Holy Week Hike

The holy week is a special week in Switzerland. During this special time of the year, people get an extra long weekend, as Good Friday is a holiday as well as Easter Monday. Back in Canada, we getr only three days with Easter Monday not being a statutory one. With this, I took the opportunity to escape the stresses of work and embarked myself on a hiking journey in the Interlaken mountains of Switzerland together with 4 ILO interns from Belgium, India, Ireland, and the USA.

Interns from USA, Ireland, India and Belgium

The trip started early in the morning with the group assembling around 8:00 at the Geneva train station. We took the train to Bern at 8:10 where we changed to another in Interlaken and then transferred to another one en route to Grindelwald which will be the start of our hike.

Scenes from our train ride to Grindelwald, just awesome

Grindelwald is a small, touristic town. It has a small train station as well as a good collection of hotels and restaurants. Strolling by the town, you get to notice that it is one of the main transiting point for tourists going up the mountains to ski. You hear a barrage of different languages as well ranging from English to French to Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and of course Swiss German.

Downtown Grindelwald

Before we start our hike, we documented the entire team still in healthy form. We took this picture just in case that identification will be needed later if something unfortunate happens to us during the hike.

According to signs and maps, our hike from Grindelwald to our destination will approximately take 4 1/2 hours. We started hiking at about 1 o'clock in the afternoon and took the opportunity to take pictures while the course was still easy.

Me still in form at the early stages of the hike

An hour and a half into the course, the hike got more and more challenging with steeper gradients, narrower pathways and rockier topography to handles:

After an hour and a half of intense hiking, we took a rest into one of the stone formations somewhere at the start of the descent of the mountain:

And this is the view of Grindelwald from that spot:


Continuing further into the hike, snow begins to build up and hiking was made a little more challenging with the slush.


The hiking actually became more and more challenging that we needed to step sideways as the snow was becoming thicker and thicker. It was the first time that somebody has hiked the route so no footstep patterns were available for us to use. And I didn't look down even once as I do have altitude sickness but I estimate that if some miscalculations happens, the fall would be somewhat between 500 - 800 metres. As the situation became very risky, we called the tourist office and finally decided to call it quits and head backto our origin. It turns out that we took the wrong path and headed into a very challenging mountain hike. I was soo relieved to turn back as these girls are really crazy... they wanted to continue with the hike! And me, being a novice hiker was having a hard time catching my breath and keeping my feet comfortable as some form of frostbite start to set in.



Going down was actually tougher than first thought. And the girls I am with are actually professional by my standards. They're just soo strong. Anyhow, they have been training for quite some time to join the Geneva marathon and this could have contributed to their finess and longetivity. I just admire their perseverance and dedication and wish could have it as well.

After 8 hours of walk, we finally reached the youth hostel we are going to stay. With my jeans and shoes wet because of the snow, I was thankful to have reached terra firma alive, kicking and without any injury at all. The climb was really scary, my hips have started to bother me and for sure, I would be somewhat sore the day after.

In the youth hostel, we are required to set our beds by ourselves. As I don't know how to set my bed, I might as well have a lesson from my fellow interns.





The next day, we embarked on another hike to finally reach our desired destination: Kleine Scheidegg. This time around, we wouldn't like to be on the wrong side already and make sure that we are taking the correct path.Here are some scenes from the hike:




This time around, we got it right and it was a less of a challenge. The pathways were paved and well marked and we were really sure that we are on the right track. However, the gradient is still steep and need to exert your aerobic energy to manage the hike.




Finally, after 4 hours of ruthless effort and lots of breath-catching, we finally reached our destination. At 2,061 metres, the oxygen is thinner and the UV rays a lot stronger. Surprisingly, the Swiss were able to build small towns on top of their mountains complete with hotels and a train station. What an incredible engineering feat indeed!










At the end of the hike, I was actually scheduled to go to nearby town whose name is a tongue-twister in itself, Zweilutschinen. Unfortunately, I was really really sore with my hips bothering me and walking was not really comfortable. I was supposed to go to a Swiss museum called Ballenberg but I decided to defer the trip and go back to Geneva instead.

On the whole, this hiking experience was really incredible as I was able to reach 2,000 metres by foot. Its tough but with sheer determination and dedication, I have proven that a weakling like me could traverse a mountain this high.