Grindelwald - Beatenburg

---

The day dawned bright and clear over the mountains so the Neiderhorn should be fine for the day. We got the Beatenburg bus from Interlaken West to the Bahn Station in Beatenburg. Beatenburg (bee-art-en-burg) sits high up on an old glacial sunny terrace above Lake Thun. It never ceases to amaze us where towns and villages are located. They look impossible to get to but there’s always a road there somewhere.

From the Station we got the cable car up to the Neiderhorn which sits up around 2000m on the edge of a very steep and sharp drop down into a very pronounced glacial valley (U shaped). Susan will remember this place very well – the ice field we had to cross sat on the edge of this cliff and she froze and used language I had never heard uttered by her before! Today, we chose instead to take a lower route down ending somewhere along the bus route. It started off well enough with a clear, wide track until we had to branch off through the forest. For the next hour we seemed to trudge our way through swamp and boggy moss amongst the forest. It appears that the hard rock beneath prevents good drainage so the water sits on the surface. Our map wasn’t that explanatory and we think we missed a turn off. We ended up much further along from where we thought and had a long and circuitous route to get below the cliff face. Add to that, that it was very hot and muggy. We arrived down in Waldegg with shot legs and quite tired. It is quite sickening to see young men bound up the hills with huge hang glider packs on their backs with hardly any effort. Were we once that age and that able??? Oh well, I guess we’re still making it, just a bit slower.

I should mention that the views from up on this high terrace above the lake affords superb views up the valleys to Gstaad, Frutigen, Kandersteg and Lauterbrunnen. Behind them sits the high alps with the Wetterhorn, Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau in all their glory. Below are the towns of Interlaken and Thun with their surrounding mountains. If the cloud hadn’t been present I’m sure we would have been able to see far to the north. Quite superb – but this is Switzerland!

---

Photos

Looking down on Lake Thun
Looking down on Lake Thun from the Neiderhorn

U shaped valley below the Neiderhorn
The steep sided U shaped glacial valley which drops sharply below the Neiderhorn