You can also find out more about the A-Team here. My dad once told me that I could sense a different world on a certain mountain. “There’s a special light and air,” he said vaguely. “You only have to walk near it to feel and to see it. “Stand in one spot and look up.”
My dad was thinking about the Eiger that day, Switzerland’s 3,970-metre monster of ice and limestone. The peak is a magnet for climbers, and remains the symbol of the Bernese Oberland. Its most prominent feature, its 1,800 metre north face, has the largest Alps. This massive slab looms above the village of Grindelwald to the south of Interlaken. It appears at sunrise in a valley full of green as a black spectre.
As well as being a promised land for daredevil mountaineers and other adventurers (bungee jumpers dive into the void from a 90-metre-high platform), Grindelwald is a happy hunting ground for hikers, and last June a themed trail opened on an existing path at the foot of the north face – the Eiger Walk of Fame. Jungfrau Region Tourism established it to honor the stories of those who pioneered routes on its near-vertical side. As the temperature in Zurich approaches 35C (95F), I decide to head to the Jungfrau Region to compare my experience with that of pioneers of alpinism.
I can easily feel the personal resonance. In August 1970, my dad Ian, and some companions, conquered the North Face, a route that had never been attempted before. Kenny Spence and Alasdair “Bugs” McKeith. The expedition of the three hard-drinking, unemployed men from Edinburgh at the time was called reckless. The German name for the rock face, after all, is MordwandIt has claimed the life of 72 mountaineers over the past decades. Now I’m at Grindelwald and tilting my face towards the sun. As he had instructed, I stood in the same place. Looking up.
On my first afternoon, I seek out the Walk of Fame, its 1½-mile (2½km) loop leading from the Eiger Express cable car top station, at 2,328metre, to Kleine Scheidegg, meaning “small watershed” in Swiss-German, a low mountain plateau crossed by rail lines and framed by the summits of Jungfrau and Mönch.
On the trail, I am completely – wonderfully – alone. The Walk of Fame is shot through with melancholy and romance, bookended by both gravestone-like slabs that recount the mountain’s most pivotal moments at the start of the approximately 2½-hour trail and a memorial overlooking Lake Fallboden. The view is spectacular in a valley with many high-altitude hikes. It gives a close-up look at rock pillars of 1,000 feet, icefields and cracks filled with snow that resemble spider’s webs. The mountains seem almost artificial, like they were created by AI, and the stories that are told along the way evoke awe, offering new perspectives on the amazing achievements of the past.
I am amazed at the number of routes that are difficult, the average slope of 64 degrees and the unsung heroes and trailblazers who have come before me. There are also grim examples of those who were not as fortunate as my father. The north face was first conquered in July 1938 by a German–Austrian party, including Heinrich Harrer, the author of Seven Years in Tibet. However, until 1957 when the first rescue operation was conducted, bodies were only recovered at the base.
As the light fades, I descend towards Lake Fallboden, and then to Chilchli. This was once a transformer for the Jungfrau Railway but is now home to a museum. A sepia gallery tells the stories of Eiger, while an illuminated wooden replica with LEDs on its north face lights up more than 30 seemingly insurmountable routes. The peaks are reflected in the blue-green still water of the lake.
Grindelwald is a Swiss Shangri-La that has hostels and luxury hotels for all budgets. It doesn’t overdevelop like many other Alpine areas. You can stay in a ritzier hotel, like Bergwelt Grindelwald (where I stayed three nights), or bring your tent as my father used to do. The Eiger, Mettenberg and Wetterhorn are a stunning geometrical combination, and look particularly beautiful at sunset, with a cold beer in your hand, from the resort’s balconies facing south.
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Another walk that is highly recommended involves walking down, and not up, from Grindelwald. Gletscherschlucht, a glacier gorge that is 250m old, can be reached in a half hour walk from the town. The 1¼-mile out-and-back walk rings with the sounds of cascades rushing down the ravine’s sides and the roar of water from the lower Grindelwald glacier as it drains into the Lütschine River. The blasts of glacial wind make it feel like a wind-tunnel.
I had another reason for being in Grindelwald and I retraced the steps I took up to the North Face, this time hiking the well-established four-mile hike. Eiger Trail Alpiglen Farm and Guesthouse. In February, my dad died in the palliative unit of the local hospital. He had been battling vascular dementia. In his final days, his fingers would tighten whenever I told him about his adventures in the Alps. It was almost as if his mind was playing with pinch grips. In a small manner, I wish to pay homage to his memory.
I hike the same lonely path to the top of the Eiger Express, but this time, I go directly east. This is where the wind drops, and the sheer verticality of the north wall really begins. By the end, my dad was non-verbal, his wisdom stripped away, yet on one of my last visits I could sense he was trying to reorganise his brain scaffolding amid the chaos, to grasp a word – any word – to describe the mountain that had meant so much to him. It never made sense to me what he was doing, but up close I can now really feel his accomplishment. I am filled of admiration, and proud.
In my backpack, I take out a biscuit tin that contains some of his ashes. I search for a place where to scatter them. In the hope that I would find a piece of him here, perhaps hoping for a neat ending. I’ve found so much more – a reminder that even when somebody leaves us, there is always something beautiful left behind. Then I scatter his ashes onto the rocks. I take one final look back and then head down the hill.
The trip was organized by Jungfrau Region Tourism You can also find out more about the following: Jungfrau Railways. Rooms at Bergwelt Grindelwald Cost CHF180 (£161), B&B. The Eiger Express tickets cost CHF49 (£44) One way For more information, visit myswitzerland.com
