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Frank Disclaimer - All Prices are from 1994/5 and are yet to be updated for this edition of the guide.

As I mentioned before, Grindelwald is the best bet, if you're still hoping the weather might clear up. While you're waiting to see if it does, head out to the Upper Glacier (signposted Oberer Gletscher), an easy hour by foot straight out the main road from the train station or a fifteen minute postal bus ride from the main parking lot for SFr 5.00. The Glacier is almost better on a rainy day because it's blue color, sometimes washed out a bit by the sun, will now appear very blue. One of the classic views of the glacier is right from the parking lot of the Hotel Wetterhorn, which is where the bus drops you off, if you're bussing. From the same parking lot, it's about ten minutes down to the stream bed in front of the glacier, where more photo possibilities will greet you. Ten minutes further, uphill now, and you're at the entrance to the ice cave--or "blue ice grotto," as the Swiss marketing experts like to call it. The cave itself consists of a few rooms, decorated by small, often tacky and/or perplexing ice sculptures, the whole thing kind of a miniature version of the Jungfraujoch's "Ice Palace." Though I don't paint this as sublimely appealing, SFr 4.00 is not too much to pay, to say you've been inside of a glacier. The caves are officially open from mid-June till the end of October, but the rest of the time, they are simply blocked off by a wire fence and sign warning of avalanches, both of which you can take as seriously as you want.

On your way back from banging around up there, pay attention for the road that cuts off to the left and heads down towards the bottom of the valley. This is the way to the Lower Glacier's gorge, which you will find by following signs for Unterer Gletscher. The admission fee of SFr 5.00 will allow you to walk the length of the 720-meter gorge and view the tongue of the Lower Glacier, which is not visible from anywhere else.