This was our day off - a chance to be tourists and overcome jet lag before pre-race tasks take over our time. We got up at 6 a.m. to take an awesome journey by train.
To back up in the story, this is my third visit to the Interlaken area and I have never visited its biggest tourist attraction - the Jungfraujoch. When I came here as a student backpacker, the weather was fantastic but I didn't have enough money. When 'Bent and I came a few years ago, we had the money but the weather was bad. Finally it all came together today!
The Jungfraujoch is a glaciated area at almost 12,000' in elevation surrounded by mountain peaks. There are lots of different things to do - outdoor glacier walks, a zip line, ice caves, restaurants, displays, shops, observatory, etc. To get there, you change trains a couple of times, climbing some very steep slopes on a cog wheel railway and enjoying spectacular scenery along the way. This is the village of Lauterbrunnen early in the journey.
And here we've climbed well above Lauterbrunnen, ascending a seemingly impossible slope on the train. By the way, we suspect that the APEX race will travel through this area as it is criss-crossed with trails and bike paths.
The final train, the Jungfraubahn, travels much of its journey inside the famous Eiger mountain.
As a mountain literature junkie, this last fact is exciting since there are a couple of holes in the walls of the train tunnel that open onto the north face of the Eiger. Over the past century, they have sometimes played a role when climbing expeditions have run into trouble.
The holes in the north face of the Eiger are covered with plexiglass now - at least the holes that they let tourists see. I wonder if there is still an escape route for climbers somewhere? I'll bet there is.
The weather was socked in when we first got up to the Jungfraujoch so we started with the ice caves and hoped it would burn off.
Today Hingo, T. Rex and I enjoyed the pleasant company of Dave Lamb (Team Granite in Untamed New England 2010), Carol Lamb and JayXC. Dave and JayXC are racing here on Team Untamed New England.
We did an uphill glacier hike that took us up to 3650 m in elevation. For some reason, the altitude didn't hit me as hard as it sometimes has at lower elevations but it was a surprisingly good workout to go uphill in the soft snow.
Our destination was a climbing hut near the Monch mountain. Incredible place to hang out for hot chocolate, photos and even postcard writing since they would accept mail and postmark it there.
We got in trouble for this... At least, we were called back quite sternly by a hut staff member. (Sad what a few AR geeks like us will do in an attempt to reach exactly 12,000' feet on our altimeters!)
After all our fun at the hut, we hiked back down the glacier in much improved weather. (Temporarily... it socked in again later.) We were a little slap happy, singing "the hills are alive with the sound of music" and clowning around.
Next we were going to go up to this Dr. Suess-like observatory - the highest point of the day. For some reason, it is called The Sphinx.
This was the view when we first arrived but it soon clouded over.
Here's Getawaystix's altimeter watch. (Thank you!) I wonder if it's been this high before.
A few hours later, we went back down the Jungfraubahn to the village of Kleine Scheidegg and had lunch beneath the north face of the Eiger.
Then we went back to Interlaken where Mountain Dan soon arrived to join us. So the Tree Huggers have assembled and now it is time for race preparations. I finished putting my bike together tonight and took it for a test ride. I'm kinda amazed that everything seems to be working OK. The 10 lb bike bag worked! Big day tomorrow - groceries, weighing bags and other last-minute stuff. Two of our team members are renting bikes and hope to pick them up tomorrow. Not too many photos are likely over the next couple of days, so I made sure to take a lot (way too many!) today. :)