Due to the condition of several of the members of the hiking team, Captain Kevin developed an alternative plan for us to get to Gruben (the original route would have been one of the most challenging hiking days ever with huge amounts of elevation gain and descent - given our speed, it might have been another 12 hour day).
The Captain's plan, however, did require us to leave the Auberge Alpina where we had been staying at 7:10 am (there was some grumbling among the troops) in order to walk to a bus stop to catch a bus to St. Luc. As we passed a patisserie that was open, Kevin bought pain du chocolate for all to celebrate Tom and Chanda's anniversary.
Once in St. Luc, we walked some more to the funicular station that we took up the mountain along with lots of mountain bikers.
Once we got off the funicular, we stopped at a hillside cafe and had coffee - the troops were now happy and enthusiastic about starting our hike on this beautiful day. The weather helped everyone's spirits for sure!
Our alternative route involved going up through the Meidpass col and then descending into Gruben. Gruben is generally considered the first "German" Swiss town, and as we hiked, we certainly heard more German being spoken on the trail. Certainly earlier on the hike, it is part of the culture for every passing hiker to greet you with "bonjour" - now the passing hikers were saying "guten tag."
Now don't get the impression that our alternative route was a "piece of cake." No, all morning we could see the Meidpass col rising up ahead of us as we did the slow steady climb up ( the col is right to the left of the jagged spikes).
You can see here when we stopped for a break we still had a long way to go!
Here are Tom and Chanda at another break holding up 11 fingers for their 11th anniversary.
Of course no accent to a col is complete without a boulder and/or scree field. What made this final ascent even more exciting was having to dodge (quickly step off the narrow trail) for descending mountain bikers who were coming over the pass.
We were so happy to finally reach the col in the early afternoon and were afforded so spectacular views on both sides.
After a brief celebration and lots of photos, we soberly looked at what we still needed to descend to get to Gruben. You can see Greg looking down - note you can't even see the valley floor where Gruben is located!
Here you can just begin to get a glimpse of the valley below, but can also see how far we have to go!
Finally, we are able to see where we will be spending the night - at the Hotel Schwartzhorn! We got inside our rooms at about 6 pm - we couldn't imagine what condition we would have been in if our faithful Captain hadn't figured out an alternative route to Gruben!
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