Engelberg My second visit to the Swiss Alps in as many months. Marvelous. And somewhere new too.
Patio Saturday - After a flight from Heathrow to Zurich, a ride on a lovely double-decker train to Luzern (why can't we have trains like this in the UK?) and a mountain train up to Engelberg, we found ourselves sitting on the patio of the Ski Lodge Engelberg enjoying the late afternoon sunshine, a beer and the view. Things were looking promising.
Hiking We decided to have a bit of a walk round town before dinner. In what I assumed was the centre of town there was this enormous signpost showing the places you can hike to from here and how long it's likely to take you to get there. It didn't look like I was going to want for hiking destinations this week.
Monastery This is the entrance to the monastery, which is the largest building in Engelberg.
Church The church at the monastery. The colours look a bit off because I still had the white balance on my camera set to "sunshine/outdoor". Doh!
Monastery View A miscellaneous view of some of the monastery buildings with lovely mountains in the background. Hopefully I would be walking up and down them before long.Having had a bit of a look round, we retired to the hotel for a beer and a fabulous dinner before we turned in for the day.
Cablecar View Sunday - It was clear and sunny, so we decided to head straight to Titlis, the highest view point in the area. This was the view of Engelberg from the cablecar on the way from Engelberg (1,000m) to the first cablecar station at Gerschnialp (1,262m).
Titlis The cablecar from Gerschnialp carried on to Trubsee (1,796m) without the need to change, which was nice and convenient. At Trubsee we switched to another, larger cablecar that took us up to Stand (2,428m). The final stage was on the cablecar in the photo, which took us to Klein Titlis (3,028m).Indirectly this cablecar was the reason we were in Engelberg in the first place. A few months ago the Metro newspaper (the free one handed out at train/tube stations on weekdays) had an article on the world's best cablecars, of which this was one. It was included primarily because it was the world's first rotating cablecar. So there's no need to jostle for the most scenic view because everyone will get a go at all of the views on the way up. Clever lot these Swiss.
Klein Titlis This was the view of Klein Titlis from Stand.
Klein Titlis And this was the view of Titlis (the mountain peak) from Klein Titlis (the cablecar station).
Klein Titlis View This was the view looking south into the next valley from Klein Titlis.
Ice Flyer The Ice Flyer is a short chair lift that runs from Klein Titlis, over a small glacier, down to the Gletscherpark. As we were up here anyway it seemed a shame not to have a go (even though it was an extra 12CHF each to do so).
Glacier View This looks like a photo of my feet standing on the ice, but it's actually a photo of the chasms in the glacier some 60 feet below my dangling feet. Exciting.
Klein Titlis View Back at Klein Titlis, this was the view looking sort of east-ish into the sun, which is why the photo has that washed-out look. It gives quite a nice Tony Hart look and feel to it though.
Stand View Back at Stand, this was the view from the cablecar station looking more or less north. The lake you can see on the right is Trubsee, which is a short walk from the cablecar station at Trubsee. That's where Judith was about to get the cablecar to and I was about to walk to. It's a modest 632m decent, which would be a comfortable way to ease myself into a week of walking.
Engelberg View This was the view of Engelberg on the trail from Stand to Trubsee.
Trubsee View A nice view of Trubsee from the trail a short while later.
Cablecars As I was still feeling pretty perky, I decided to walk the extra 796m back down to the hotel. Judith decided to get the cablecar.This was the view of the cablecars descending from Trubsee before they crossed the flat, grassy plain to Gerschnialp, before making the final descent into Engelberg.
Blocked I made it safely down the steep, slippery bit on to the flat, grassy plain. But now the path was completely blocked by this grass munching cow and I had to go off-piste to navigate around it.
Mountain Bike Trail On the final leg of my walk, between Gerschnialp and Engelberg, the trail ran close to one of the dedicated mountain bike trails. The lady at the ticket office had mentioned that my hiking pass included a day of reduced-rate bike rental. However, all such thoughts fled from my mind when I saw this.The idea seemed to be that you would ride in from the left, off the flat bit and land gracefully on the downward sloping bit and exit right. What's not quite so obvious from this photo is that the sloping bit on the right is about 10 feet below the flat bit on the left. Now I consider myself to be an enthusiastic mountain biker, but that sort of shenanigans is a very long way beyond my level of comfort/skill/bravery/insanity.
Mountain Bike Trail I also passed this feature on the mountain bike trail. I think the idea of this one is to hurtle in from the right, launch from one of the curved ramps, catch some air and land in a controlled manner on the ramp on the left. It was a shame I didn't get to see anyone do that.Anyway, I made it safely back to the hotel, where we had a beer before going out for dinner because the hotel's restaurant was closed for the day. However, this did afford Judith the opportunity to get a cheese fondue in, which is an essential aspect of any alpine holiday as far as she's concerned.Distance walked today - 8.3km (5.2 miles)Ascent today - 0m (0 feet)Descent today - 1,428m (4,684 feet)
Flower Monday - Today I was going to walk from the hotel to meet Judith for lunch at the cablecar station at Brunni, which was a moderately enthusiastic 860m above the hotel. Just to make it a bit more challenging, I was taking an indirect route that would allow me to take in a nice view point along the way.This is a photo of a nice flower that was by the trail as I was leaving town.
Valley View There was a nice view as the trail started to rise above the village. It was pretty sunny, so the uphill slog was warm going.
Clouds After a while I had climbed into the clouds, which certainly helped to cool things down for a while. It hadn't done much for the views though.
Blue Sky A while later and I broke out of the top of the clouds for a lovely view of some mountain tops and blue sky. Unfortunately the view point I was heading for was still largely obscured by clouds, so I didn't get any good photos from there.
Trail Having reached the highest point of the trail the path now meandered along at broadly the same level, making for an easy walk to Brunni...
Cows ...with the odd obstacle along the way.
Brunni After an hour or so, and with the clouds starting to break up, I finally made it to Brunni, which you can see here on the right. The chair lift that Judith took to get here from Ristis is visible on the left.
Judith All of the lovely scenery had left Judith feeling enthused, so she decided to join me on the relatively short 254m descent from Brunni down to the cablecar station at Ristis (although this bit of the path seems to be going up, not down!).
Meadows The first part of the trail was fairly level, across these pretty meadows.
Oh No! More Cows! After a while we encountered the recurring issue of a path blocked with a cow. Or two cows in this case. Three if you count the one you can see in the distance. Fortunately Judith manages to reason with it and it moved out of the way.
View A nice view.
Me From a slightly different angle, I would have been almost invisible against the sky in that t-shirt.Shortly after this photo was taken, we arrived at Ristis, where we stopped for some much needed lunch (and my only rosti of the week).After lunch, Judith decided to get the cable car back into town, while I decided to walk back to the hotel via a rather indirect route.
Church I thought this small church looked nice against the background of mountains.
Shade After a couple of miles of winding my way down the hot and sunny hillside, I descended into the welcome cool shade of the trees.
Valley At the lowest point of the trail (about 800m), I reached the bottom of the valley. This is where the river running through town ends up.Due to the inconvenient position of the sun, the foreground was in deep shade, whilst the trees in the background were in full sun. So I took this HDR shot to try to balance out the exposure a bit. It's not a bad effort, but it looks like I could have gone an extra stop or so with the bracketing.
Lake After an hour walking up the valley, I popped out next to the small lake at the western end of town. From here it was just a short walk back to the hotel for a well earned beer on the patio before dinner.Distance walked today - 17.3km (10.7 miles)Ascent today - 1,080m (3,542 feet)Descent today - 1,080m (3,542 feet)
End der Welt Wednesday - Having had an unexpectedly long walk yesterday, I decided to take it easy today and just follow the trail by the river upstream for a few miles. My map indicated that the trail only rose by a few hundred meters over a distance of around five miles, which sounded comfortably unstressful.I took this photo as I was walking from the hotel to the river, looking north-east towards End der Welt.
Shade After my toasting on the south-facing side of the valley yesterday, I was hoping that this trail by the river would be fairly shady. Yay! It was!
Furenalp After about an hour I passed the cablecar to Furenalp, which is around 800m (2,600 feet) above where this photo was taken.
Valley View I took a short, scenic detour, which turned out to be a fairly bonkers, near vertical ascent on a switchback trail, 150m (~500 feet) straight up the side of the valley. Being on the north side of the valley, the trail was in perpetual shade, wet and slippery. So it was a relief to get to the top and be presented with this fabulous view.
Stafeli Cablecar A while later I passed the small cablecar at Stafeli, which rises a modest 300m (~1,000 feet) up the side of the valley.
Stafeli Cablecar Here I've zoomed out and added the big red arrow so you can see the tiny cablecar that I was zoomed in on in the previous photo.
Spannorthutte Looking to the south, somewhere on that dark peak in the middle of the photo is the Spannorthutte, some 450m (~1,500 feet) above where I was standing. I couldn't see it or the trail to it from where I was standing. It was a tempting prospect to head up that way, but I was supposed to be taking it easy, so I walked on by, happy to save that challenge for another day.
Decision Time The final part of the trail rose fairly steeply on the south side of the valley. It was hot and there was not a breath of wind to help cool me down, so it was a relief to finally reach the marker post at the end of the valley.There were two viable options at that point: turn around and retrace my steps, or press on to the cablecar station at Furenalp. As the trail to this point had taken me higher than I was expecting, it was only another 250m (~800 feet) up to Furenalp, so I decided to press on in that direction.
Spannorthutte As I made my way back down the south side of the valley, being much higher up I could finally see the Spannorthutte as I passed it again. It's barely visible, right in the middle of the photo under the big red arrow that I've added.
Spannorthutte Even zooming in as far as I could, just can still only just tell that there's an actual building there. It's not helping that it appears to be made of stuff that's the same colour as the surrounding hillside.
Furenalp It was a hot walk along the south side of the valley, but after an hour or so I arrived at Furenalp. This was the view looking west towards Engelberg in the distance.
Sky I was laid on a bench having a rest, when I noticed this photo opportunity above me. With the sun just out of shot, the lens flare creates an interesting effect.
Furenalp Patio View They've got a very popular restaurant at Furenalp, which isn't at all surprising given the fabulous view across the valley from their patio.
Engelberg Another view of Engelberg from Furenalp.
Model Village Is it just me, or is this really weird? Applying a "miniaturisation" effect to a photo of Engelberg has made the town look like a model village. Spooky.
Model Village And again. Is that strange or what?
Cows Anyway, having had some fun with the effects on my camera, I got the cablecar down (I couldn't face the prospect of walking all the way down after getting cooked in the sunshine for the last few hours) and walked back to town. On the way I passed these six baby cows all standing neatly in a row.
Valley View Looking behind me, I got a splendid view of the valley I'd just walked up/down.
Chair Lift On the way back to town I passed the cablecar station to Ristis. As I had an unlimited use hiking pass, I decided to make use of it and got the cablecar up to Ristis, where I switched to this chair lift up to Brunni.
Brunni This is the small lake at Brunni. I briefly entertained the idea of stopping for a beer, but it was almost 16:30 and the last ride down is at 17:00. I definitely didn't want to miss that and have to walk down, so I jumped straight back on the chair lift.
Furenalp View From the chair lift I could just make out Furenalp far away in the distance. You can just about make it out about half way up the photo, slightly to the left of center.
Sunset Back at the hotel, this was about as close to a sunset as you could see down in the valley. Considering this was supposed to be a taking-it-easy day, I'd walked rather further than I was anticipating. Time for bed.Distance walked today - 18.3km (11.4 miles)Ascent today - 1,003m (3,290 feet)Descent today - 242m (794 feet)
Clouds Wednesday - Got up, looked out of the window, couldn't see anything. This photo was taken from the cablecar on the way up to Trubsee.
Trubsee At the lake, visibility was no better, so I spent a bit of time walking around the lake taking photos. This is a photo of the boathouse.
Shore This is part of the lake shore.
Trail Having taken a few photos, I decided to walk back to town. This turned out to be slightly more challenging than I expected.As is generally the case in the mountains (well the Swiss ones at least), the trails were marked by the painted red and white stripes that you can see in the photo above and you simply navigate from one marker to the next. However, when visibility is poor it can be tricky working out where the next marker is. A couple of times I set off in the direction I thought the trail was going, but couldn't find a marker, so had to backtrack to the last marker and try a different direction.Still, when you're walking in a valley, as a general rule if you just keep heading downhill you probably won't go far wrong.I had seen zero people on my walk back to the hotel from Trubsee, despite the area around the lake being very busy when we were up here on Sunday. Back at the hotel, the barman tells me it’s because most of the people you see around Engelberg during the day aren’t actually staying here. They get the train up from other places in the morning. So when the weather’s poor they simply don’t bother turning up. Bonus.Distance walked today - 8.6km (5.3 miles)Ascent today - 0m (0 feet)Descent today - 796m (2,512 feet)
Trubsee Reflections Thursday - The weather was much improved so we decided to head for the Jochpass. This initially entailed getting the cablecar up to Trubsee. This is a very different view to the one I had yesterday. Fortunately there was still no wind at all, so the mountains were reflecting in the lake beautifully.On the right is the boathouse I took a the photo of yesterday.
Chair Lift Having walked around the lake, we got the chair lift from Trubsee up to Jochpass.
Jochpass Judith decided to hang around at the restaurant at Jochpass while I went for a bit of a walk.
Engstlensee First I got another chair lift down to Engstlensee. You can also see another lake (not sure what that one is called) in the top right of this photo. It would be nice to walk there at some point, but I didn't really have the time for as it was somewhat out of my way and it was going to be a long enough walk back to Jochpass as it was.
Engstlensee Having walked along the lake shore, I headed off back up the valley to Jochpass. The trail rose steeply up the side of the valley and offered some fabulous views of the lake and the mountains beyond.
Judith Back at Jochpass, I met up with Judith for some lunch. She decided to join me on the walk down from Jochpass to Trubsee, which you can see on the right in this photo. The chair lift that we got up to Jochpass earlier is visible on the left.
Trubsee View This is a nice view of Trubsee, with the lake on the left and the hotel/cablecar station on the right. It was looking very cloudy in the far distance, but the clouds were far too low to be bothering us.
Valley View I dropped Judith off at the cablecar station at Trubsee and continued walking back to town. I was taking a slight variation on the route that I took in the fog/cloud yesterday to see if I missed any particularly good views. This one's not bad.
Marmot I'd heard loads of marmots over the last few days and I'd even seen a few from a distance, but this was the first time I managed to get close enough to take a photo of one. I did try to creep a bit closer, but it was having none of it and disappeared down a hole. Doh!The rest of the walk back to the hotel was uneventful.Distance walked today - 14.3km (8.9 miles)Ascent today - 493m (1,617 feet)Descent today - 1,323m (4,339 feet)
Moon Friday - Today I'd decided to go back to Furenalp to effectively complete Tuesday's walk, where I bottled at Furenalp and got the cablecar back down because I was too shattered to walk the last bit.The moon was just visible over the mountains as I left the hotel.
Trees The walk to the Furenalp cablecar station was along the river, through the trees again. The sun ahead of me created an interesting backlighting effect. I've converted the photo to black and white because I thought it looked better, although Judith prefers the colour version. Unfortunately (for her), it's me that's picking the photos to go on the website, so it's the black and white one that's in.
Furenalp Cablecar Given how nice the weather was, it was unexpectedly quiet at the cablecar station, so there was no queue and I was able to get on the first one out. The Furenalp cablecar is tiny, holding a maximum of only eight people and there are only two of them travelling back and forth, so you don't need many people to turn up for a queue to start to form.
Engelberg View Walking away from Furenalp, the view looking towards Engelberg in the distance was fabulous.
Insect My 18-200mm lens demonstrates it's flexibility by snapping this pleasingly sharp shot of an insect on a dandelion from a distance of around four feet.
End der Welt After a couple of hours I made it to the bottom of the valley at End der Welt, translated as End of the World. It's so-called because this part of the valley is a dead-end and you can progress no further.
Shade As I started up the other side of the valley, I was back in the lovely cool shade of the trees, which was a relief after getting well cooked during the descent on the other side.
Valley View Eventually I popped out of the top of the trees and got a nice view back to where I'd just come from. The large hillside on the left is the one I'd just walked down to End der Welt.After another hour-or-so I made it to the cable car station at Ristis, where I met Judith for lunch.
Ski Lodge After lunch we got the cable car back to town and returned to the hotel for our final pre-dinner drinks on the patio and our final dinner, which, as it had been every day, was excellent.Distance walked today - 16.0km (9.9 miles)Ascent today - 553m (1,814 feet)Descent today - 714m (2,342 feet)Saturday - Got up, had breakfast, packed, got the train to Luzern, got another train to Zurich, flew home and started to reminisce about the fabulous holiday we’d just had in Engelberg. The hotel was excellent, as were its staff. The food was excellent, the walking was excellent and the weather was very kind. All in all, another great Swiss holiday. I can’t wait to visit again.Total distance walked this week - 83.0km (51.6 miles)Total ascent this week - 3,129m (10,263 feet)Total descent this week - 5,583m (18,312 feet)