Today we start our two days walk along the Aletschwald, the biggest glacier in the Alps.
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The first day we will climb up to the top of the valley and the second day, we will walk along it for seven hours. Seven hours watching a glacier, such a privilege!
The walk starts in Fieschertal and finishes in Belalp, so it is not a circular walk. We will have to use public transport to either the start or the end of the walk. We have decided to do the latter, it is better to get the public transport to the start of the route and walk back, so you are not pushed by any timetable.
Last night, we intended to sleep in Belalp and leave Dora there, but Belalp is a very touristic town, and you have to pay everywhere to park. So we drove down the valley a few kilometres and found a free car park in Geimen. Surprisingly, a Spanish couple was also parked and intended to spend the night there. A really nice couple from the Basque country, fans of rock climbing who were travelling in a converted 4×4. Not a real motorhome, but it does for a short term holiday. Also, it is less obvious than Dora. You can get away with sleeping anywhere and not being molested.
We chatted for a while. They were in their twenties, young and used to unplanned travelling. They arrived in Switzerland out of the blue a couple of days ago and were looking for things to do. We gave them one of the many maps we had of the Valais and talked to them about the walk along the glacier. We also gave them our card so they could check out our website for places to trek and climb.
We could invite them for dinner to play ‘pocha’ with us Gary suggested. When we left Spain, we promised ourselves to make friends to play the game, as you need a minimum of four people. But it hasn’t happened, and neither will it tonight. As soon as we said good-bye to them, they went to sleep, it was still daylight.
As we packed everything last night we have just got up, have a coffee and lock Dora securely. Luckily we don’t need to walk far to get the bus, the bus stop is just opposite us.
We must admit Switzerland has very a good public transport network. From this small village, we can buy a combined ticket of three means of transport, which will leave us right at the start of the walk. Of course, you pay a premium for it; €37 each. Although we asked for a bus ticket all the way, the bus driver sells us the combined ticket with the train, which has probably pushed up the price.
The bus takes us to the town of Brig thirteen minutes before the train leaves. That will give us enough time to pick up some bread from the supermarket.
Fancy a banana?
Sure
Fruit has to be weighted before you pay for it at the cashier. Interestingly, the scale is not marking zero, it marks 20grs, the weight of the tray where you place your fruit. This is so sneaky of them. How many people might have placed their fruit and vegetables without realising? In that way, the supermarket gets extra cents or euros, depending on how much stuff you buy. Clearly, a robbery! They don’t only charge you bloody high prices for everything they sell, they also use dishonest tricks like this to get more money out of you. And, do you think we’ve got an apologise from the staff member? NONE. So deceitful, so shameful, so arrogant.
Anyway, we put that behind us and get on the train. It is not being a peaceful journey, really. A group of teenagers, shouting and singing are disturbing the whole carriage. And Spanish people have the reputation of being loud!
The train stops at Fiesch, where the bus is waiting for us to take us to the start of the trek. We have the bus entirely for us, no one else is doing this walk today.
It may be down to two reasons; it is cold, grey and miserable, or it is already low season, or both.
We won’t walk along the grosser Aletschgletscher today, we will just climb to the top. There it is the Marjele hut where we will spend the night. Our walking guide suggests todays walk will take 3 1/2 hours. We have started quite early, we reckon we will get there by lunchtime, which will give us the rest of the afternoon to chill out and take a short walk to the edge of the glacier.
The start of the walk is a bit boring, mainly on road but we go through a couple of quintessentially Swiss villages which keep us entertained. This one is particularly cute.
With its timber frame huts sitting on the top of mushrooms-like pillars. This scenery reminds me of the Heidi series I was so fond of when I was a girl.
We soon leave the road to pick up the footpath through the woods. The humid and wet weather encourages mushrooms to grow. This one is the size of my hand.
The walk is nice and peaceful. We have not come across a human being yet.
A proper autumn day in August. Likely, it is not raining (yet).
A large butterfly catches my attention. I love butterflies, specially the ones with bright colours. This one had particularly unusual ones; green and grey, matching perfectly with the healthy grass and the gloomy day. I am surprised I have persuaded Gary to go back and photograph it. He hates moths.
The path is fairly steep at times but we are not in a hurry. We hardly talk to each other, we just walk; plot, plot, step by step; at a steady pace; embedded in our own thoughts, enjoying peace and quietness.
We soon get to a hibernating chair lift. We are not sure what use it has; there is no ski slope at this low altitude and it doesn’t seem to connect with a second stage lift.
We soon leave the tree lines.
We can’t see the grosser Aletschgletscher from here, but we can get a glimpse of its little brother; the grosser Fieschergletscher.
After an hour climb, we get to the Bur hut.
which looks inhabited; only the owner and his goats are around.
A few friendly goats come and say hello, hoping to get some food from us. Others are quite entertained, playing sexual games. A bit young for that sort of thing, if you don’t mind me saying.
Sorry, we haven’t got any food for you. Well, we do, but it is for us.
Here our walking guide suggests we turn left and zig-zag up the valley. Why? that means we will miss the view of the glacier. So we ignore their advice and walk along the ridge.
And here it is; grosser Fieschergletscher. It looks a bit manky and dirty, there is none of that deep blue colour, so typical of a glacier.
But if we zoom in with the camera we can get a glimpse of that blue, crystal ice.
We hope its big brother looks much more splendorous.
We go up the ridge to get a bit closer.
Still nothing that looks like a glacier. But we notice a bright turquoise spot; a lake laying there, on its own. Nature can create such weird and beautiful things.
Black clouds, full of rain keep chasing us but they haven’t dared to burst into tears yet. Meantime, we continue.
Occasionally we get breakthroughs of sun. We now turn left and pick up the path our book suggests.
It is the steeper section of the walk. But we cope well, we are not tired, we’ve only been walking for two hours.
After half an hour climb, we reach the pass. We say good-bye to the valley we have been walking on for the last 2 1/2 hours.
And walk towards the hut.
We hear bells, dozens of sheep get excited with the presence of humans. They come and say hello, also looking for food.
Sheep are pretty stupid animals. Normally you woo them and they go away. Not these ones, these ones are not shy, these ones don’t go away, these ones start surrounding us and don’t let us move. I no longer want to be friendly with them. I want to escape, but I can’t. They have blocked me up.
I call Gary for action. Go whilst I entertain them. I feel so silly being scared by bloody sheep!
They eventually get bored and stop chasing us.
I am not very good with animals, I must say. I haven’t grown close to them, I’ve never had pets, my parents never liked them. So I’ve always felt intimidated by them.
And there is the hut, only 10 minutes away.
Our host comes and say hello. We have booked but we didn’t need to. There is only us for now.
We settle in, have some lunch and go out again. Although we will have enough of the grosser Aletschgletscher tomorrow, we can’t wait to get the first views today. There is a half an hour footpath which takes you to the edge of it. Once we’ve had a quick lunch, we set off again, in search of the wonder.
It has started to rain, but that doesn’t stop us.
Rather than take the short route, we climb the ridge to get an upper view. From here we can see that there is also a way down to the glacier by scrambling down with the aid of fixed ropes. We give it a go, fearing that we may need to scramble back up, as we can’t see whether this rocky path goes down all the way to the bottom.
But we don’t care, the scene is already fantastic. We look right,
we look left, it is just endless. There seems to be two thick grey lines in the middle of the glacier. This may indicate that there is not one glacier, but three joining together much further up from the three biggest peak of the area; the Eiger, the Jungfrau and the Aletschhorn.
The scale of this wonder of nature is incomprehensible for the human eye. From far, it resembles a smooth, soft, porous sponge.
Closer, the numerous and dangerous crevasses reveal. I suddenly feel a chill down my spine. We are going to be crossing a glacier in a couple of days time, when we attempt to climb Dufourspitze (4639m), the highest peak in the Swiss Alps.
Fortunately, the footpath goes down all the way to the bottom. From this close, the glacier changes again its shape and form.
All we can see now is a massive block of ice.
It looks as solid as a rock. We are tempted to look underneath.
It is hard to believe that this enormous, solid, compacted material is not static, it is moving, all the time, eroding and shaping the landscape.
The sense of fear of being close to such a massive block of ice is rather unnerving. We are aware we are in a dangerous zone. but we are trying to be careful when getting closer. This is a once in a lifetime experience. We don’t wanna miss any detail.
But the closer you get the more amazing the glacier looks. By looking underneath it, the ice changes colour. The grey, caused by the amount of ground, rocks and general dirt now disappears to give way an intense blue. How can light go through such a thick, solid layered of frozen snow?
It is like being back to room we stayed when we visited the ice hotel in Sweden back in 2003.
This is as close as I can possibly get. It feels now extremely cold.
Gary dares to go a bit further in. I wait for him here to make sure he is all right.
What an amazing experience, what a shame that future generations are not likely to see this wonder of nature except for text books and images.
We go back to the hut. It’d be nice to rest before dinner, we have a long day tomorrow.
Hang on, what is that? a tunnel? Lets go and explore.
It certainly is a tunnel, rather wet an unpleasant. It connects to the valley we were yesterday doing the Via Ferrata. It was probably built when the hut was constructed and it is now used to supply the hut.
We get back to the room to get ready for dinner.
Whilst waiting, a French family turns up. They came walking from the funicular along the glacier and they will also stay here tonight. They are really nice. He speaks English, the woman speaks Spanish and the girls a bit of both.
Dinner eventually comes. We are so hungry we only remember to take one photo at the end of the starter, which consisted of a cheese soup?? It sounds a bit weird, doesn’t it. It is probably the closest English translation of the Swiss fondue. Quite nice, actually.
For the main course, we had beef, mashed potatoes and broccoli. I don’t eat beef so Gary is having a meat feast. In exchange he gives me his broccoli. Desert consists of Apple cake.
Whilst eating, we observe the French family. In a few occasions we have talked about the relationship that French parents have with their children; quite mature and healthy. We’ve noticed this by simply looking at their facial expressions, body language, posture… This family has proved it once more.
I could go to bed right now but I stick around for a while, as it is still daylight. We take out the board games but can’t play at most of them, all instructions are in German. We end up playing the German version of parchis (ludo in English) but the game is not going well for me. I am loosing badly, so as soon as the sun disappears, I have an excuse to go to bed. I know, very immature attitude, but I am afraid I am a very bad loser.
Total distance 11.6 km
11.6 kms
3 hrs
SM
