(Wengen, Switzerland)

After skiing in suboptimal conditions for a day last week, and then having the resort shut down on my first scheduled day of skiing here, you’d think that all the iffy weather stuff would be behind me. But you would be wrong!

My first two “real” days of skiing here were plagued by poor visibility (fog), marginal snow conditions, and eventually precipitation that ranged from rain to sleet to heavy snow. We had to make do with minor victories, and keep looking ahead to the promised sunny skies on days four and five. Fortunately, the food at the Hotel Bellevue in Wengen (see photo at the top of this post) continued to impress. And there were no lift lines at all!

The poor visibility is particularly frustrating. It certainly interferes with skiing (making even seasoned skiers look like absolute beginners), but it is especially unfortunate in this part of Switzerland. One member of our ski group had never been to Wengen before and we had to assure her that the legendary and massive Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau mountains were really looming far overhead.

At 4:30 p.m. on the first day, Mother Nature teased us a little. All of a sudden, the clouds parted, the sun emerged, and the cloud level was actually below us. We had a brief but dramatic view of the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau…with a strange horizontal cloud formation just below (see above photo). It was amazing! I think my camera was overwhelmed by the sunlight, though, as all of my frantically snapped photos came out rather blurry.

Alas, day two was just more of the same fog, with rain at the lower altitudes and increasing snow at the higher altitudes. Our lunches took on increased importance, as they offered a respite from the poor weather. But some restaurants were closed (including one in Grindelwald that was a real hit in 2018) because of the low numbers on the slopes…or because the pistes leading to them were not open.

Looking on the bright side, suboptimal skiing weather does have some benefits. It makes skiing incredibly easy once the weather improves. It is a great workout, because “skiing blind” places heavy physical demands on you. And it develops concentration skills, as assessing the snow and piste conditions by feel demands nothing less than 100% focus. Your senses are certainly heightened: on the second day, we spotted a huge herd of roughly 50 chamois as we rode the Oberjoch chairlift high above Grindelwald.

Stay tuned for my report on the third day of skiing in the Wengen-Grindelwald area!

(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!