Up to the Niederhorn

This was the our usual Spring "check the status of the legs" tour. There's still too much snow to do the Niesen, so we choose the Beatenberg and the Niederhorn. We've been here before, but did a different tour that time.

Today we start in Beatenbucht under cloudy skies and take the path up, up, up through the woods, making good time, until we hit the station at Beatenberg. Here we turn left and follow the road until it turns upwards through the woods towards the ridge. Now it's more up, up, up along the ridge, under the trees, through some mud, through some snow, and eventually into a bit of cloud. We take a short snack and water break as we cross the bend in the road that leads to Vorsass, but mainly it's just up, up, up. It's a nice path and there would be, at times, great views, but today there's none of that. Eventually the path takes us to the peak, behind the gondola station. There aren't a lot of people up here, but certainly more than we'd been seeing. We take advantage of the nice wooden lounge chairs up there (empty thanks to the weather and lack of views) and have another short food break. Since we're doing well on time we opt to stop in at the restaurant for some beverages and soup while we plan our route back down.

snow and clouds

After the break we continue along the ridge with no views and more snow than last time, to Oberburgfeld. Here we descend steeply to Unterburgfeld and then turn off to follow the path to the Bireflue. During this descent things finally clear up enough to see some of the view that we've been missing all day. Ah! View! Next on a fun path steeply down through the Bireflue and then more descending (constantly following signs to Beatenberg, which is really long), through Wydi and then down, down, down to Sundlauenen where we get the bus towards Interlaken and the train back to Basel.

steep down through the Bireflue

It was kind of a crap weather day (though it didn't rain on us), but still a good hike and test of our general fitness level: we're doing fine. :-)

VIEWS!

The track:
Totals: 14.3km, 1460m up, 1380m down.