Hiking at Schynige Platte in the Swiss Alps

         You can only get to Schynige Platte on a historic cog railway that goes so steeply up the mountain you'd think you were lying on your back. All there is in Schynige Platte is one large, late-nineteenth century hotel,

Hotel Schynige Platte from the back

a railroad station, a small tourist shop, and the Alpengarden with numerous paths twisting up the mountain through flowers from all over the Alps. Many people come to Schynige Platte from their lodging in Grindelwald to see that garden and to hike one of Schynige Platte's spectacular trails.

    If they get there at the right time, they'll be greeted by alphorn players, as Will and I were.

    Will (see blog post on June 3) and I were staying three days at the hotel. We arrived in fog. I immediately put on my boots and went for a hike in the fog. Nothing was visible. Were we in the Alps? So they told me. I took a long, steep hike to the top of Oberberghorn, the highest point at Schynige Platte, from which I had a breathtaking view of fog. 

    The next day I made the same hike to get a different view: a complete panoramic view of the Alps with Interlachen below, a breathtaking view of peaks, glaciers. tiny chalets, and the miniature city of Interlachen between two enormous lakes, one silver, one blue.

Part of the 360º view from Oberberghorn

    The wildflowers were at their peak. They covered the hills.

 Colors tumbled down the mountains, decorated the rock walls, carpeted the slopes. I've never seen anything like it. Tubular shapes, umbels, racemes, and weird spidery blossoms, fuzzy ones, dark ones, light ones, spiders and chandeliers and ground-creepers, tall one-flowered spikes, all kinds and colors and textures, an unending wonder. Some I recognized (columbine this big?! Pink bistort?!); some I identified (yellow gentian, Alpine rose); all I enjoyed.

    That evening the fog cleared, and the setting sun set the peaks afire: Jungfrau, Eiger, Mönch, and many lesser peaks.

    The next day, hiking across open hillsides, I heard, from a long distance, the alphorns. I could barely see the two players, but the beautiful long notes came soaring across the distance with eery distinctiveness, each note beautiful.

Alpenhorn players in bottom left

    On the third and last day—the day before returning to Paris for the flight home—I wanted to do the long hike from First back to Schynige Platte. The hotel personnel tried to discourage me. "You have to be fit," they kept saying. "It's a six-hour hike. Are you sure you can do it?"

    I was pretty sure I could. 

    And I did. It took two hours and forty minutes to get to First, including a thirty-minute gondola ride straight up the mountain. I started on the trail at 11:00. The weather was good, and the views were magnificent—the glacier-dotted Alps, the snowy peaks of Jungfrau, Eiger, and Mönch, the flower-strewn hills, a fast-running stream burbling down the mountain. Birds, bees, and, at first, lots of hikers, most of whom I left behind at the trail crossing called Faulhorn, just before the highest point. The trail started wide and gravelly but narrowed as I hiked and turned small and rough on the downhill with lots of places that called for fancy footwork. At one point I went down the mountainside on narrow stone steps to—surprisingly—a cafe, where I stopped for a coffee before continuing another two hours.

    In the vicinity of Schynige Platte trails again, I was walking far above Intelfed, the summer pasture, stunningly situated on a grassy slope under the Alpine peaks. At one point I walked through a herd of beautiful Swiss cows on both sides of the trail, so close I could have petted them. The music of cowbells was lovely.

    It was 5:10 when I got back to the hotel. I took off my boots, poured hot water into the antique basin in our room, and soaked my tired feet. 

                                                                                    Photo by Will Holton

Then I joined Will for a well deserved beer on the porch.

    It was the best day of the entire three-week trip to Europe.