From the Grindelwald train station it's about a fifteen minute walk out the main road, if you don't waste too much time on the plethora of tourist shops, to the Pfingstegg cable car station. You'll see a sign pointing down the hill to your right. Buy yourself a one-way ticket and enjoy the ten minute ride to Pfingstegg. Boy, that was a tough 400-meter altitude gain! Now look for a trail marker to Stieregg, which will point you up and around the face of the Mettenberg, that bulwark of rock upon which the Schreckhorn sits, and on up the narrow valley behind the Eiger.

On the way up, you'll pass a wider area in what is basically a cliffside path, and this part's known as Bäregg. There are a few points of interest about Bäregg. One is the legend of St. Martin, who came to stop the overflow from a high mountain lake, and while he was pushing back on the near-bursting wall of the Eiger with his walking stick, the pressure on him left an imprint of his body in the cliff face at Bäregg. If you can't find this human body "imprintation", perhaps you can spot the hole his walking stick allegedly punched, through the top of the eastern ridge of the Eiger. (I've decided that legend-weaving is like a centuries-long game of "Whisper Down the Lane" to the Swiss because I recently heard a variation on this one, where St. Martin used his walking stick to form the space between the Eiger and the Schreckhorn, so that some sunlight would come into the village.) Also interesting is that Bäregg was once the site of a guesthouse, but after the second time it was destroyed by an avalanche, they gave up on trying to rebuild it. The Mettenberg is virtually one big avalanche zone, and they rumble off of it all spring long, providing a continuous and almost comforting backgound noise for the people of Grindelwald.

This is no wonder because the trail, while plenty wide enough to feel secure on, amounts to little more than a hairline fracture in the otherwise smooth, precipitous slope of the rock face. More or less the whole way along, if you'd like to lean over the edge a little bit, you're looking down--and I mean straight down--on the Lower Glacier's gorge. While the Mettenberg is completely safe from avalanches at the time of year when the Pfingsteggbahn is running, the almost vertical Fiescherwand, on the other side, will show you at least one waterfall of snow during the course of this hike.

Stieregg is a mountain restaurant built on a place where the horizontal gound, scarce in these parts, widens out into a broad, sheep grazing pasture. At 1,650 meters, it's the high point of the hike. Though I've never personally been beyond Stieregg, I know that if you continue on up to a place called Bänisegg, which adds probably just over an hour of hiking time, you'll get a view of the glacier that won't put a crick in your neck or risk your tumbling into a thousand-foot chasm.

In any case, the higher you go, the more rugged and alpine the terrain becomes. Go as far as you want, but remember that there's no other way back, and you'll have to retrace your steps. Once you return to Pfingstegg, continue on in the same horizontal direction, following signs for the Chalet Milchbach or the Oberer Gletscher. The walking is easier back below treeline, in and out of small forests, amongst boulders and through fields. Good views of Grindelwald and the Wetterhorn are around every turn in the path. You'll also pass a site of geological interest, with an explanatory plaque (in German) detailing, among other things, the formation of potholes by glacially transported stones.

It's not a bad idea to stop off at the Chalet Milchbach for a drink because, from their outside terrace, you can watch people going up the ladder trail to the right and eventually up over the mid-section of the Upper Glacier. If you're feeling kind of daring, you can go up there yourself, but it costs two francs. Five minutes further down the hill, you'll reach the entrance to the ice caves, which explains the sudden feeling that you've re-entered the tourist zone. Zig-zagging on downward, you soon emerge from the woods onto a large, flat stream bed, where you can clamber around for a while and look at the glacier from different angles.

From there, the trail goes up the other side and takes you, in ten minutes' time, to the Hotel Wetterhorn. The Hotel Wetterhorn (or, to be more fair, its parking lot) commands a broad, full-frontal view of the glacier, and I'm sure that's as close as many of the tourists get. Behind the hotel and down the road a bit towards Grindelwald, you'll find your next trail marker, sending you towards Grindelwald Dorf.

The stretch between the glacier and town, though considerably lower in altitude than most of the hike, is by no means unscenic. You'll pass farmlands, old chalets and burbling mountain streams, all while advancing on a storybook Grindelwald with the Eiger jutting into the sky behind it. Pay attention to your trail markers because some of them are hard to see, hidden by trees or by the eaves of houses. But if you get lost out there, in the "suburbs" of Grindelwald, well, it certainly wouldn't be the worst thing that ever happened to you.