Day 2 – First to Hotel Wetterhorn at EveryTrail

Started the day with a polite doorbell-like chime over the PA speakers. Everyone was unimpressed at how restful the first night at altitude wasn’t, pins and needles, odd dreams and a small nosebleed. Sore throats abounded, a well placed Deca-thingy tablet saw off one. However, we got fed a very good breakfast for 6 people, including a nice fruity porridgy muesli, apparently called Bircher Muesli.

The morning’s walk down and along from First to Gr. Scheidegg was gentle, would have made a perfect first day. saw our first wildlife, marmots and an ibex.
Met about a dozen Japanese tourists coming the other way, sadly fulfilling many national stereotypes, including a young woman in designer trainers with a parasol and one of the merrier ones sitting on a unique striped flower I was about to photograph. Oh well, there were many other nice Alpine flowers to see.

Morale noticably low, none of us really enjoyed walking in the mist and rain, can get that in the UK with the help of a treadmill, some mallets to the feet and a watering can. The GPS gadgetry again remarkably helpful, instantly answering everyone’s questions.

Crossed a few snow patches, which was fun and quite pretty in places, quite lunar. All of us noticed our water intake had climbed a lot, but there was more of that to come. Got to Grosse Scheidegg for gratuitous hot chocolates then stomped very downhill towards Hotel Wetterhorn. Passed a nice older couple from London halfway down who’d come from Pfinstegg, raised Tilly Hats at each other. Met some very free ranged piglets and cooobeasties, the cocolina buss had to herd them out of the way on its way down, they retaliated by herding Tarqs out of the way afterwards.

Once we dropped out of the clouds, the drizzle eased off somewhat and we had our first proper views of the trip, which were very welcome and thoroughly photographed.

Checked into Hotel Wetterhorn, think we were the only overnight guests, again, then got a bus into Grindelwald for another look at the increasingle unreliable weather forecast and a beer or two. The local brew in spetzial or dunkel is extremely good, the sushi-rice with Salmon sandwich from the co-op was also good. Yum. It’s apparently a function of the weather, but bumbleflies were everywhere, in the hotel rooms, round the dinner, even outside a bit, so we got some fly papers from the co-op to hang up in the hotel.

Dinner was good at the Wetterhorn, got to try the local clear beef broth with strips of pancake and had an over-generous Alper Rosti to follow. We had to pay for the overnight then too, incase we did a runner in the morning. Tarqs got awarded a fly swatter by our server for splatting two on his forehead. The daily special of Veal Liver was apparently seriously good, but I remain offaly unconvinced of eating it.

Another quick round of travel yahtzee preceded an early night, mostly asleep by 10.