The Lauterbrunnen Valley was formed over the last 2-3 million years through the process of glaciation. Glaciated valleys are characteristically "U-shaped", in that they have a relatively flat bottom, surrounded by extremely steep walls. An example found in the U.S. is Yosemite Valley, which also has a river flowing through it, fed by mountain streams and waterfalls tumbling down rock walls of a thousand feet or more. But unlike Yosemite Valley, whose walls are made of granite, the Lauterbrunnen Valley's walls are made of limestone. Both valleys are surrounded by spectacular mountains, but both valleys also present visitors with the predicament of not being able to see most of the nearby mountains from the valley floor. To see beyond the walls, one must climb to a higher vantage point. In the case of the Lauterbrunnen Valley, there are actual settlements atop the valley walls, where actual Swiss people live (though they're often outnumbered by tourists). The largest such settlement on the west side of the valley is the town of Mürren. This was our primary objective for our first full day in the area.

Getting to Mürren from Lauterbrunnen is usually accomplished by taking something called the Bergbahn Lauterbrunnen-Mürren, or BLM. There are two parts to this. The first involves climbing the steep slope to the west of Lauterbrunnen. From 1891 until 2006, this was done via a funicular. As this funicular mainly operated at ground level, it was subject to problems caused by snowfall in the winter, including avalanches. For this reason it was replaced in 2006 by a more typical gondola which dangles from cables all the way up the same route. In the gondola picture below, you can see that there's a framework below the gondola car. This is used to transport a large pallet that can be loaded up with passenger luggage or supplies for the town (there isn't any vehicular traffic in Mürren). The Lauterbrunnen station for the gondola was a very short walk from our hotel.


The cable ride ends at a station called Grütschalp after a climb of more than 2,000 feet, where a more conventional narrow-gauge train is waiting to take passengers along the top of the valley wall the rest of the way to Mürren. To transfer pallets from the gondola to the train, there is a massive and fabulously complicated diagonal-elevator-double-forklift sort of machine that has to be seen in action to be believed. The trip to Mürren from Grütschalp is only 2.7 miles, and there is a trail that parallels the railroad track, for those who prefer to walk. This is probably not that unusual when the weather is good and people are not pressed for time, as the scenery is amazing. Unfortunately for us, the weather was not so good, as a steady drizzle was falling and much of the scenery was intermittently obscured by clouds. Still, we could see some things from the train, including the largest settlement above the east side of the valley, a town called Wengen.

But the top sight across the valley, towering above the east wall, is a famous group of three mountains, called the Eiger (13,015 feet), the Mönch (13,474 feet) and the Jungfrau (13,642 feet). In German, these names mean "Ogre", "Monk", and "Maiden" or "Virgin", with the monk being situated between the ogre and the young lady. There's probably an official story behind this, but you should be able to make up your own – it pretty much writes itself. You can probably also imagine that a view that encompasses the valley floor (2,600 feet), the valley wall and these glacier-covered peaks must be truly spectacular. Or would be, if everything wasn’t covered in clouds...


After a short train ride, we disembarked at Mürren's small train station. There was a viewpoint next to the station, to which we made our way, despite the continuing drizzle.


Mürren has a good number of structures, considerably more than one would expect to be usable by the town's permanent population, which only numbers about 450. But the town is popular with skiers in the winter, and in the summer is a center for hikers and cyclists, and there are enough beds in town (inside of hotels and condominiums) to accommodate 2,000 visitors. There are also enough shops and restaurants to serve this short-term population, as well as people just passing through for the scenery, like us. And even with the clouds, the view was impressive. A closer mountain, called the Schwarzmönch, blocked our view of much of the big three, but there was still a lot to see from different vantage points as we walked through the village.







On reaching the other end of the village, we found a station for a gondola system, called the Luftseilbahn Stechelberg-Mürren-Schilthorn, or LSMS, at which one could buy passage back down to the valley. Or, up into the higher mountains.

Going up, there are two wonderfully scenic stations, called Birg and Schilthorn. On top of the 9,700-foot Schilthorn there is a metallic rotating restaurant called the Piz Gloria. If this restaurant looks like it could be the lair of some kind of supervillain, this is no accident. It served as the headquarters of one of the great supervillains of all time, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (head bad-guy of SPECTRE), in the 1969 James Bond movie, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Apparently the movie's production company got wind of the restaurant, which was then under construction, when they were scouting for locations. They helped out with the completion of the restaurant in return for being able to use it in the movie. Of course they blew the whole thing up as Bond made his escape, but they had the decency to really only blow up a model of it at a studio in London, leaving the restaurant for the enjoyment of generations of tourists. But not for us as it turned out. Riding to the top from Mürren is pricey, costing more than $80 per person for the round trip, and live video feeds on display in town showed that the Schilthorn was totally enveloped by clouds, with no view at all (according to the people at the station, this had been a problem for most of the summer). But when it's clear, the 360-degree view is amazing and not to be missed, if you can afford it. All of the mountains are visible – the Schwarzmönch is not a problem, as you can see over it. Some of the pictures below were taken on an earlier trip, in my distant youth, and the picture of the restaurant came from the Piz Gloria's website, where additional photos and information can be found.



So instead of going up from Mürren, we went down. But not via the cable car. There is a settlement below Mürren, called Gimmelwald, a short walk down a paved trail, which we wanted to see. As the drizzle had pretty much let up, we thought the walk would be pleasant, and this turned out to be the case.



Gimmelwald (population 130) has the look of a collection of vintage houses, and does not have the appearance of an obvious tourist destination. But some of the houses are actually hotels or shops, or double as business establishments run by their occupants. Still, it is very quiet when compared to the bustling metropolis of Mürren. We didn't go into any shops, as they weren't obvious shops and it would essentially have been knocking on doors of strangers' houses to ask what kinds of cheese they were selling.





Below Gimmelwald was the Gimmelwald gondola station, where one could either catch a gondola back up to Mürren (and eventually the Schilthorn), or a gondola down to the valley floor. The walk down looked like it would be very steep, so we chose to ride the gondola the rest of the way. Those who have a problem with heights would probably have some anxious moments on this ride, as a good portion of it is nearly vertical, but we managed it without too much trouble, landing at the valley station in the tiny village of Stechelberg.

Stechelberg is at the opposite end of the valley from Lauterbrunnen, but there is a bus that you can catch if you don't want to walk (and we didn't). We returned to our hotel room and rested for the remainder of the day.

The weather remained wet, raining hard at times, but let up by dinnertime. We walked down to the main building and had some hearty (and heavy) Swiss food, seated next to the dining room's mineral exhibit.


We walked back through the dark to our room and rested some more. Our plan for the next day was to visit the settlement above the valley on the east side, the town of Wengen.