History

The name "Lauterbrunnen," clear and bubbly-sounding, actually means "pure springs." It was first mentioned in a deed of sale in the year 1240, when Walther von Wädiswil of Unspunnen sold the Sefinenalp, above Mürren, to the Augustinian monks in Interlaken.

The Lauterbrunnen Valley is a U-shaped glacial valley with 500-800 meter cliffs along its west side, cliffs so sheer that some of their tops actually jut out over the valley floor. It's known as the "Valley of the Waterfalls" because, though you may count an even greater number during the spring thaw, there are seventy-two officially-recognized waterfalls festooning its majestic walls.

Perhaps the most famous of these is the Staubbach (duststream) Falls, located just south of and visible from just about anywhere in the town of Lauterbrunnen. This 260 meter white plume, often reduced to nothing but a misty veil in dry seasons, was praised by Goethe in his poem "Song of the Spirits over the Waters." Believe it or not, the best view of it is right out in the street in front of the train station. Your attempts at getting right up to it will leave you frustrated; it's been fenced off at a good distance because it spits stones.

Other notables include the Trümmelbach (drumming stream) Falls, ten cascades semi-enclosed inside the mountain, about a forty five minute walk to the south of Lauterbrunnen. Fed by the Eiger, Guggi, Chielouwena and Giessen Glaciers, far above, this torrent of run-off cut a narrow gorge that at considerable depth eventually widened out into a cavern. Illuminated for tourists, as much as 25,000 liters of water per second can thunder through this subterranean channel. A half an hour's walk further south, right by the valley station of the Schilthorn cable car, you will find the Mürrenbach Falls, with 600 meters the highest waterfall in Switzerland. Also very beautiful are the Sefinen Fall, which you'll pass by, if you do the Gimmelwald-Mürren hike and the Schmadribach Falls, which is one of the perks of the Oberhornsee hike.

Though Lauterbrunnen is a pretty spot, it is known for little, other than its local Spitzenklöppelei (lace-making) and the fact that it's the principal "city" of the valley.

Less famous and, indeed, much less remarkable is the village of Stechelberg, at the end of the valley's road. Nonetheless, Stechelberg, or "Point Mountain," refers to something interesting with its name. It's called this because of the pillar of rock on the face of the Schwarzmönch, about a thousand meters higher up, which is also known as the "Mönchs Büffel." If you visit only once, even if you only come as far as Lauterbrunnen, you will know exactly what rock I'm talking about. For the young lads of Stechelberg, it used to be a test of courage to climb the Büffel and go around its "collar" without ropes. Some did it in order to win the hand of a girl in marriage. But what, you may ask, does the word Büffel actually mean? During the Czechoslovakian climb of the Schwarzmönch in '93, when this term was being bandied around a lot, I started asking Mürren locals about it. Of the half a dozen different explanations I got, some of which were completely hilarious, I preferred the one given to me by Hans Otto the ski instructor, who was older and had been around Mürren's one block a few times. It was supposedly a "silhouette" of a monk's head, made by the rock itself, when a bank of fog passed behind it. At sundown the very next day, I was sitting at the window, mulling over this same subject, and suddenly, I saw it, but not exactly as Hans Otto had described. The shadow of the rock, in the evening light, formed the perfect silhouette of a monk's head on the rock face behind it. It was completely coincidental that I saw it because it only happens at certain times of the year, when the sun's at the correct angle. Only guessing, I'd say it's probably evenings in early October or late February.

More famous, and probably vastly more interesting to the traveller, are the resorts over-looking the valley, namely Wengen and Mürren. Wengen (cheeks, i.e. "on the cheeks of the mountain") is a nice enough town, sprawled on a sunny terrace above the eastern and more gradual walls of the valley. It's easily accessible with the Wengernalpbahn, which is the connecting train to the one that goes to the Jungfraujoch, so it is not lacking for tourists. Having been one of the most beloved resorts of the British for a long, long time, it has therefore become rather big and un-Swiss. It also just doesn't offer quite as much in the way of scenery or hiking trails that some of the other Berner Oberland villages do. If it's not so already, it will soon become obvious that I'm incredibly biased in favor of Mürren and not very interested in Wengen at all. I suppose we might as well just give up the charade right now and move on to talking about Mürren.

Mürren, meaning "walls," was first mentioned in documents from the year 1257. Like Gimmelwald, Trachsellauenen, Sichellauenen, Ammerton and Im Tal (the latter two no longer in existence), this village was originally settled by people from the Canton of Wallis, just over the mountains to the south. Typical of Walliser settlements, it sits on a narrow shelf at about the mile-high mark (1645 meters). (Indeed, very little is level in Mürren, aside from the streets, and I'm sure they've been made that way artificially.) More evidence of the southern Swiss influence that the visitor to the area might notice is found in the occasional house with stones on its roof, a typical Walliser construction, decorative wooden masks reminding us of the continued presence of the Lötschen Valley wood spirits and the Walliser family names of Feuz, Stäger and von Allmen, which cover about three quarters of the population of the village (the other quarter being Gertsches).

The whole idea of the people coming up from the Wallis is a bit of a mystery. Not why they came; they had long been known for their wanderings and migrations, and the Lötschen Valley specifically, which is where these people came from, experienced quite the population explosion just prior to their northward expansion. The question to which historians remain non-committal is which route they actually took to get here. Probably, they had been coming all along by a rather circuitous route, through the Lötschen Pass, then over another pass, southwest of Mürren, called the Sefinenfurke. But from around 1250 to 1400, they also allegedly frequented the Wetterlücke, a torturously high pass at 3,181 meters, regardless of whether or not there was less glaciation at the time. (Remarkably well-preserved tree stumps found under the tongues of the glaciers en route suggest that this now barren scree-scape might've once been a much more easily traversable woodland.)

Though there is amazingly little actual documentation of the use of this pass, facts that make it seem likely were the existence, at that time, of the settlements of Ammerten and Im Tal, located further up, between the pass and the modern-day settlement of Stechelberg, at the "end" of the valley. (It's another mystery as to why these places are no longer around, though either avalanches or the plague could've easily been the culprit. 1669 was the big plague year in the valley, the population of Lauterbrunnen alone having gone from 580 to 220 in a matter of a few months.) Also, at the time of the alleged use of this pass, the Schmadri Quelle was being heralded as a therapeutic mineral bath. Located just east of the site of today's Schmadri Hut, this spring with its man-made rock basin was right on the way to the Wetterlücke. In spite of the support it may lend to the argument, any good effects produced by the water were purely psychological; it's been subsequently analyzed and found to be dull-normal.

Adding to the mystique of the pass legend is the story of the bell in the Lauterbrunnen museum. Rivalling the Liberty Bell in size, it's supposed to have been brought over the Wetterlücke from the Wallis, and it's dated 1483. Hmmmm, according to my calculations, that's about eighty years, give or take, after they stopped making this trek over the pass due to increasing glaciation. That sure makes the Olympics today seemed sissified--can you imagine a high-altitude, cross-glacier giant bell relay?

But--back to Mürren, which we really haven't spoken about much at all. Though obviously already kicking around for centuries, its first transportational link to civilization (other than the walking trails) didn't come until 1891. Then the funicular from Lauterbrunnen to Grütschalp was built, along with the cliff-top railway from there into Mürren. Like Wengen, this village has the delightful reputation of being car-free. Wengen has a few cars and a lot of those little electric things. Mürren has a few of those little electric things and a lot of vehicles of all kinds. Tourists are not permitted to drive to Mürren, however, and the 100 plus vehicles cruising the area all have permits to be there. The term "car-free," sadly, hasn't applied for years, but the writers of travel brochures still continue to use it quite doggedly.

In 1967, the Schilthorn Cableway was completed. Though the the funicular and Bähnli from Lauterbrunnen, via Grütschalp, to Mürren was somehow seen by the locals as necessary and practical, the idea of the Schilhornbahn was wholly unpopular. I'm given to understand that it was built and since then run almost solidly by "outsiders" (probably meaning alien flatlanders from far-away places like Stechelberg and Lauterbrunnen), and the construction of it was even vandalized, more than once, by the locals. (I do not know these locals by name and cannot speculate as to who it might've been; I just read this in a book. As for the Bee King, he certainly had nothing to do with it.) The cableway connects, in dot to dot fashion, everything between the Schilthorn and the valley floor, bringing with it a constant flow of tourists that could've very well ruined Mürren by now. But somehow it didn't. Maybe many people just bypassed Mürren entirely, in favor of spending more time at the revolving restaurant at the top. The Piz Gloria, made famous by the 1969 James Bond film "On her Majesty's Secret Service," revolves once every fifty minutes. It used to move faster, but the people couldn't take it.

The quaint farming village of Gimmelwald, a half an hour by foot or five minutes by cable car below Mürren, seems at first glance to have escaped touristry altogether. Author Rick Steves suggests this is because it's built in an avalanche zone, a classification which precludes additional building projects, such as the condo-style chalets creeping in these days on the edges of Mürren. How un-Swiss to let such a technicality prevent potential revenues from tourism. But thank God. The combined populations of Gimmelwald and her big sister Mürren total less than five hundred people, making this side of the valley clearly the better place to be. The Back Lauterbrunnen and Sefinen Valleys, which extend south and southwest, respectively, from the main valley, are currently inhabited only by a few summer farms. Oberberg (Sefinenalp), which you will skirt, if you do the Rotstockhütte hike, has long been known to produce the best cheese in all of Switzerland. The reason given for this is that the pastureland on the south side of the Wasenegg is made up of a specific combination of wild herbs, which, when eaten by the cows, sweeten the resulting dairy products.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Back Lauterbrunnen Valley saw a flurry of activity which would contrast stongly with the tranquil, remote walking paths remaining today. Trachsellauenen, which is about a fifty minute walk up the valley from Stechelberg, was at that time a center of high alpine mining activity. Originally, its main focus was the iron ore taken out of the mountainside just south of the tongue of the Rottal Glacier. Later it was apparently expanded to the mining of zinc ore and lead sulfide from other parts of the valley. The operation ceased production in 1805, leaving behind two of the original smelting furnaces, one at Schmelziwald and one at Trachsellauenen. The latter was destroyed by an avalanche in 1931 but is now undergoing reconstruction, strictly for historical purposes. The narrow, steep-sided valley is prone to avalanches and ice-falls from overhanging glaciers, making access to Oberhornsee, at its upper end, possible only five or six months of the year. The beauty of this remote valley is enhanced by the Untersteinberg Nature Preserve, a lush natural garden that relatively few tourists venture into.

Nature, a prevalent force in the valley with a big role in its history, is not just known for its benevolent beauty. From time to time nature turns the proverbial other cheek. About once a century, for example, the River Lütschine goes berserk. The last time was in 1933, when what is normally little more than a stream reached a width of 200 meters in some places. If you by any chance find yourself walking from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen, you may notice a high-water mark from '33 marked on the side of the Jungfraubahn Elektrizitätswerk, between Zweilütschinen and Lauterbrunnen, on the left side of the path.

Another way in which nature shows her strength is with avalanches, often appearing as harmless and beautiful white plumes showering down off the Schwarzmönch, when viewed from Mürren. But they aren't at all harmless, despite the historical account given by a man who was for two hours buried, unconscious, in a Sefinental avalanche in 1939. Revived by the traditional shot of schnapps, he suffered virtually no injuries other than crankiness and insisted he knew all along that his friend Heini would dig him out. Another documented avalanche was one in 1889, which swept away the collection of barns at Stufenstein, in the Back Lauterbrunnen Valley. After the new barns, now over 100 years old, were built, someone had the thought to write a few words about the avalanche, in pencil, on the side of one of them. This somewhat whimsical inscription is still there but barely legible.

The last natural force, which the people of the valley have had to reckon with down throughout the ages, is that of the Föhn. The Föhn is a warm south wind, an alpine version of a Santa Ana, and when it blows strongly, a lot of damage can be done. In the Föhn storm of November 1962, so many roofs were ripped off the houses in Lauterbrunnen that they had to import carpenters from Austria to do all the rebuilding. Whole stretches of forest were destroyed, most notably in the lower part of the Trümmel Valley. When combined with a carelessly tossed cigarette butt, the Föhn can be particularly dangerous. In 1926, a Föhn-related fire took out three prominent hotels and several residences and barns at the north end of Mürren. Since the train was at that time out of service due to repairs, help could only come on foot, up the trails from Lauterbrunnen and Stechelberg. Before it could be gotten under control, a stream of burning Mürren-chunks was already pouring over the cliffside.

The people of the valley have certainly known a colorful natural history, including, in addition to the above, an array of sudden storms, earth slides and spontaneously-plummeting boulders. Sometimes man thinks he is boss, but here, he never goes very long without having Mother Nature remind him who's really in charge.

In closing, a few words about the languages of the area. High German is of course the "official" language of the Berner Oberland, but, though using it is still better than using English, it is regarded somewhat with disfavor. The German-speaking areas of Switzerland all also speak Schwyyzerdüütsch, which is technically a dialect of German, though unintelligible to speakers of German. Swiss German varies from valley to valley and sometimes even from town to town. (There are more than just a few small differences, for example, just between Mürren, Gimmelwald and Stechelberg, and it amuses me to hear people who live no more than ten minutes away from each other by cable car make fun of each other's accents/ dialects.) There's a lot of French influence in Swiss German, probably more in the Lauterbrunnen Valley than in other areas because it was brought in indirectly via the Walliser dialect. Lastly, Swiss German is a little more similar to English than High German is, making it easier and more fun to learn. Me, biased?