Starting from the top of the Pfingstegg Cable Car, this walk follows the track along the side of the mountain with marvellous views over the upper Grindelwald valley.
It goes through the Breitlouwina Tunnel (see below) and, after a short uphill climb, reaches the Restaurant Milchbach.
When I visited in 2006 the owner of the café, Peter Bohren, showed us a photograph of the Upper Grindelwald Glacier in the 1970s when it used to flow under his Terrasse, whilst doing an almost perfect impression of Leonard Rossiter's Rigsby from Rising Damp. The glacier was no longer visible from the café.
From there, the path descends rapidly to the valley floor and, passing the replica Wetterhorn Cable Car, up to the Hotel Wetterhorn where you can catch the bus back into Grindelwald.
The Swiss have a way of surprising you in all sorts of unlikely places. About half way along the path from Pfingstegg to Milchbach I could see some slippery looking scree covered rocks up ahead, and it looked as if we might be in for a bit of a scramble.
No danger of that. The locals had built a tunnel (the Breitlouwina Tunnel) behind the rocks, complete with a "window" looking out through the three drops of water that constituted a waterfall in someone's imagination, and solar powered lighting.
The Christmas decorations left over from what was presumably the opening celebrations just added to the sense of the surreal.
Restaurant Milchbach
No web site.
Contact:
Milchbach, Oberer Gletscher,
Familie Bohren,
3818 Grindelwald.
Tel: +41 (0)33 853 14 67
Comments
matt
the Breitlouwina tunnel protects from significant rockfall and allows early season passage bypassing snowfields, the strangely sculpted underside of which can be viewed at the window.
Perched high on the side of the Wetterhorn Mountain you can spot the remains of a building. This is the top station of the old Wetterhorn Cable Car, the first public cableway in the world.
A replica of the car sits forlornly outside the Hotel Wetterhorn at the site of the old base station.
As a plaque explains, the cableway was opened on the 27th July 1908 and ran successfully until 1915.
External Links and References
External Links
Wetterhorn Lift
The original running gear and another copy of the cable car in the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne http://sammlung.verkehrshaus.ch/extern/eMuseumPlus?service=direct/1/ResultDetailView/result.tab.link&sp=10&sp=Scollection&sp=SfilterDefinition&sp=0&sp=0&sp=1&sp=SdetailView&sp=7&sp=Sdetail&sp=2&sp=F&sp=SdetailBlockKey&sp=0
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Comments
matt
the Breitlouwina tunnel protects from significant rockfall and allows early season passage bypassing snowfields, the strangely sculpted underside of which can be viewed at the window.
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