Hiking to the Glaciers

This morning I coaxed Mariella into another hiking day. The day started out a little rough, with a conflict. The conflict arose out of marital communication challenges. Can anyone relate? The day started out bumpy, but God redeemed it as he always does. I will start off by saying Mariella was a climbing champ today. The plan today was a hike to the two nearby glaciers. We started by walking ten minutes from the hostel to a gondola, which was a five minute ride to Pfingstegg trail head. We started hiking toward Lower Grindelwald Glacier. A quarter of the way into the hike we came to a sign that read something like, “Trail Closed Avalanche Danger.” This is what we deciphered from the Swiss writing. We turned in the other direction and decided to hike around the mountain to the Upper Grindelwald Glacier. After an hour and a half of hiking, we came to a steep part of the mountain that had ladder like steps weaving up the cliffside. After getting to the base of the mountain we read another sign that said closed. We noticed that about ninety-eight percent of the railing was disassembled. So…we interpreted the closed sign and missing railing as the trail being closed for those too scared to hike up ladders and steep steps without railing or cables. I knew if my friend Wes was with me he would not hesitate at attempting the somewhat calculated risk. I was surprised that Mariella was the one first up the latter trying to get a better view above the trees. We were grateful to find that we were the only ones at the top of the mountain side looking one way to the valley and the other way to part of the Upper Grindelwald Glacier. Stunning! We slowly made are way down the stairs and ladders and made it back to Grindelwald safely and even before dark. Great day! Waking up early tomorrow and catching a train back down to Italy. We are heading to the Cinque Terra coastline (north of Pisa) and hope to walk from fishing town to fishing town along the coast. I believe the Italians call the walk to the towns along the ocean Via dell'Amore (Path of Love) hopefully that means we will start our day a little differently and without conflict. 

Another great hiking day

Two days ago we were blessed with the parting of the clouds, revealing the snowcapped mountains. We hiked from Grindelwald to Bort then we took the gondola to a place called First. Once we arrived at First I (Craig) hiked 50 minutes to Bachalpsee Lake. Yesterday it was raining in Grindelwald and snowing on the mountains, so we decided to have pajama day and recovered from our hike at the hostel.
Today, the weather cleared up. We did a marathon hike up one of the mountains in the pictures we posted a couple days ago. We hiked four and a half hours from Grindelwald to Alpinlen to Mannlichen. The hike back down the mountain was about two and a half hours. Most people pay the $16.00 for the gondola ride to the top. We enjoyed some coffee and bowl of soup on the top of the mountain instead. We rested a bit in a hammock at the top and took photos of the majestic mountains.
Beautiful!

Swiss Alps!

WOW! What a day. Craig and I decided to take a “little” hike yesterday. It turned out to be a little bit more than a “little” hike. The signs on the path said “easy trail and sport trail” always pointing in the same direction so we didn’t really have a choice. We quickly learned that getting anywhere in Switzerland will have to be either straight up or straight down. I have forgotten the formula for figuring out gradients so, you will just have to take my word for it, it was super steep. We left Grindelwald and headed for the trail. It was about 1 hour and 20 minutes of straight up, with a few rests in between, but the view was my “dangling carrot”. I need these carrots when exercising; I love the treadmill because it is constantly giving me my much needed positive reinforcement, in the form of calories burned, miles gained and most importantly time remaining. So, we continued up and up and up. After about an hour, Craig gave me the ultimate reinforcement “ok mud, when we get up to that point, we can take the gondola the rest of the way.” YES! So we took the gondola for what would’ve been another two hours of uphill-upmountain hiking. We arrived at the top and started up towards the lake. After soaking through shoes and socks and freezing toes and more snow further ahead and a tantalizing coffee spot, I decided to allow Craig the joy of hiking alone for another 50 minutes to the lake, I enjoyed my hike to the warm restaurant and warm latte in hand. As you can see, Craig got some amazing pictures of the lake, incredible reflection shots. He returned after about 2 hours and we headed down, no gondola this time. We started our descent at about 4pm and finished at 7:30pm, not stopping a ton, except for a couple of serious photo sessions. We were definitely hurting by the time we got down, but what a day, we couldn’t have asked for better view, while we went up, the clouds were covering everything and we were a little bummed, thankfully only a few hours later, it all cleared up and it was absolutely majestic. Enjoy the photos, video coming soon.

Grindelwald, Switzerland

We left Venice today and arrived in Grindelwald this afternoon. Grindwald is near Interlaken. The mountains are crazy beautiful. A woman I was talking to on the train today said that when she looks at the mountains at times she is moved to tears. Wow! The beauty of creation and the creativity of the Creator is indeed emotionally moving! The travel book reads, “Welcome to the fairy-tale alpine creation they call the Berner Oberland, a place so silverscreen perfect you’ll think you’re conjuring it up. This place is like having your cake and eatin’ it to. Not only can you spend mesmerizing hours staring at the sheer, outrageous beauty of those snow-white, jagged, craggy, so –big-they’re-going-to-swallow-you mountains found everywhere, you can also play in them.” We can't wait to go hiking!

Photos from the train and walking through town: