Meet my good friend and notoriously-slow-Snickers-candy-bar-eater Pat M. He was just here for six days. I’ve known Pat since we were teammates on a powerhouse third grade boys soccer team back in the late ’60s. These days, Pat spends much of his time working outdoors as a wetlands scientist so I knew he would be up for a solid week of hiking and exploring in the Swiss and French Alps. He did not disappoint. Continue reading
Lauterbrunnen
Death or Glory! We hike 2,100 meters up to snowy Piz Gloria on Schilthorn!
Followers of this blog will recall my affinity for the Lauterbrunnen Valley and the mountains of the Bernese Oberland region, including the Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau mountains. I’ve taken virtually every visitor we’ve had to Lauterbrunnen, usually incorporationg the hike between Grutschalp and Murren, then down to Stechelberg and back to Lauterbrunnen through the valley.
But every time I’ve been there, when the weather was clear, I’d glance up the valley to the highest peak, called Schilthorn and say to myself, “Some day I will hike all the way up there.” I mentioned this to one of my favorite hiking companions, Patrick, who was in town for a visit, and the two of us decided it would be a great adventure and a lot of fun to hike it together. Continue reading
Para-gliding looks like fun. Sort of.
Setting aside for the moment the fact that I am pretty scared of heights, I have recently found myself thinking that if I had my life to live over again, I might go ahead and get my high school degree because I might need something to fall back on, but then move to Switzerland and become a para-glider guide. From my vantage point, those dudes seem to lead a pretty good life.
Paragliding is that sport where you rely on updrafts to lift you (and a partner, for a tandem flight) up off the earth as you basically run off a cliff. Continue reading
If you come for a visit, I will take you to Lauterbrunnen.
We were visiting friends in Paris a couple months ago, comparing notes about places we’d been in Switzerland, when my friend asked me, “Have you been to Lauterbrunnen?” When I replied in the negative, he responded, “Oh, you’ve got to go to Lauterbrunnen.” The very next weekend, we got in the car and traveled the 2 hour 15 minute drive (which is a lovely trip by the way, past Gruyère, Bern, and Interlaken) to go and see how beautiful this area is for ourselves. Continue reading
Pat and Chris came to visit and we hiked our rear ends off, both literally AND figuratively!
As followers of this blog are undoubtedly aware, one of my favorite things to do here in Geneva and elsewhere across Europe is hiking. So when our two sons expressed an interest in getting a lot of hiking in during their 2-week visit, I was happy to comply. The best part, of course, would be the time spent exploring the great outdoors with the boys, but as an added benefit, we’d achieve a common fitness goal: to be in better shape after the two week vacation than we were beforehand.
Here’s a day-by-day rundown (with photographic evidence) of our hiking regimen during their two week visit to Geneva and points beyond. Continue reading
Swiss Sojourner 