how the clouds had really come in -

It was a long descent to that lake…

… which gave the clouds time to lift a little, and us to watch some marmots -

The views of the mountains and glaciers hanging over First and Grindelwald were awe-inspiring in their scale…

… and gorgeous in their majesty -

As we left Mürren the next morning by gondola, it was raining, and we caught a peek of some of the myriad waterfalls the valley is known for -

The Bernese Oberland

That title encompasses the central highlands in the Canton of Bern, and includes towns such as Interlaken, Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, and where we stayed - Mürren. The scenery was spectacular! On the train ride in, we passed this gorgeous lake…

… before entering the Lauterbrunnen valley (known for its 72 waterfalls) -

You can’t see it in the picture above, but Mürren is perched on the edge of the cliff deep in the valley on the right side.

This was the view from our hotel balcony, looking onto the Eiger and Munch mountains -

We arrived in the early afternoon, with plenty of time to make my 3 pm appointment to fly!

Yes, I went paragliding again (the first time was in Columbia in 2022, and was a relatively short flight). I had booked an afternoon time slot to help ensure that I could get a “double time” flight with the rising thermals that occur. Steve was my photographer for the takeoff. This is a video, so the usual comment applies - open this post in your browser by clicking the link at the end of the email -

My pilot took lots of stills while we were flying…

… and that one above was my favorite because of the enormous waterfall we flew over. The next shot shows how high over the valley we were before we descended -

did you notice who had the “controls” ?

Steve captured the descent and landing well, but you’ll have to forgive some of the issues in the middle. He was using my Nikon to film, and he doesn’t have all the hours with it that I have. :)

For those of you with weak stomachs, I won’t share the video we took while we were looping. It felt like riding a roller coaster that did 360 degree loops. Super fun!

The next day we did a “short” 4 mile hike near town and enjoyed fabulous weather…

… and views…

… and met some local friends -

And that evening, we got to see a family of wild goat-antelopes called Chamois -

be sure and enlarge the picture to see the beautiful facial markings

Mürren is a beautiful little town filled with flowers…

… and blessed with drop-dead backgrounds -

We were treated to a beautiful post-sunset sky as we enjoyed our al fresco dinner. Stay tuned for more adventures from the highlands!

Lucerne/Luzern

With the benefit of hindsight, we realized how spoiled we’d been with the peace and noncrowded conditions in Scuol, when we hit Lucerne. We’re in the middle of the high season, and the crowds everywhere reminded us of that.

The Chapel Bridge was built in 1333 over the Reuss river, near its origin from Lake Lucerne…

… and it’s the oldest covered bridge still existing in Europe.

We wandered a little through the old town…

… and filled our water bottles from a continuously running fountain -

We also took a cruise on Lake Lucerne, checking out the water front…

… ogling the places we didn’t stay…

… enjoying the scenery…

… and watching all those cooling off in the lake, avoiding the 90 degree heat.

All manner of watercraft were out…

… including cruise boats -

Ours was just a little smaller ;-) -

This looked like a fun apparatus for the young people -

Interesting architecture abounds…

… and boat houses are quite substantial -

The next day, we took a cogwheel train (the steepest in the world, with a maximum gradient of 48% !) to the top of Mt. Pilatus -

At the top of this 7,000 ft mountain towering over Lucerne, we were treated to awesome views of Lake Lucerne and the surrounding mountains. This is a video, so be sure and open this post in your browser by clicking the link at the end of the email.

We went for a long walk around the mountain side…

… checking out the wildflowers, like this Round-headed Rampion (aka Rapunzel Flower)…

… and when we returned, an Alphorn concert was going on!

The video I shot was just so-so, but I grabbed that shot of the instrumentalist, so you could see the horn and its immense size. In a later post, I’ll share a video of an impromptu concert we had during dinner one night.

(Just a note regarding future posts from this trip. They may be posted quite far apart, as we have just started our 11 day hiking adventure of the Tour Du Mont Blanc, and I expect to be wiped out most evenings, with little energy left for blogging. We’ll just have to see…)

I’ll close this post with an artsy shot looking back at the incline near the top, and the hotel there.

Scuol, Switzerland

We started our two week exploration of this beautiful (expensive) country in the SE corner where Romansh is the official and primary language, followed by German. This town came to my attention because of the sgraffiti used on the architecture -

This is a decorative technique that scratches through a coating on a hard surface to reveal an underlying layer of another color -

Just about every building in town had this…

… and almost every home had a rounded entryway -

There was a church on a hill that was very picturesque, but quite bothersome to me. It chimed the quarter hour all night and day [and we needed to have our windows open for breezes during the heat wave].

We did a little day trip to a nearby town, Tarasp, to tour a medieval castle built in 1040 -

The interior was neat (we couldn’t take pictures) but the views from the top were awesome -

Back in Scuol (pronounced “shkool”), we wandered around in the evening admiring the light of the “golden hour”…

… and I decided the siting of the church was pretty great, even if it was noisy. :)