Bundalp, Bern, Switzerland Saturday, August 25, 2012

Mountain Bus

After I posted the blog yesterday, we chatted with some new friends from New Zealand. Carol was talking to them while I was finishing up my writing and I joined in later. Kevin, Heather, and their son James live on the North Island of New Zealand. They are touring Switzerland, doing a guided bike tour in France, and then taking a Mediterranean cruise. Kevin and Heather have recently retired from dairy farming. Their son James has gotten around, living in Canada, hiking in Nepal to the base camp of Everest, and mountain biking on cliff edges. We talk for several hours when they realize that they should go eat dinner. We exchange information and it is funny because they have cards made up just like us. Thanks for the nice evening and we hope to visit with you when we make it to New Zealand .
Carol was not feeling one hundred percent yesterday so based on the weather report of heavy rain up high and Carols health, we decided last night to take a train and bus to Griesalp and then hike to our hut at Bundalp from there. This is a short 3 mile or so hike and we are hoping the easy day may help her. If not, then we can always bale out from there with the short hike down. It rained again all night but is just cloudy with some mixed sun this morning. A leisurely breakfast and than we get to packing. Ursula the owner offered to hold some of our stuff since we are returning here on Monday night. We take her up on the offer and load the day pack and a stuff sack with things we can live without until Monday. The paper for Italy, pills, some clothes, laundry soap, razor,shaving cream, etc., and knowing we can carry less water here, means we are about 5 pounds lighter each. Thank you Ursula at Hotel Rugenpark. If in Interlaken, stay here, they are wonderful people.
We catch a train to Spiez where we wait about 30 minutes for a train to Reichenbach IK( which means In Kiental). Must be more than one Reichenbach. While we were waiting, Carol hears what sounds like her name being called. She thinks it is some Indians or Pakistanis, but she keeps hearing Carol, Carol. Turning around she sees Christopher and his father along with the rest of the family shouting her name across the tracks. They are the people that we met in Gimmelwald several days ago. They finished their hike and are catching a train back to their car. It was a fun chance meeting.
At Reichenbach, we were supposed to have a 30 minute wait for the bus to Griesalp but there is a bus there that says Griesalp. It is a small bus similar to a mini school bus. I ask the driver to confirm that this bus goes to Griesalp and he says yes. I show my Swiss pass and he says 7SF each. I ask if the pass is good and he says this is a mountain bus, everyone has to pay. Paying the fare we get on and then realize that this is the bus in the schedule, he just waits here for 30 minutes. Carol takes advantage of this and gets off to use the WC.

Mountain Bus Ride

We take off and immediately climb up out of Reichenbach and the road gets down to basically one lane in spots. We go to the small berg of Kiental and stop for a few minutes. The driver went to get trail maps of the area for everyone. We start back up, passing a flat area where glacial streams flow. Than the road does some serious climbing and narrows to barely our vehicle width. We pass a glacial waterfall and stop so everyone can see. The driver seems really happy in his job and is giving information about what we are seeing along the way. Unfortunately for us, it is in Swiss German so we try to figure out what he is looking at along the way. There is quite a bit of laughter at times so I guess he is part comedian. We now hit some steep hairpin turns and he honks his horn which plays doo dahhh dahhh dah, long and loud so anyone coming the other way will know we are there. The rock walls are very close to the bus on my side as we climb even more steeply. I feel like I am on one of those buses you see in movies in South America on a road they probably don’t belong. After a bit more up, our 50 minute ride ends at Griesalp, which consists of about 3 gasthaus’s and restaurants.

Forest Hike

We hoist our packs onto our backs and start the climb to Bundalp. At the moment the sun is on us but we soon enter the rare for this trail, Swiss forest. It is humid, so even in the cool shade we start to sweat. Everything is green and we pass a few small waterfalls. We exit the forest to cross a short meadow with a downhill up and think we can see our destination high above. We soon realize we are wrong as our trail breaks off in the opposite direction and starts a more serious climb. It is not too bad other than a few places where the rock is wet and a bit slippery. The mountains here are made up of a lot of shale and unlike our rock mountain granite, it is very slippery when wet.

Grateful Dead Groupie

Carol is holding up even though she still feels funny. It is some kind of semi nauseas feeling in her stomach, so we stop to eat after about an hour to see if that helps. We also think it may rain on us and we are getting back into the treeless part of the walk so it is a good place to stop. Sandwiches in our bellies, there is probably less than a mile uphill to our home for the evening. We make a steady climb and arrive beating the Swiss time of 1+30 by a 5 minute margin. We seem to keep up with the uphill times pretty well but the downhill times just are not cutting it with the heavier packs. I think they time them with day packs, no packs, or steroidal old ladies!

Berghaus Bundalp

We manage to check in with no English spoken and she writes down the dinner time of 6:00 so we are set. We soon realize that there is no shower here so I freshen up with some paper towels. Did not think to ask if there was a shower when we reserved a private room and it came back with shared bathroom. Shame on me but maybe that is the reason we did the shorter walk today. This way Carol can stand to be behind me tomorrow. We are also in a building attached to the barn. Our room is on the other end but there are some rooms that look like they share a wall with it and the bunk dorm room is above the barn. We may buy some alp cheese here as they make their own.
My poor sweetheart has been sleeping the last hour while I write this so I may go outside for a bit. So far there has been no rain here but since we have arrived, the higher mountains and the passes have disappeared in the clouds.

Beef Stew and Rosti

Last thought for the night. Dinner at 6:00 turned out to be dinner at 7:00. It was very good and more than we were expecting at this Swiss budget price. Beef stew ,a large portion of rosti potatoes , and a lettuce salad. When we were done, the whole family sat down at another table and started eating. Did not ask if we wanted anything else, are we done, etc. It was kind of odd for us but we sat there and waited for them to finish and then she came over so we could ask about breakfast and pay our bill. While we have been eating, the rain has started and it is raining quite hard now. We are hoping it gets it out of its system and clears up in the morning before we start. We have a big climb tomorrow and the drier the better, not to mention that it would be nice to see the view when we get to the pass. We will see.
CNC
“I’d rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth”-Steve McQueen

Expenses
14SF- Mountain Goat Bus to Griesalp
110SF-Berghaus Bundalp- shower 3 miles downhill or in the glacial waterfall
4.80SF-1 beer, Carol just had water she brought down with her.

Miles hiked – 3 miles
Total miles walked 3.5 Miles