Saturday night we weren’t sure that we would be able to tackle another hike the very next day, so we put off the final decision to Sunday morning. Luckily, we all felt good so we decided to take the bus to Grosse Scheidegg. It was a 40 min bus ride in the other direction from Grindelwald. This time I was brave enough to snap some photos, but they don’t really capture the peril. Sometimes it feels like the bus might tip right over the edge.

When we got to Grosse Scheidegg, the sun was still behind the mountain so it was pretty chilly. We were pretty eager to start our hike and get to the sunshine!

When we got around the corner and into the sunshine, we could already see our destination - the First gondola. Of course, it was the case that even though you can see it, it’s still a nearly 2 hour hike away.

We stopped about halfway and emptied our backpacks for a picnic. We had apples, cashews, leftover pommes frites and gluten free bread from dinner the night before, picnic eggs (the colorful boiled eggs), pistachios, Coke, and beer. I’ll let you guess who brought the beer.

Cass and Luke fed a black bird that was brave enough to get close, and pretty soon we had a whole flock of new friends.

About 3/4 of the way into the hike, there was a split in the path. Stay on the original path and continue on to the destination, or take the alternate path which goes around a mountain and has an extra 100m in elevation then joins back up with the original trail right before the end. My first answer was nope because I was feeling energy depleted, but Cass and Luke wanted to go so I relented. I regretted it pretty quickly, but there was no turning back!

Cass’s new obsession is going off path and doing crazy stuff. “I’m going to hike up to the bottom of that rock formation and you take my picture, ok?” I’m busy just trying to get oxygen into my lungs I’m not studying your off-piste shenanigans. But as I was trudging on up the extra 100m altitude, I look over and see a couple of mountain goats right where Cass is hiking. Oh wait no, that’s more like 50 mountain goats! All of a sudden I’m having visions of having to call Rega (helicopter rescue) due to mountain goat attack. On top of it, another hiker had taken notice of the shenanigans and stopped to video the whole thing. Now I’m also having visions of this guy running me down to read me the riot act about the hiking rules and how many of them Cass has just broken. Luckily, no Rega was required, and we all made it through unscathed.

We finally made it back to the gondola and went to eat at the restaurant. Cass and I had some delicious goulash, and Luke had Rösti (I think it’s his favorite).