(Wengen, Switzerland)

Our first day of skiing was epic. This was mostly due to the sunny skies, amazing scenery, and lack of other skiers. However, it was also fun to tap into memories I didn’t realize I had.

While skiing non-stop from the top of the Gummi lift to Grindelwald (more than 1200 vertical metres…and by no means the longest piste here), I found myself recognizing landscapes, buildings, and even smells from the ski camps I attended in Grindelwald from 1999-2002. On more than one occasion, I suddenly expected to smell dairy agriculture…and sure enough, I did!

I looked for (and found!) chamois grazing on the inaccessible cliffs in the Schilt area of the Grindelwald/First ski area. The slalom course was still set up at the top of the Oberjoch lift. The signage was still poor at the  Hohwald T-bar and the snow was still above the roofs of the summer farm buildings. It was really cool to have it all come flooding back despite being away for so long.

Another surprise memory was the Bärgelegg Hütte (see photo at the very top of this post).  We were looking for lunch and just went to the nearest “crossed fork and knife” we could find on the piste map.

On arriving, I immediately recognized it as the place where I had an outdoor lunch nearly 20 years ago.  On that day, I enjoyed a simple but satisfying lunch on a picnic table looking out towards the Eiger in the brilliant sunshine.  And that’s exactly what we did this time too:  two warming bowls (each!) of Bündner Gerstensuppe, a traditional Swiss barley soup from the southeastern canton of Graubünden.

We later skied all the way down to the Hotel Wetterhorn on the outskirts of Grindelwald.  To do so, we slalomed past the actual Wetterhorn…one of many peaks here that towers more then 2km straight up from the surrounding landscape.

We took the train from Grindelwald to Kleine Scheidegg and passed directly under the mighty Eiger.  Photographs simply cannot capture the simultaneous immensity and insignificance of being directly underneath a sheer vertical wall of 2km (rising to a height of 3970m – more than 13000 feet).  But that doesn’t stop thousands of visitors from trying!

Alas, the weather changed quickly (as it so often does in the Swiss Alps) and I couldn’t take any quality photos of the Eiger.  This was not a problem:  we knew we would be back the next day and have another opportunity to take photographs.  Stay tuned to see what happened!