Having just explored the terrain above the west side of the Lauterbrunnen Valley on the previous day, we awoke with a plan to do the same for the eastern side. Our plan was to take the train to the town of Wengen, perched above the eastern edge of the valley, and then to play the rest by ear, depending on the weather conditions. The morning's weather was bright and sunny, a welcome change from the drizzly day we'd spent visiting Mürren and Gimmelwald, though again there were some clouds obscuring the higher mountains.

Climbing the 1,500 feet from Lauterbrunnen to Wengen is normally accomplished by taking a ride on the Wengernalp rack railway, which boards at the town railroad station, just down the hill from our hotel. Rack railways are commonly used in mountainous areas where there are grades that exceed a steepness of 7-10%. Conventional friction-based trains can't climb such grades, as they just slip backward in the attempt. A rack railway has a special track with "teeth", and trains with cog wheels that mesh with the teeth. They're built more for safety than for speed, but our train got us up to Wengen within about 20 minutes.


In Wengen we exited the train and took a little time to admire the view from the station.



The town of Wengen is famous for its mountain sports, especially (in the winter) its skiing. Once a year the town is host to the Lauberhorn ski races, a stop on the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup circuit. The Lauberhorn is an 8,000-foot mountain just outside of town, down which extremely skilled (and maybe not entirely rational) skiers can be seen flying each January. The downhill course, at 2.7 miles, is the longest on the circuit. There is a section called the Haneggschuss which is the fastest on the circuit (the record speed is just over 100 mph). As you might expect, there have been a number of spectacular falls and crashes over the years, but (so far) just one fatality, in 1991. From the winners list, it looks like only men's events are held here, but the list reads like a Who's Who of famous skiers (Killy, Stenmark, Mahre, Johnson, Tomba, Miller, etc.). We didn't go up to the ski area, partly because it was summer and there wasn't anything going on, and partly because we weren't aware of it anyway.

Another attraction which we didn't pursue but which we were aware of, could have been reached if we'd stayed on the train (and paid a significantly larger amount of money). The Wengernalp railway, as it turns out, is the longest continuous rack and pinion railway in the world. From Wengen it continues upward, eventually ending at a town called Grindelwald in the next valley to the east (for a total railway length of just under 12 miles). But on the way it stops at a number of stations before descending into Grindelwald's valley. The highest station, at 6,700 feet, is at Kleine Scheidegg, a mountain pass of considerable notoriety. For one thing, this is the finish line of the Jungfrau Marathon, run each September by another possibly irrational group of athletes. This irrational group is larger than the skier group, with 4,000 runners registering each year. The marathon course begins in Interlaken, and follows a steady but manageable climb into the Lauterbrunnen Valley. From Lauterbrunnen, things get serious, with a very steep climb up the valley wall into Wengen, and from there more unrelenting steepness eventually into Kleine Scheidegg. The total climb for the course is nearly 6,000 feet, with 4,200 feet of that in the second half of the course. But the scenery is hard to beat, if you survive. The event is a very big deal for the communities affected, with thousands of enthusiastic Swiss spectators shouting encouragement and generally making a big racket during the race. We left Lauterbrunnen two days before the race, so we missed the marathon (and the higher hotel rates that undoubtedly went along with it). But this was pure accident, as we had no idea there was such a thing as a Jungfrau Marathon until we saw the banners as we rolled into town.

Another of Kleine Scheidegg's claims to fame is its role as sort of a base camp (though a rather luxurious one, with hotels and restaurants) for one of the world's most challenging and dangerous climbs, the north face of the 13,000-foot mountain called the Eiger. The north face of the aptly-named Eiger ("Ogre") rises nearly 6,000 feet above Kleine Scheidegg, and since 1935 at least 64 climbers have lost their lives trying to scale it. In German the north face is called Eiger-Nordwand, but it has been given the clever nickname Mordwand, which means "murderous wall". The wall has earned this name through a variety of incidents, generally related to weather, avalanches or equipment failure. The first successful climb was accomplished by a German-Austrian party in 1938, and over the ensuing decades the climb has become safer, through the definition of established routes and improvements in equipment and weather forecasting. But it remains a climb not to be taken lightly. In 1974, the movie The Eiger Sanction was partly filmed on the north face, as director and star Clint Eastwood insisted on authenticity. Eastwood was 44 at the time, but did his own climbing with the help of a climbing adviser. During the filming, a cameraman was killed by falling rock and two other crew members were seriously injured, including the climbing adviser.

Kleine Scheidegg is also the starting point of the Jungfrau Railway, a 5.6-mile rack railway which runs to the highest railway station in Europe at the Jungfraujoch. Those of you who've read the Mürren page will remember that there are three principal mountains to the east of the Lauterbrunnen Valley: the Eiger ("ogre", 13,015 feet, discussed above), the Mönch ("monk", 13,474 feet) and the Jungfrau ("young woman"/"virgin", 13,642 feet). The Jungfraujoch is the saddle between the Mönch and the Jungfrau, and has an elevation above 11,300 feet. At the Jungfraujoch there is a railway station, a building called the Top of Europe (connected to the station by a tunnel) with restaurants, shops and exhibits, and an astronomical observatory (connected to the Top of Europe by an elevator) called the Sphinx, with an adjacent observation deck. From the Jungfraujoch there are fine views of the neighboring mountains, as well as a closeup view of the Aletsch Glacier. Facilities are available for playing in the snow outside the buildings, though with the thin air you might not feel like it very much. The weather might not agree with you either – though relatively sunny, the high temperatures in the summer hover around freezing (and in the winter, well below). And it can get breezy – winds above 160 mph have been recorded.

The Jungfrau Railway travels between Kleine Scheidegg and the Jungfraujoch by way of a tunnel which passes through both the Eiger and the Mönch. Most of the trip is spent inside this tunnel, but for the claustrophobic there are a couple of stops where there are windows through which one can partake of amazing views. One set of these windows is in the middle of the Eiger's north face. The tunnel was built between 1896 and 1912, opening for business well before the north face was successfully climbed. The project cost the lives of 30 workers, mostly from blasting accidents.


We did not visit the Jungfraujoch. The cost is considerable (nearly $200 per person for a round trip from Lauterbrunnen), the cloud situation appeared that it would render the views less than optimal, and we weren't anxious to deal with the altitude. We got no higher than Wengen, which is a nice town that is well-equipped to handle the needs of visitors, and which has some nice views of its own.










There's a cableway from Wengen up to a point on the ridge above the town called Männlichen, and there's a scenic trail from Männlichen to Kleine Scheidegg which is downhill and only 2.5 miles long. We considered doing this, but from Wengen we could see the cableway disappear into clouds before reaching the top of the ridge, so again it seemed like it would be a lot of trouble and expense for not much of a view.


After finding lunch in Wengen, we decided we would return to Lauterbrunnen via the train. We had a pleasant time exploring the town but were discouraged from further adventures by the cloud situation. While disappointing, this apparent setback left us time for a different adventure. This would be an up-close look at one of the valley's waterfalls, called Trümmelbach Falls.