Jungfrau 2022

[eaf]

Woohoo, the most spontaneous, untimely, borderline inappropriate and irresponsible sprint for Jungfrau skiing region and back (at least for me, hopefully) is under way.

Triple-vaccinated, twice-tested, with tedious (and not free!) paperwork for Switzerland certificates and entry forms, as well as the drive, checkin and loooooong security line are all behind our backs now.

Three days of skiing and four nights of stay in a village of Grindelwald where we are supposed to arrive via a 3 hour  train ride with 2-4 changes, depending on the route that sbb.ch will pick for us when we clear security and claim our luggage in Zurich. Each change is 5-10 mins only, which is going to be exciiiiiting!

Rewatched North Face for the scenes from Kleine Scheidegg at the bottom of Eiger, for we’ll hopefully get there as well.

It’s been snowing in Jungfrau daily for a few weeks, it’s going to be snowing there every day we’re there, I’m sure I’ll hate every minute of it.

[toast21602]

Hell yeah!

Super jealous! Safe travels! Have a blast out there. Enjoy the skiing and raclette! 

[antman12]

F yea!

Get some @eaf!!

[saltyant]

This is grate! Here are some pics from my trip up Jungfrau on 9/3/2014, back when I was plenty gangster. Plenty thug.

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Salty sweet sunglasses are they unisex?

[saltyant]

20 minutes ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

Salty sweet sunglasses are they unisex?

Thanks. I didn't think to bring sunglasses on my Eurotrip and was told by everyone that I wouldn't be able to see on Jungfrau peak without sunglasses due to the immense brightness. So I bought a pair in Lauterbrunnen and my friend lent me some Swiss Francs. 

@eafMake sure you take the choo choo train to the top of the mountain, and eat lots of Swiss chocolate.

Edited January 5, 2022 by saltyant

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Eaf is hardcore. He could have just taken a 4 hour flight to Denver or taken a couple hour drive to Elk mountain Vermont. Way to get after it!!

[RidgeRacer]

I'm looking forward to this! Eaf's dolomite TR was really f'ing good. 

[eaf]

Super-easy change from plane to train at the airport. Picked up luggage, fired up SBB.ch, which produced a few routes with the fastest one just 10 minutes away, reached the escalator down to the numbered platform from the app, and that’s really it.

Different trains arrive and leave every 5 minutes, the platform is insanely long, and initially we had hell of a time trying to figure out where exactly we are supposed to wait, esp. since there are 1st and 2nd class carriages, but then came the moment of enlightenment, it appears to be all encoded on the bottom of the board with ABCD naming platform zones, and numbers above - carriage classes.

Train came, we went in, beaaaautifulIy empty upstairs, figured I’d carry the stuff there and sit, since it’s about an hour till the next change at Bern, and while I’m huffing and puffing, almost ready to drop down and sleep, I get to realize that conductor is waaaay too chatty, almost like telling a goodnight story, first in German, then in French, I’m thinking, you’ve got to be kidding me, what’s there to talk about?? And then comes the turn of English…

There’s a freaking accident somewhere on the tracks toward Bern, so, would you all please just leave at Zurich bahn and then search for alternatives. Wtf!

The app starts showing cancellations as well, suggests to take a bus (sic) to get to some other station and take a completely different route, but luckily it soon comes to senses and shows a train an hour away, this time with three connections, but interestingly promising to get us to Grindelwald only 40 mins later. Of course, this train is packed 🤣

[eaf]

Yessss

[eaf]

Turns out, the snow isn’t happening until tomorrow afternoon, so today is a beautiful sunny day.

Figured we’d try the smaller disconnected area served by First lift in the morning. Only one bus stop away. Could’ve walked really, if it was not for boots.

Got there 10 mins ahead of opening time, but the doors stayed closed until 8:05, which was extremely annoying, but then, only 3 stations away, was the skiing area that we were after.

Beaaautiful, albeit very windy. Spent some time on the ridge walk while they were opening further lifts.

Now back at home eating and  preparing to take a train to Kleine Scheidegg to ski until the closing time.

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

@eafit’s probably apres ski time. What are you eating and drinking? 

[eaf]

No idea, all I know for sure is that there’s a bottle of champagne in the fridge, but the rest is mystery.

[eaf]

Well, Kleine Scheidegg sucked big time.

Beautiful vistas, a 30 minute ride by train zigzagging up the slope, and a total circus on top. Sooooo many people, so few and so narrow trails, totally scraped to some frozen base.

There was one trail going all the way down along the rail track, absolutely unreal views, but it’s narrow, green and is the only way to go down except for a gondola or train ride. So folks of all abilities end up flying, pizzaing, standing or passing.

Thinking of either repeating First tomorrow morning or trying Mähnnlichen.

[toast21602]

If the trails are crowded can't you head off-piste? 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

21 minutes ago, toast21602 said:

If the trails are crowded can't you head off-piste? 

If you ski off piste the ski patrollers will be piste off.  Also I think Eaf is into groomers. 

[eaf]

Lol, this place goes totally dead at 8pm. Granted, there was serious partying going on in the Terminal around 4pm, but now…

[saltyant]

3 hours ago, eaf said:

Well, Kleine Scheidegg sucked big time.

Beautiful vistas, a 30 minute ride by train zigzagging up the slope, and a total circus on top. Sooooo many people, so few and so narrow trails, totally scraped to some frozen base.

Sounds terrible there, you should ask for a gift card and come home to ski Spring Mountain with us.

[RidgeRacer]

9 minutes ago, saltyant said:

Sounds terrible there, you should ask for a gift card and come home to ski Spring Mountain with us.

Don't mess up his thread saltlick. You don't ski spring

[saltyant]

21 minutes ago, RidgeRacer said:

Don't mess up his thread saltlick. You don't ski spring

He said something sucked big time juxtaposed with totally awe inspiring photographs which warranted hilarious commentary from me 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Johnny Law]

FKNA ! Sick pictures and i love your story telling. 

Isn't Schilthorn near there ? My recollection is that's the highest in that area.

[RidgeRacer]

13 minutes ago, Johnny Law said:

FKNA ! Sick pictures and i love your story telling. 

Isn't Schilthorn near there ? My recollection is that's the highest in that area.

Eaf knows how to write a TR for sure

[eaf]

Top of the morning to everyone 

[eaf]

It was a looooong day today.

Made a decision yesterday to go and check out Mähnnlichen, so walked to the train station in the morning with the idea to ride Interlaken train one stop to the Terminal where gondolas start, but then realized that another train to Kleine Scheidegg was leaving a few minutes earlier, and spontaneously decided to give it another try.

It turned out great. Sunrise ride up the mountain in a completely empty train, then likewise hardly any people on the trails, in other words Kleine Scheidegg has totally redeemed itself during those few morning runs, and one hour later we skied down to the Terminal and proceeded to Mähnnlichen.

It is a very different area, with wide groomers, and though there were already plenty of people who ascended both from Grindelwald and Wengen (Mähnnlichen is easily reachable from both), they’ve somehow spread out, so it was manageable. But I still think that First is the best crowd-wise.

We looped those high elevation groomers for a while, then got a little bored, so had lunch (Swiss or EU COVID Cert is required to eat inside), somehow got ourselves back to Kleine and ventured on a long loop along rail tracks to Wengen. It’s a similar kind of a trail that is going in the other direction to Grindelwald, but it is far less travelled, so we just zoomed along, got really embarrassed when ordering drinks in some place along the trail only to find that it’s cash only, and we had only a few franks in our pockets, but otherwise had a very pleasant leisurely ride to Wengen.

It’s a place worth exploring. The trail gets right in the middle of it, so from trees and slopes you literally end up crossing the streets and getting to a point where there’s a skating rink on the left and a gondola back to Mähnnlichen on the right.

Rode up, paused for a drink watching how everybody was scrambling before incoming snow, skied slopes half way down to Grindelwald, realized that we can’t see shit and took gondola to the bottom.

Phew.

[toast21602]

The amount of train pictures included in this report is phenomenal.