In Which We Go to the Mountaintop. Literally.

Most of the Swiss live in apartments in densely packed towns and cities, but at heart they are mountain people.  On Sundays they pull on hiking boots and return to their roots.  Some drive but most take trains, if the packed conditions are any indication. 

Last Sunday we decided to join the crowds and visit Engelberg, one of the mountain towns where we will be heading to ski in a few short months.  Armed with our Halbtax card, entitling us to buy tickets at a reduced rate, we cut short our usual Sunday fruhstuck, or breakfast of croissants, juice and coffee, and filled up our daypacks with lunch, fleeces and rain gear, just in case.  At the train station we joined many others similarly dressed for a walk in the mountains.  Boarding the 8:01 train we had to search a while before finding seats together.

A View from the Train

In Luzern's huge Hauptbahnhof we changed to a narrow gauge train with only three Thomas-the-Tank-Engine-style carriages.  Arriving with only a few minutes to spare before departure we found the cars filled with people of all ages and nationalities, many holding on their laps backpacks with telescoped hiking sticks strapped on.  We located aisle seats facing each other, but as the train left the city and skirted the lake it became clear that any seat would be scenic.  On one hand lush green mountainsides rose steeply and on the other brilliant blue Lake Luzern stretched far to distant mountains.  Eventually the train left the shore and began climbing into a valley whose sides rose ever more steeply as we went.  Yet surprisingly we didn’t leave the farms behind; the lush pastures just became more vertical, until we wondered how the cows managed to keep from tumbling downhill as they grazed.  At several points the grade became so steep that the train switched to control from a cable on the ground,  and I had to brace myself against the central table to keep from tumbling into TS's lap!  (By the way, you can click on any of these pictures to get an enlarged view.)

Yet when we reached Engleberg, a charming town completely encircled by mountain peaks, we discovered that we had only finished the first leg of our journey to the mountaintop.  A ten-minute walk through town and along a mountain stream brought us to the first of three separate mountain conveyances that eventually took us to the top of Titlis, 10,000 feet above sea level.  The first was the most familiar to us, a six-person gondola.

At the valley floor quickly descended below us, we had dramatic confirmation of a fact that had begun to be impressed in our American minds:  These Alps are steep!  We are used to mountains; we have skied in Colorado and Utah and backpacked the Wind River range in Wyoming.  We have been in the Pyranees in Spain and the Lake District in England, but they always struck us as somehow smaller and less wild than American mountains.  Perhaps because we knew that the Alps have been settled by humans for millennia we thought of them as Old World, somehow tamer.  We now learn that the Alps are in fact very young mountains, as these things go.  Hence, they haven't been worn down by time, as have the mountains in Pennsylvania.  Hence, they are steep. Very, very steep.

We transferred to a large aerial tram and then to a round, rotating gondola touted as the first of its kind in the world.  Actually, the gondola stayed in place, but the floor rotated, leaving those of us who like to hold on to something stable in such situations feeling a tad queasy.  But it did offer breath-taking views as we gradually rose to the top of the snow covered mountain.  Even after disembarking, we took an elevator to the top floor of the resort, where folks who had come properly equipped could simply put on their skis and glide down the glacier.  It was a bit startling to realize that this is the same route we will follow when we set out to ski this mountain in a couple of months.

Our own skis are still on a ship somewhere on the Atlantic, or I would have regretted that we had not thought to bring them.  There were only a few runs available, but the exotic idea of skiing in early October was delightful. Look closely at the run down the middle of the picture and you can see several skiers.


Most powerful, however, was the sheer fact that we were standing on top of a mountain, and in the midst of the most majestic peaks we had ever seen.  To the southwest a solid bank of clouds backed up against a line of peaks.  It looked as though a river of clouds was streaming over their tips.  (That's the sound of the ski lift in the background.)

Everywhere we looked was awesome, inhuman beauty. 

Nevertheless, it was well past noon and we were hungry.  So somehow in the midst of all that grandeur, we brought out our lunch -- along with several hundred other mountain-lovers.  We were happy that we had brought our own, for there was a long line waiting for pomme frites and brauts.

Finally, we took last long looks before retracing our steps back down the mountain and eventually home.  Awed and happy.