Sunrise. Lo, in the distance--snowy peaks!
Because of the rain and snow, we hadn't put on sunscreen since Attinghausen, about 5,000' lower than Tannalp. We weren't feeling the difference in air pressure, but the sunscreen tube sure was.
After breakfast, we headed out into the sunshine.
A view whence we came, with more snow than when we had climbed up from Jochpass. By early morning, the snow line was already rising.
While I was busy climbing up a hillock to take photos looking back at the Tannalp, the bright yellow and blue open-air Frutt-Zug chugged by, full of tourists who were not getting pelted by graupel. What a difference 24 hours makes. Our backup plan the day before, had the weather seemed too dire, would have involved taking a train from Engelberg to Lucerne, then a train to Sarnen, then a bus to Stöckalp, then a Seilbahn to Melchsee-Frutt (where we would have seen the Melchsee up close), and finally the Frutt-Zug to the Berggasthaus.
The lake offered satisfying photo ops.
As we hiked up toward the ridge, we turned around to see the Engstlensee in the distance.
The cirrus clouds above the Melchsee were impressively wispy.
Once we reached the ridge, we had views down into the Gental. It was a long and steep drop, and I was glad that the potential presence of free-ranging cows had necessitated the fencing between me and the plunge. That got us wondering how many cows plummet off cliffs in the Alps every year. Turns out no one's really counting, but in Switzerland, it's on the order of a few to fiftyish. Here's an article about it that goes into an unexpectedly long tangent about lemmings, with an aside about four yaks.
Yeah, pretty steep. Rolling down the hill toward the Melchsee was clearly a better option than plummeting off the ridge in the opposite direction. We did neither, which was thrilling in itself.
Our immediate destination was the summit of Planplatten, where our options would be to hike down to Hasliberg or take a gondola part way down. We stopped for some french fries at the lift restaurant, assessed the state of our hard-working knees, and decided to veer off the Via Alpina and take a less steep route down.
But first, we hiked past the lift station to admire the view of the Wetterhorn, which, in the time it took to eat the fries, had alternated multiple times between being visible and being obscured by clouds. Peeking out along the right edge of the Wetterhorn, and separated at the base by intervening clouds, is the Eiger.
Back at the lift station, we could see Lake Brienz and the Meiringen military airport down below.
We breezed down into the warm, flower-filled cirque below the summit, which must be a lovely place for non-acrophobes to ski in the winter. Exiting the bowl in Mägisalp, we continued along the road before veering off onto another straight-shot trail through another ski run. After previously contemplating how many cows fall off cliffs every year, we were primed to ponder rates of ankles broken in marmot holes.
We greatly enjoyed the lack of fog.
4,500' is a long way to hike down, and sometimes entertainment is needed. Along the Kugelweg, kids who had remembered to bring golf balls or similarly sized balls could drop them into large wooden marble tracks and watch them roll.
By the time we neared our accommodations for the evening, the Gasthaus Gletscherblick, we were happy to end our hike walking uphill instead of down.
According to artsy notes in our room, Astrid Lindgren--author of Pippi Longstocking and many other children's books--regularly summered here and enjoyed the relative anonymity.
The hotel was cozy, homey, and delightfully "vintage," with creative and fresh food--a fun place to stay. They had two pianos, both out of tune, one of which was a Bechstein Flügel (grand) with a Dampp-Chaser, so there must have been serious pianists around at some point. I extroverted in German to let the proprietors know the Dampp-Chaser was blinking, cuz priorities.
We enjoyed but did not take advantage of the li'l free library outside.
After dinner (which we topped off with house made ice cream and a piece of "Haselnuss Kuchen" that was akin to a double-tall ground pecan pie), we headed out for a rain-free, backpack-free meander in search of Alpenglühen. S noticed some enticing stone stairs at the base of a cliff, so we headed up and found ourselves on a loop trail, where multiple benches were available for contemplating the views. Turns out Alpenglow hard to find when neighboring mountains get in the way of the sun, but we managed to see hints of it here and there. The hill we were on is called the Ursiflüö, with two delightfully adjacent umlauted vowels. Schwyzerdütsch is great with those long extended vowel sounds, nöööö?
Ta da! 10.8 miles, 1,775' ascent, 4,525' descent.
