The Oberland continued — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

Steve joined me on our next adventure in Mürren, which was to “hike” a Via Ferrata. This is a mountain route along a fixed steel cable and utilizes metal rungs, ladders and suspension bridges. Your gear consists of a helmet, a harness and 2 carabiners attached to a shock-absorbing lanyard -

Steve will demonstrate how you remain safe while being attached to the cable at all times. (video alert - open the post in your browser by clicking the link at the bottom of the email) -

It was less than a mile and a half, but took us and our group of 8 over 3 hours to complete!

The views were literally jaw-dropping…

… along with the descent down the cliff face -

Every time I pulled out my cellphone to snap a shot, I worried that I might drop it, and that made my hands even sweatier! Our nephew who had recommended this to us, told us later that he had bought a special cord to attach his cellphone to him while he was climbing. Thanks for not telling us ahead of time, Josh!

We got to do a zipline…

… climb down a series of ladders (by this point we were really noticing how much of an upper body workout this was!)…

… walk a tightrope…

… and traverse a very long, bouncy suspension bridge -

Did I mention the epic views??

That night there was an Alphorn concert on the patio where we had dinner, and I got a much better video of it this time, as I had promised earlier -

For our last big activity in the area, we took a train to a neighboring valley, and then boarded a cogwheel train to take us up into the highlands to start our 10 mile hike. On the way up, I caught views of misty mountains -

For those who might be interested, we hiked from Schynige-Platte to First. After the first ascent we were overlooking Interlaken…

… and the lakes it lies between -

And the views kept rolling on…

… and the flowers blanketed the slopes -

These next two pictures will give you a sense of the height and scale we enjoyed. This was our first peek at this lake and “pointy” hill (I have no ideas of their names; they were just very cool to see, and quite distinctive) -

As we got closer and climbed higher, the perspective changed -

That photo above was taken near the top of our hike, over 8,500 ft, and the variety of flowers present at that elevation was really neat to see -

enlarge the picture so you can see all the different colors in the tiny flowers

This was our lunch spot on the other side of the pass we crossed, and you can see how the clouds had really come in -

It was a long descent to that lake…

… which gave the clouds time to lift a little, and us to watch some marmots -

The views of the mountains and glaciers hanging over First and Grindelwald were awe-inspiring in their scale…

… and gorgeous in their majesty -

As we left Mürren the next morning by gondola, it was raining, and we caught a peek of some of the myriad waterfalls the valley is known for -