Day 11 – The Falls Near Lauterbrunnen

Lauterbrunnen is a small town of about 2,500 people just eight miles up the valley from Interlaken. It is situated in an impossibly steep-sided valley surrounded by exposed rock faces and snow-capped mountain peaks. The name Lauterbrunnen literally means ‘many fountains’ in German, and that’s no exaggeration. The dramatic topography, especially during spring thaw, gives rise to no less than 72 waterfalls, some of which are as much as 1,000 feet high.

Lauterbrunnen is the travel gateway to some significant regional destinations. A cog train links Lauterbrunnen with Wengen, a popular ski town on the eastern side of the valley where we have stayed twice before. The train continues upward to the Kleine Scheidegg, which is where you board trains for the Jungfraujoch, an observation platform near the peak of the Jungfrau. This self-proclaimed “Top Of Europe” (at 11,332 feet) has been a tourist magnet for decades.

Mürren, on the western side of the valley, is another popular ski town that is accessible from Lauterbrunnen. We have skied all over this area on past trips to Switzerland, but perhaps our most memorable day was on the slopes above Mürren. We will return later in the trip specifically to visit Mürren – see Day 14 for more details.

Today’s weather was beautiful from the very start and we knew that we didn’t have very far to go, so we decided to take the lake steamer to Interlaken. Just by chance it was the Jungfrau, the most ornate of the steamers on the lake. There’s no such thing as an express steamer, so you get to stop at all of the small towns along the lakeshore. So long as you’re not in a hurry and the weather’s OK this is a fascinating thing to watch as the captains handle these 150 foot ships like small fiberglass runabouts. This cruise took a bit over an hour, departing Brienz at 10:40 and arriving at Interlaken Ost by 12 noon. From Interlaken we took a train that arrived in Lauterbrunnen just before 12:30 PM.

From Lauterbrunnen we walked up the valley along a single lane road to the hamlet of Stechelberg. This was a real cruiser – nicely paved and relatively level – so we took our time and admired the waterfalls along the way. We also took time to stop for lunch at a bench with a fantastic view in every direction, including up. I say ‘up’ because the steep valley walls in this area make it extremely popular for hang gliding, parasailing, and even base jumping. I lost count of the various airborne daredevils that we saw during the course of today’s hike.

Stechelberg was more or less as expected, another small Swiss hamlet with roots in the agricultural world and a growing interest in tourism. The main attraction here is the cable car that takes you up to the peak of the Schilthorn. The Schilthorn is smallish by Alpine standards (at roughly 10,000 feet) but has a revolving restaurant at the top and is perhaps most famous as the setting for scenes in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. This marginal brush with fame, sadly, is being parlayed by developers into a new tourist attraction called Bond World that is scheduled to open on the Schilthorn later this year, over 40 years after the movie was originally released. Quick – who played James Bond in this sixth iteration of the 007 franchise? An Australian model named George Lazenby. Who, you ask? My point exactly.

The walk to Stechelberg had been so pleasant that once we got there we decided to simply turn around and walk back down to Lauterbrunnen instead of catching the bus. By going the opposite direction we were able to enjoy scenery that we had missed on the way up for various reasons.

We caught the 16:03 train from Lauterbrunnen, changed in Interlaken Ost, and were home by 5:00 PM. Today’s hike totalled 7.2 miles with only 360 feet of elevation … a much needed break after our Wine Trail and Zermatt outings the prior two days.

Map

Photos

Weather

Meals