Hiking: What You Should and Shouldn't Do

Buying this guidebook was an excellent start! Please do consider hiking as one of the best ways to see the Alps; it's a healthy, relaxing activitiy that gives you plenty of opportunities to enjoy this incredible corner of the planet! Study the hikes outlined for you in the later chapters beforehand and dream about the things you are going to see. A lot of thought was given to which hikes would be the best ones, in the hopes that you wouldn't just strike off up the nearest random hillside, like I did when I first came to Switzerland. Of course, most all of the scenery in the Alps is beautiful, but, if your time is limited, you want to make the best choices.

Have a good idea exactly what route you plan on taking before you find yourself wandering aimlessly. Look at a map, and if you can't bring the map with you, make sure you at least bring a written set of instructions. We all go into it thinking how much we love nature; nature loves us, and the mountains are our friends, but we're naive. Without being paranoid, understand that the mountains are only your "fair-weather" friends, and that a good relationship with nature is contingent on your own common sense.

In the Berner Oberland, you'll immediately notice that all walking routes, even those following village streets, are marked with signposts, usually with signs in eye-catching yellow. The yellow, in fact, designates a "wander" path, or a path that you could feel free to take your grandmother on. In the higher elevations you will begin to see red and white signs, which designate "mountain" paths, paths where hiking shoes are recommended. On these you might have to pay a little more attention for things like steepness, loose rocks or a low shoulder--such as a thousand foot drop off to one side. Just kidding. Usually it's nothing to get "on edge" about.

Often the signs not only give place names but also an estimated time it should take you to reach each place. I usually beat the sign times, at least on the downhill parts, and if you're, say, a twenty year old guy, some of the posted times will seem laughably over-long. However, it's a good idea, just like when you set your watch ten minutes ahead, to forget about the difference because now and then you end up needing that extra time. Keep in mind, too, that many of these trails are a piece of cake in the daytime but become incredibly treacherous just as soon as the sun goes down. Make sure you're done hiking before sundown, or make sure you bring a flashlight!

Some of the trail markers also have the elevation written on them, which is handy, especially if you have the map there with you and are clocking your progress on a climb. Elevation is something you might want to consider beforehand, though, because knowing, for example, that there's a two thousand meter altitude gain between Stechelberg and the top of the Schilthorn could be the dissuasive factor in the decision to make that hike. (Or it could be just the thing to spur you onward!)

Another thing that's worth looking at on a map ahead of time is where you are in relationship to any form of civilization. Villages are fairly obvious, and mountain restaurants are often marked by a symbol of a flag or chalice. But, just because there's beer in the mountains, don't turn this adventure in nature into a high alpine pub crawl. I have a story that typifies this and a few other hiking "don'ts." When I was working at Balmer's, a girl called up (I don't remember the time, but it was after dark) one night, hysterical, saying that two of her five friends had gotten lost off the trail, and now the rest of them had finally arrived at some old hotel. They were "so far out" that they had no idea where they were, and how the heck were they ever going to get back? My mind was whirling with remote places like Griesalp and Obersteinberg, where I knew they'd have to spend the night, if they were there that late. First I asked her to go find out what hotel they were at. The Hotel Stechelberg? Okay. So remote that it's on a bus route. She and her friends had been drinking up in Gimmelwald and tried to come down the normal trail afterwards, and it was apparently too dark to see the person next to you, let alone where the trail and its precipitous edge were. But they got up a possee of locals and went up and found the others, thrashing around in some ravine, and everyone was home, safe in bed by midnight.

If you are in a remote place, God-willing with lots of daylight left, you might run across some glaciers. I don't know anyone who's had any misadventures on glaciers, but they ought to be avoided, unless you're well acquainted with that kind of experience. On the hikes in this booklet, you can reach the Kanderfirn, at the end of the Gasterntal or the Wetterlücken Glacier, at the end of the Back Lauterbrunnen Valley. (A Firn is a frozen limbo, half way between glacier and snow.) These aren't pre-fab tourist sights like the Grindelwald Upper Glacier, so you're pretty much on your own, if you follow the trail out on them. By rights, there should be a third color trail marker, indicating ropes, crampons and pick-axes obligatory.

Avalanches are something you have much less control over. Being a flatlander myself, I also had, for a long time, a kind of la-dee-da attitude about avalanches. To this day I've seen quite a few at a distance but never yet actively participated in one. And from the stories I read and hear, I think it's an experience I want to avoid. The problem with many of us English-speakers is that we mostly come from places that don't have this phenomena, don't know where and when to expect it and have no idea how to react to it. Please give it some thought and try not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Though winters have been much less severe in recent years, I still have to issue a stern warning to the crew staying at the Gimmelwald hostel (who seem to think they are immortal): stay the heck out of the Sefinen and Back Lauterbrunnen Valleys in the winter. And, if you think those avalanche shelters down in Stechelberg are just for show, well, they're not.

Fear of heights--and this is said really only for people who are on more serious hikes than the ones in this book--is mostly a state of mind. The illusion of greater depth or steepness is somehow created by your mind, and, if you sit down for a minute and collect yourself, it passes. Some people are acutely aware of a drop-off, while others are not aware at all. It was the same woman who asked me about the Schilthorn hike who, near the top on the Rotstock Hut side, asked her husband what the cable strung along the embankent to their left was for. Her husband, who had been holding onto the cable, pointed to their right and said, "Look down there." She saw several hundred feet of nothing. "Oooh." If you end up crossing some rugged terrain, try to find that middle ground, somewhere between panic and carelessness.

Don't leave the trail and don't leave your friends. I shouldn't have to relate a story like the one following, but it did happen, and I want to help prevent things like this from happening again. Three Canadian guys were at Oberhornsee, and one wanted to wait there, while the other two went up to the glacier and back. When the two returned, the friend was gone, upon which they spent three solid hours methodically searching the area. At nightfall, they arrived back at the Hotel Obersteinberg, where they asked for advice. After a long discussion of the possibilities where this friend could be, including an in-depth personality profile in the hopes that it might give more direction to these possibilites, not to mention another flashlight search of the area, it was more or less decided that he was somehow hurt and unconscious not too far from the lake. In any case, he definitely would not have gone into the valley. The natural course of action in that case was to call for a helicopter rescue. Because of the oncoming electrical storm, however, the helicopter folk decided not to come until 6:15 the next morning. Everyone slept poorly, certain that this injured and probably unconscious person was not going to make it through the night. The helicopter came as scheduled, searched and found nothing. Shortly after its return, the missing friend turned up at the Hotel Oberstainberg, explaining that he had (his words) "decided to scale down the rocks" next to Krummbach Falls and ended up spending the night at the huts Im Tal. I hope he enjoyed his adventure because, aside from risking his life and his friendships, it also cost him several thousand francs.

I'm not your Mom, but I see it as my duty, nonetheless, to point out that many people die every year on the Berner Oberland hiking routes. Many tourists come into the area totally unprepared for anything, let alone danger, and seem to think of the Alps as some kind of harmless parkland. Remember your scouting days and always be prepared. No, not paranoid, simply prepared. Here's another all-time favorite example of mine. My roommate Jana and I were hiking up to Birg, on the flanks of the Schilthorn, in June. It was foggy and cold, and, as we neared our goal, we got into knee-deep snow. Since neither of us had ever been that way before, when the path diverged into three parallel goat-path like routes, we got confused and stayed on the low one, eventually leading off on a ski piste, to the left. We suspected all along that we were wrong, but we got out the map and corrected ourselves before the situation got too out of hand. While we were still trying to decide what was up, two North American girls rocketed past us and disappeared around the bend, on the piste. They were wearing shorts and tennis shoes and had one small day-pack between them. They never stopped to consider that they should be going any other way besides the way that looked right, and I was willing to bet that that tiny day-pack contained no map, no water, no rain-gear and probably just a couple of snacks. We were a long time having coffee at Birg, and we never saw them come in.

In 1993, on July 11th , Mürren had two inches of snow, and it stayed on the ground for the better part of a day. Mürren is located roughly at the mile-high mark, 1645 meters, considerably lower than where the two girls took the wrong turn beneath Birg (about 2400 meters). Are you getting some pointers, here? I hope so. I've made my share of dumb mistakes, too, but now I always carry a jacket and rain-gear, when I go hiking, and I often use both. The opinions on drinking water are extremely ambiguous. I've occasionally drunk from streams without a problem and have heard stories about people remaining healthy after a drink from a stream where there was a dead chamois or cow in the water further up. But I really wouldn't do it, if I knew there were cows around and am inclined to say, at this point, why risk it at all? Make use of the many water troughs along the way (indicated on the maps in this book), and supplement this with a liter-sized PET bottle of the liquid of your choice. As far as shoes are concerned, I actually hiked for years in high-topped tennis shoes, but once I tried hiking boots, I never went back. For a tour of Europe, heavy hiking boots are completely out of the question, it's clear. If your making your vacation just in Switzerland, though, they're the most practical thing on earth.

Though you should always try to be ready for the terrain and for the potential workings of nature, you'll find the hikes recommended here to be relatively "safe" hikes. In any case, read the detailed description of each one ahead of time, and then decide which ones you're up for. For the most part, you'll be able to keep your eye on the distant snowcaps rather than just on where you're walking, and the biggest thing you'll have to worry about is whether or not you remembered to put film in your camera.