Crazy little beautifully perfect Gimmewald

Trip Start Jul 25, 2007

Trip End Jun 22, 2007

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Flag of Switzerland Gimmewald, Switzerland
Thursday, July 19, 2007

We literally left one paradise for another. I'm not sure how this all worked out, but our small time in the actual alps could not have been better. The whole trip I've been asking others about this small town and noone had heard of it. The only reason I knew to go here was first by Karin (thanks girl:), who described an amazing setting of being in a hottub in the alps in this small town on her journey, and number 2 Rick Steves...who else! He really promotes this place, and actually the majority of the people we met there had head of it through RS. He promotes for great reason though. You are literally sleeping on top of and inbetween mountain ranges. Our train ride from Italy took about 7 hours with a change over in Milan, but then we hopped a train from Interlaken to a bus in Lauterbrunnen to a gondola in Stechelberg. This town, as well as the others up in the Berner Oberland area, are only served by gondola and there are no cars. We passed about 4 waterfalls on the way to Gimmelwald, and up on the gondola. We stepped in Gimmelwald and stepped into a complete fairytale. Tiny mountian cow town with one main road, set perched on a beautiful valley in the mountains. The alps tower above, and the sounds of the waterfalls echo through the canyons. I just really can't even describe. One step and we were at the Mountain Hostel, the one hostel in the town. Luckily they had rooms, so we didn't need to go anywhere else. This hostel was great. Tons of backpackers, mostly of the active type. We were met with several people just getting of a hike as we were entering.

along the hike

We immediately met 3 guys who we would actually spent the rest of our time in the alps with. Patrick, John, and Mark. John and Mark are father, son respectively, while Patrick was an independent traveller from Oregon. They all were fantastically entertaining, and made for a great group.
We put our stuff down and decided to take the gondola up to the next town, Murren, where we were able to find a restaurant. We were starving, and it couldn't have been more perfect because the food we found was fantastic! I ended up getting a cheese fondue, which is a specialty in this area, and obviously so. That night was great. There's a bar at the mountain hostel, where we shared bottles of wine with our new friends and sipped our glasses as we enjoyed the wood burning hottub outside. It's the most amazing thing. Just such an amazing panaramic view. We met several others from the hostel as the hottub was popular. But we did manage to go to bed at some point.
We woke up to our window open to the mountains, and decided to pay the little extra money to take the gondola to the highest point, Schilthorn. There is a restaurant there where we planned to have breakfast. We brought our hiking gear as we decided, yikes, to hike all the way back down. Schilthorn is actually a spot where an old 1979 James Bond was filmed, thus the name of the breakfast buffet "bond breakfast". It's an amazing spot, which is understating it. The restaurant is rotating, so our breakfast was had with a 360 view at one of the highest spots in the Berner Oberland. To clarify, we were at the ice capped points of the mountain, which our view was surrrounded by all the snowcovered alps. If anybody debates it, it's definitely worth the franks to go up there. We spent a couple hours at the top, and then decided to take the gondola just a little ways down to Birg, where we would hike the rest of the way down. Hiking from Schilthorn is a little more of an endeavor, that most people in our group weren't preparred for. We still hit a little snow as we started our decent from Birg. I really want to write on and on and on about this hike because it was just that amazing. We passed lakes, used cables to navigate narrow cliff passes, walked out onto a ridge with a 50 foot portion of a "tightrope" with a 10,000 ft drop below. It was a technical hike, but I never really felt in danger, and would recommend it to anyone! I could go on, it was such a dream, but I don't even have enough time. About 3 hours in we wound around the Sprutz waterfall, where we just sat and admired, and then finally decended around 5pm into Gimmewald. My calves are killing me! but totally worth it. I've got to hop off now, as we're in Interlaken now about to go canyoning. I'm sure I'll have a lot to say about that too:) I hope everyone is well. I can't believe I come back home this weekend!

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along the ridge	another view	cold at the top	cows with bells
crew on the move	gondola ride	Hike from Birg	montain hostel with amazing view
mouintain hostel	on the gondola	rainbow after the storm	Schilthorn, at the restaurant
Sprutz waterfall	Start of our hike down	the crew at the top	view from Gimmelwald
View from out the hostel window	view of alps off train from Lauterbraunn	Woodburning Hottub in alps