Interlaken and Gimmelwald

I woke up early the next morning (11/5), 6am, to catch a train to Interlaken. I arrived at Interlocken at 2 and went to the tourist office to find a hostel. I ended up staying at Balmer's, but was not very impressed by it. It seemed like cool place to hang out, but the pillows were tiny and the rooms were crowded. Interlaken was dead during this season, so I headed to Gimmelwald (11/6) where the Mountain Hostel is that I was excited about even before this trip. To get there I took a train, bus, and gondala. This place was beautiful, it was literally surrounded by snow covered mountains. When I went in the hostel I was greeted by some other guests that were martial arts instructors. I did not get to talk long since they were going on a hike. I ended up just sitting in the hostel most of the day resting. I did do a trip up to the grocery store, but arrived at 12:12 when the store closed at noon. I ended up going to Esther's restraunt to buy a sandwich, yogurt, and beef jerky. It was all very good. The rest of the day was spent looking at emails and playing pool with the other guests.

The nex day (11/7) I woke up at 7:30 and ran up to the grocery store because people were planning on hiking at 9 and I needed to get back by then. I got back at 8:30 so I had some time to chow down musilii. We decided to hike up a valley and follow a stream to where the stream had carved out a cave inside a glacier. The hike took two hours to get to the cave. The hike was filled with scenery. The entire way was a rocky path along a steep mountain, at a few points we were in a pine forest that was beautiful. When we had hiked the two hours we were close but did not know where the caves were. We got to the end of the valley and it was enclosed by mountains, but we did not see a cave. It had to be ahead, so we kept walking. When we got to the top of a steep hill made of razor sharp rocks it was right there, a giant black hole dug straight into ice. Getting down there was tricky because there was a 45 degress slop heading into it that was covered with ice and loose sharp gravel. When we got down in it it was much larger than I had thought. Four of us put our head lamps on and walked in. The width of the cave had to be 20 meters wide and 10 meters high. The cave walls were similar to egg crate foam texture except on a much larger scale. Like in rocks there were different colors of ice probably from areas of high pressure. Some of these layers were extremely clear and you could see a few meters in and other were foggy from the air bubbles in it.

The four faster guys in the group including me walked further into the cave; we followed it for about 15 minutes before we took a break. We paused for a minute and turned off the head lamps. It was the darkest I have ever seen. I put my hand up to my face and could not see a thing. After we decided to turn back becasue we thought it might be dangerous because we did not have the porper gear. I wanted to go a little further and see if we could find the exit where a water fall was. When back at the hostel I ordered a pizza and beer and exchanged stories about the day with the other guests.

The martial arts instructors invited me on a hike (11/8) for this day, but I declined bacuse I had no food to take and they told me they were going for 9 hours and I wasn't sure I could keep up. At around 11 I went outside and it was an absolutely beautiful day. I decided to not sit around and take a hike. My plan was to follow the same trail as to the ice caves and then follow a trail that went up to the mountain. After about 2 hours I had made it pretty far and decided to go 30 minutes further. After 30 minutes I made it to a small camp of 3 buildings, from here I could see the top of the mountain Spitzberg and Berg. This was where the martial arts guys were hiking. I decided to hike up there, but did not know what trail to follow. I followed one for 30 minutes, but found out it was the wrong one, so I turned around and went back to the camp. At the camp I followed the sign that led up the mountain. This was a very steep climb and I was nervous about getting hurt because I had not told any one where I was going and did not have the right gear. After about an hour of walking and crawling up the mountain I was close to the top. I could see the restraunt and tourist center clearly. There was probably only 200 meters difference in elevation, but it was steep. I was ready to keep climbing, but they had removed the trail markers, so that dumb hikers don't get themselves killed. After some comtemplation I decided to head down the mountain because I thought it was too dangerous to hike on unmarked trails with no one else with me and no gear or radio.

When I got back to the hostel I realized I had been hiking 6 hours and the other hikers were not back yet. After an hour the people that did the same hikes as me arrived. They ran into the same problems I had. The martial arts guys could find the trail and decided to blaze their own. and another guy got close to the top, but would always slide down the snow because it was so slick. I was proud that I was the first the first back and the one that hiked back, though they got to the top they did take the gondala back. We had a good time telling the stories of the day's adventures.

At 8 that night I had to head back to Interlaken because I had to get a train at 7am the next morning. When I got to the hostel the lady told me the reception was close, but the sign said it closed at 11 and it was only 9:30 so I pushed a little bit and she let me in. Next stop Swedish Family Reunion