Photos 16-20
The first photo in this series picks the journey back up in a ski lodge above Grindelwald in First. We had arrived in thick pea soup fog, unable to see the drama surrounding us. Fortunately, when we woke up early the next morning, the clouds were clearing and we were able to take in the splendor of the mountains. The ski lodge had an observation platform that you see in the photo, providing dramatic views of the Eiger and the rest of the Bernese Alps. After taking in the views, we ate a quick breakfast, loaded up, and set off.
We were on day 7 of riding. After leaving the ski chalet, we rode a popular hiking path to an alpine lake, but we were up early enough to not have any other people around besides a local worker and a man fishing. After taking in the lake, we had a massive and wonderful 4,000′ singletrack descent into Grindelwald. Featuring some fun baby slabs, some chunk, but generally being quite rideable for two guys on loaded bikepacking setups. Erik is in the photo above, still relatively high on the hillside before we really got to bombing down.
After refueling in Grindelwald, the sun really came out, and I’d say this was the beginning of the heat wave that would define the last few days of the journey. The 3500′ climb from Grindelwald to Kleine Scheidegg, a renowned mountain pass, felt absolutely awful to me in the fully exposed sun and heat. Erik was long gone on this one, which consisted of a mix of single lane blacktop and gravel roads. I was sweating hard, and feeling low. There were lots of hikers making the ascent on the same road, and we winded along with farms and the famous rack and pinion railway that connects the valleys to the pass. Once at Kleine Scheidegg, I found a coke and fully laid out in the middle of the tourist sea to rest. After the trip, while flying home, I watched the film Phantom Thread and saw this very same hotel used in a minor scene.
The two photos again are counting as another 2 for 1. The top photo is sunset from the end of the day that started in First. After reaching Kleine Scheidegg, we took some back gravel paths to the carless town of Wengen, where I’d been once as a very small child. Unfortunately on the way, I had a wipeout on a very dusty hairpin and momentarily was nervous that I’d really cut my arm open badly. But after rinsing things out, it looked okay and we continued. We had lunch in Wengen, I called my Mom while there to reminisce about us being there when I was just a toddler. Then Erik and I continued on dropping down to Interlaken eventually, and then continuing along the shore of Lake Thunersee before an agonizing end of day 1500′ ascent to our hotel for the next two nights in a little hamlet named Aeschiried. The first photo was taken at sunset that evening. The next day was a rest day, it had gotten hot, and without much to do, we took a bus down to the lake and walked around the town of Spiez, a pleasant but relatively unremarkable place where I took the selfie above.
After leaving the high and epic Alps near Grindelwald and descending to the lake, it had felt like we were done with the mountains. But on day 8, out of the gate we were doing some deep climbing on remote gravel and singletrack paved roads. It was going to be very hot later, so it was a small blessing to have the first half of the day in this remote, forgotten, misty corner of Switzerland. At one point, our GPS breadcrumb trail lead us to an steep, open pasture land, with literally no sign of a trail in any direction. We had to just point our bikes towards where we thought we were supposed to go and do some bomb descending amongst the ringing cowbells. From there, more lovely, quiet gravel roads following along a river brought us out into a broad valley with a highway below. We stayed on the farm dotted hills above the highway and headed West to the ski town of Adelboden and into yet more mountains and some truly hot weather.