Sunday July 31: Griesalp to Kandersteg
Today’s route went up and over the Hohtürli, the highest and scariest of the three high, scary passes that come in the middle of the Via Alpina. After being scared out of my wits on the Sefinafurgga yesterday, I had no desire to approach something even more frightening. In addition, it was a weekend and tomorrow was a national holiday, which meant the trails would be crowded – and the last thing I wanted to face was pressure to move faster or to get out of the way. We agreed to blow off the hike and just take the bus and train to Kandersteg.
Griesalp is maybe the highest Postbus stop in Switzerland. As always, the postbus and train were very easy to navigate. We were in Kandersteg before our morning coffee had worn off.
It’s always anticlimactic, though, to arrive at a destination many hours too early. Our hotel wasn’t ready for us. We had nothing to do.
And so we ended up walking from central Kandersteg up all the way to the Oeschinensee (the famous local mountain lake), doing the end of today’s hike in reverse and uphill, and a hard, hot walk it was! We found ourselves in the company of numerous Israeli teenagers out on a school outing – nice kids who were very proud of their (admirable!) English language skills!
We’d agreed to take the cablecar back down to town, but even reaching the station involved a half hour walk uphill.
In Kandersteg, we got into our hotel room and began our rest! The first step was to wash some clothes to give them maximum time to dry, though on our sunny balcony this ended up taking no time.
