Hut to Hut Adventuring in the Swiss Alps
TRIP DETAILS:
- Total distance: 33.1 miles (50 km)
- Total elevation gain: 9,400 feet (2,865 m)
- Route Type: Point-to-Point on well signed and maintained trails
- Wilderness Area: Jungfrau Region, Switzerland
- Season: Late August (but could probably go as early as July)
- Permits: Reservations recommended to stay in the huts
Day 1: Schynige Platte to Berghotel Faulhorn (7.2 miles, 3,225 ft)
Day 2: Berghotel Faulhorn to Glecksteinhütte (11.8 miles, 3,304 ft)
Day 3: Glecksteinhütte to Berghaus Bäregg (7.9 miles, 2,431 ft)
Day 4: Berghaus Bäregg to Grindelwald (4.3 miles, 440 ft)
If you love backpacking, prancing through the mountains like a frilly little jaunty lass/lad, carrying only the lightest of packs, and hot meals paired with cold beers followed by warm beds in the wilderness, hut-to-hut hiking might be a treat for you. And the cherry on top is that you can start and end in different locations, because the exceedingly efficient railway employees of Switzerland will magically transport your luggage from the one train station to another, for the (shockingly) reasonable price of 12chf per item (no reservations required, just show up and deposit your luggage with them). All you have to do is choose and reserve your sweet alpine huts, your luxury in the mountains, and I here am to help you with that (maybe).
After agonizing over many Swiss Alpine Club maps, converting metric distances and elevations to imperial units, in order to string a series of not-too-aggressively spaced huts together, I finally stumbled upon a blog post outlining this very hut itinerary and adopted it for my trip to Switzerland (thank you Jack!). Some further ramblings, logistics, and pictures about our times in the Swiss Alps below.
We took a train from France to Interlaken, Switzerland, where we jumped on a bus to Wilderswil to spend the night before our hut-to-hut, since the train station to access our trailhead was based out of Wilderswil. We stayed at the Jungfrau Hotel and found it cozy with a great breakfast!
21-24 August 2022
Day 1: Schynige Platte to Berghotel Faulhorn (7.2 miles, 3,225 ft)
Wilderswil – Schynige Platte – Oberberghorn Summit – Berghaus Männdlenen – Berghaus Faulhorn
On the first day of our hut to hut adventure, we woke up in the Jungfrau Hotel to a vast and delicious breakfast spread. Then we walked just across the street to the train station, left our luggage with the nice Swiss men who promised to deliver them to Wengen, and purchased our train tickets from Wilderswil to Schynnige Platte on the SwissMobile app (~30chf pp). The cog train took us from Wilderswil to Schynige Platte in a very slow, straight and upward fashion. The bench seats facing each other were so close together to be built for long Swiss legs, but apparently they’re built so that they’re knees are Interlaken. The views got spicier and spicier as we ascended and finally arrived at Schynige Platte.
The Schynige Platte rail station itself was breathtaking. I spent a few minutes appreciating the classic red train against the big mountainous backdrop. Once I had gotten my ooh and ahs out (who am I kidding), we proceeded to hike up through the Alpengarten, which had nice botanical signs for a million different (mostly senescing) plants. Progressively followed signs that pointed us toward the Panoramaweg, a ridge line trail that offers views into valleys on either side: turquoise Lake Brienz on your left and Iselten, the largest highest alpine meadow and the Alps ( Jungfrau, Eiger, Mönch) on the other. I said “wow” and “ah!!” and “how???” many times. The meadow on this side of the ridge was full of cows wearing big Swiss bells, so the entire valley sounded like a windchime factory. Dan was particularly smitten with the Kühe.
Panoramaweg took us by the side trail to summit Oberberghorn (probably .4 miles round trip), which involved some very steep ladders to a fenced in summit. Would definitely recommend making the detour to get some intro via ferrata and views!
From there, the oohs and ahhs continued, as we got absolutely overtaken by super fit Germans and Swiss. We arrived at our first hut, Berghaus Männdlenen, set in the pass, a nook between two summits. I’d previously read a lot of reviews saying how mean hut owners are to people who squat and don’t pay, so I made sure to buy beers right on arrival (they took Visa!). Drank our beers, ate our delicious peppery salamis, used the port-o-potty, rested, and waited for the clouds to blow over. The hut was set right next to our continuation of the trail, a steep ascent. Watching other hikers huff and puff on their way up it made the beers and break particularly sweet.
After a refreshing Pause, we began the ascent we’d watched over beers. We kept a steady pace behind an old German grandpa. I guess that’s where I stand in the speed rankings here.
The bulk of the steep uphill came between our beer break hut and Berghotel Faulhorn, which is a hut perched on the tippy top of Faulhorn summit. The views are astounding unless you’re socked in, which we were for all the switchbacks to the summit. Upon our arrival at Berghotel Faulhorn, we sat outside on the terrace and ordered hot chocolate, beer, and Bergkäse, and the clouds eventually blew away leaving us with the grandest of views of big snowy mountains. After that sustenance power up, we were able to go put our things into our shared dormitory: 2 bottom bunks in a room of 30! I pulled out my watercolor supplies and painted a little cow in the meadow picture which a very nice German lady complimented me on in German. I’ve gotten to talk to people in German a couple of times which has been very fun, and humbling. My German has really deteriorated in its decades of disuse.
It was quite an effort to kill the hours until dinner in the cold foggy summitland. After elevating our legs in bed and eating Toblerones, we figured we would just go sit in the restaurant early. It was so nice and cozy in there. Our dinner was cheesy potato soup with crunchy croutons and bread, followed by an entree of (meat option, Jessica) beef stroganoff with rice (not a version of stroganoff I’m used to but good nonetheless) or (veg option) Alpenmakkaroni (cheesy noodles with potatoes served with apple sauce), and dessert reminiscent of flan. Soup was great, entree was good, dessert I could’ve done without. The 1.5L bottle of water I bought was 12chf. I think it’s cheaper to just drink beer here.
It was all we could do to stay upright so we at last paid and went to our dorm to lie down, write and read… and sleep.
Day 2: Berghotel Faulhorn to Glecksteinhütte (11.8 miles, 3,304 ft)
Berghotel Faulhorn – First – Große Scheidigg – Glecksteinhütte
The morning of the second day, I woke up in dormitory at dawn quite hot. Despite the frigid summit weather, 30 bodies in a room generate a lot of heat. I stepped out of the dormitory to our easy-access summit and watched the sunrise. The sky was clear and pink and all the mountain layers were various shades of purple and blue! This is the kind of scenery that connects straight to my soul.
After the sun rose we changed and packed and had breakfast as well as nice chit chat with the German-Swiss couple seated with us. Instead of buying the 12chf per 1.5L water, we bought the 4chf per L March Tee, which turned out to be weird sweet red tea that I suffered through most of the day because I was so thirsty.
We began to descend for nearly one eternity, from Faulhorn to First, past Große Scheidigg, until we reached the turnoff to Glecksteinhütte. At First we were able to access free water and the cliff walk. The cliff walk is a metal platform bolted into the side and around a jutting out section of cliff, with the goal to get as airy as possible. It was pretty cool, especially since it was free, but the other folks on it were viewing the whole thing through their cameras on selfie sticks which was annoying. The restaurant was really glam, there were sheep furs on all the chairs and benches, and we had hearty Swiss soup while beholding the Eiger from the patio. The place had quite a Disneyworld vibe though: there were many people in line for photos at the end of an airy metal dock/overlook. All of these people were too casually dressed and clean – they had clearly arrived via chairlift. Too touristy for us, so after filling up our bottles with *free*water* we made a bee line to head out of there. We continued to descend, descend, descend, and at some point I missed a trail fork and we ended up on the road for a ways. At Große Scheidigg, another lovely mountain hut thick with cyclists, my hunger returned, and I ordered a really delicious spätzli with veggies and beers on the Berghotel terrace. Now fully loaded and sleepy from the beers and carbs, we needed to wrap up our descent to reach the turn off for our ascent to Glecksteinhutte. My toes kept hitting my boots on the way down and were absolutely killing me. At the turn off for the Glecksteinhutte, I elevated my legs against the huge wooden hut signpost and popped some ibuprofen before continuing on.
We had some fair warning that the trail to Glecksteinhütte would be airy, but I don’t think I was quite so ready for that in practice. In the beginning I lead, feeling pretty comfortable as long as my feet were on rock and I kept my sight line on the ground and toward the wall rather than over the cliff edge. For this initial section, the trail was usually a ~3 foot ledge hugging the wall of the cliff. Sometimes via Ferrata cables were provided. However, the next section of the trail was maybe a 2 foot narrow path, with a grassy vertical wall to our death side, and this put me in a small panic. Thankfully Dan felt okay for that portion and took the lead, I just followed watching his shoes. The trail varied a lot in its cartography but was consistent in its exposure. I started getting more comfortable again once the trail resumed being rocky – turns out I do not like slippery scary grass. There were some iron cables built into some of the sketchier locations but certainly not all of them. I also started to wonder if I even have the grip strength / upper body strength to hold my self up using the cable should my feet fail me. Anyways, I didn’t really like that thought pattern. There was a particularly spicy part through a waterfall where I was refreshingly doused in cold alpine water – we were quite exposed and despite being kind of late in the day we were burning up with all the climbing.
At one point I looked at the map and was excited to see that we were three quarters of the way there. Except… that last quarter was extra steep and ended up taking us about another 45-60 min. Finally, we could at least SEE the hut, perched high on the ridge above us. Not promising. But we kept at it, taking breaks when I needed my heart to stop racing so rapidly. A long eventuality later, we did indeed reach the hut, and Sarah checked us in and got us set up with large beers each, which we drank out on their absolutely magnificent backyard patio overlooking the valley and the mountains beyond. Then we got to take HOT SHOWERS and were fed a family style dinner of barley soup, salad, pasta with sun dried tomatoes and cubes of ham, and finished with a Swiss version of a cinnamon roll. I had another disappointing hot chocolate, which I drank while we sat outside and watched the sun set over the mountains. Some mountain goats showed up and provided the evening entertainment. There is a printed flyer advertisement for the Gleckstein-to-Grindewald taxi: for 300 chf, a dude will climb up to Gleckstein with his parachute, strap you to him, and the two of you skip the hike down by jumping off the cliff and landing in the valley below. Which route is scarier?
Okay, big grass cliff, this is where I got a bit panicky. 
Wide-ish trail, not so bad! 
Rock, back in the zone. 
It was steep and exposed, but sometimes some thoughtly swiss person put in a cable. 
Finally, views of the hut perched way up on the cliff. 
Hut appearing closer, but still an eternity away. 
Absolute perfection in a patio 
Steinbock came for the after dinner show. 
Glacier from the hut. 
Day 3: Glecksteinhütte to Berghaus Bäregg (7.9 miles, 2,431 ft)
Glecksteinhütte – Hotel Wetterhorn – Berghaus Bäregg
I woke up just before 6, starving, so to kill some time before breakfast I went to the bathroom and outside to watch the sunrise. Some more soul bending colors over Grindelwald. Also of note, the toilets here just run and run and run and you poo into a waterfall abyss. How does that work I wonder?
By this morning I had already forgotten how absolutely heinous the trail to Gleckstein was the previous afternoon. “We made it, that wasn’t so bad!” Started out okay, just a steep descent. Short moments later, the honeymoon was over, and the via Ferrata began. Basically scaled a wall, facing it, moving sideways, feet on a tiny ledge, until reaching a series of steep cliffed out switchbacks and some more cables. I kept singing any song I could pull out of my brain, repeating how good and clingy the rock was, and how little old Swiss fraus do this — anything to keep my mind occupied and from wandering over the side of the cliff ( it worked surprisingly well ~ *mindfulness*). I think the part that gave me the most heart racing anxiety was a series of cables along an eternal bare rock face with the narrowest ledge and a sheer drop immediately below. Anyways, I led the whole way down this morning, exchanging bravery responsibilities with Dan from yesterday, since he got little sleep and was in a world of mental anguish. Also on the way down, we encountered a chipper group of dudes who were strapped up with their parachutes. They told us to look up and watch for them in about 45 minutes.
Despite the all encompassing scariness of the descent, we made it down with no (physical) harm done. We did even catch the small colorful parachutes in the sky on their way down. We had nearly made it to Hotel Wetterhorn (along a nice, flat, shaded path) when we came across an old man who’d just fallen down and sliced his arm open on a rock. Dan helped him up, poured water on his flapped open and bleeding skin, and that was about all we could really to do help. We offered to take their bags but they declined, and just made their way slowly back to the parking lot on their own.
We paused to brunch at Hotel Wetterhorn, a multilevel wooden chalet with flower hanging baskets in every window, where we finally had Swiss fondue! It came out with a loaf of the softest warmest and pre-scored bread, pickles and small whole pickled onions, and boiled potatoes. Out of starvation I even ate a cheese-doused potato. At Dan’s request, I also confirmed from trip reports that the hike to Bäregg did not have (or need) cables, nor have Gleckstein levels of exposure. Reports sounded safe, so we continued on our journey.
Post-brunch, we headed up through a nice shady forest to Pfinstegg, a hotel / restaurant accessible by cable car from Grindelwald. Dan was still subdued with Gleckstein PTSD, and I was quite sluggish after brunch beer. By the time we arrived at Pfinstegg, we were quite hot and ready for another sit-and-snack, so we ordered ice cream and beers. What a treat, to pause a hot hike for some cold indulgences! Dan baited a small scared white dog with little pieces of waffle cone that had come with his ice cream. At last, a dog allowed itself to be pet by Dan. This, plus the ice cream probably, brought my mute boyfriend back to life.
Berghaus Bäregg is not far from Pfinstegg — less than 2 miles — but the going is very steep, and at 3 in the afternoon, the canyon-side that the trail is built into was in full sun. The “no exposure” claims were confusing because you could certainly fall off a cliff to your death, though the trail was a bit wider than the one to Gleckstein. Either way, this level of exposure felt like nothing to us at this point, having been fully desensitized this morning. We arrived at Bäregg about 1.5 hr after setting out from Pfinstegg, hot hot hot and tired. The lovely hut lass immediately set us up with some cold beers and more ice cream. We sat out on the cliffside wrap-around patio, complete with shade structure, with our unlikely treats, overlooking the Eigergletscher, and watching the paragliders swoop in and out of the canyon – there must be a gust that can bring them up and back here. It was truly dreamy.
After some time resting and recovering from our midday ascent on the patio, one of the hut chicks finally showed us to our room. Turned out that we were the only hut guests that evening, so we had a dormitory room all to ourselves. We took full advantage by exploding our things all over the room. At sunset, we watched a border collie wrangle in the sheep that had been dispersed across the steep hillside back down to their nighttime paddock near a house perched on a small flat area of the canyon. The sheep would run full steam down the steep terrain, absolutely psychotic looking.
Dinner consisted of a flavorful and hella lit curry soup (with cream), more alpenmac (with hot dogs… or some hot dog flavored swiss sausage), and ice cream topped with honey and chopped meringue (delightful). We retired to our room afterwards, being supremely exhausted and deprived on horizontalness, however, it was Hut Babe Friday, because the ladies turned up the jams and poured themselves a lot of white wine. We thought certainly, they would turn it off at ten, but we were wrong, so at this hour we put in our earplugs and fell asleep.
Day 4: Berghaus Bäregg to Grindelwald (4.3 miles, 440 ft)
Berghaus Bäregg – Grindelwald
We had a bit of a long morning since the girls didn’t propose serving breakfast until 8am (the latest yet). I woke up ready to pop out of the bunk, hung out the window to behold the morning dispersing of the sheepies. As they would climb up the green mountainside where it met the mountain trail, they would file onto the trail (much easier to walk on the trail than up the steep hillside), but as the sheepies in front of the line would stop and graze on grass, they would hold up the rest of the line, creating a roadblock. Any hiker that wanted to continue past our hut to the next hut back would have to figure out a route through hundreds of thick sheep.
Breakfast was more uninventive bread and jam and coffee, which we packed in as much as we could muster to have some energy for the hike down. The way was steep, and my poor toes were suffering from the get-go, despite the new lacing technique I found the previous evening via google, which promised to give my toes a little more room and lock my feet back in their boots. Did my feet grow? I am seriously so confused why these boots do not fit me anymore.
Down from Bäregg, skipped past Pfinstegg, and over to Eigergletscher. I was hoping to do the Eigergletscher canyon walk (a boardwalk built into the side of the canyon just over the raging river) but it was 40 CHF per person, for a 10 minute walk, which I thought was kind of insulting, so we passed on that. Instead, we continue our walk from here into the town of Grindelwald, our first civilization in 4 days. Someone had previously described it to me as Swiss Dosney, and while I think First takes the cake on that title, Grindelwald was also a string of souvenir shops and restaurants. I have to admit that I was absolutely dying over all the perfect little swiss chalets with flowers pouring out of their balconies and engulfing their front yards, combined with views of giant snowcapped Alps in the background – quite swoon-worthy. We sat down at the only food place open at the early hour of 11am – C und M. I had my first bratwurst of the trip, accompanied by a small salad (vegetables!). The brat was everything I needed it to be: hot, juicy, and salty.
Now that we had met our basic human needs to go on, we popped in and out of some of the tourist shops (nothing new compared to the Interlaken shops), and found ourselves quickly at the train station where we bought tickets to get to Wengen. The woman at the counter asked me if I preferred to get there the cheap way or the expensive way, but didn’t specify anything else. Obvious answer – cheap way? Then I was presented with a pair of train tickets to take us from that station to Wengen for about 30 CHF. After sitting outside, looking at the screens, and realizing this, I got quite grumpy because I had wanted to take the cable cars. Being tired and sore and hot probably didn’t help my mood. Dan went in and exchanged the tickets for cable car tickets, which amounted to 120 CHF total (!!!) and in order to act on these tickets, we needed to trek from the train station where our bodies were currently located, all the way over to the cable car station (a 15 to 20 min walk). Well, I had what I wanted, so I sucked it up and we walked over to the cable car station. On the way to the station, a family in an SUV coming towards us pulled onto the sidewalk we were walking on, and held up traffic to wave us down to ask us a question. We told them we were not from here and couldn’t help, though they continued to insist we come up to their car to assist them. We thought the situation was absolutely audacious and squeezed passed their car on the sidewalk in the small gap they had left us to continue to the cable car station. The station was a huge modern building with lots of unexpected shopping within. We had a gondola all to ourselves, from Grindelwald to Männlichen, and watched all the impossibly well-manicured swiss lawns race below us.
Männlichen is perched at the top of a mountain crest – massive views of the Alps every way you turn. Other than that, there appear to be 2 cable car stations: the one we took up from Grindelwald, and another at the other side of the crest, which descends the other side into Wengen. Between the stations is what appeared to be a big hut plus restaurant, and a sprawling playground. We made our way over to the Wengen station and JUST missed the one descending, but not before we scanned our tickets and trapped ourselves inside the unmanned station, where we were now forced to sit within four concrete walls for 30 min, when we could have remained outside to at least appreciate the views of our 120 chf ride (I don’t know if you can tell but at this point I was very grumpy with the country of Switzerland). The Wengen cable car had long waiting periods in between because it was simply one large gondola on a line that goes back and forth between stations. You can pay a couple more chf to ride on the top (of course the swiss will squeeze a little more out of you for that). Our ride did eventually come and deliver us safely to the carless* town of Wengen. Asterisk because it turns out there ARE cars, just not as many as one would expect in a normally habited place, but you can’t expect to just walk in the streets (because there ARE streets) and not get run over.
Our hotel, Hotel Schoenegg, was not a far walk from the train station. The room was small but boasted a small flowered balcony with jaw dropping views of the mountains across the valley from us. After a shower we … laid down. It was great.
We finally managed to return to vertical for beers on the Crystal Bar patio. We had made reservations to dine at Restaurant Silberhornstube specifically because their menu listed a fondue series (on request)! Turns out that “on request” doesn’t mean “sit down at dinner and request what you want off our menu,” like literally anything on a menu ever, but “request it 24 hours ahead of time”. We still ended up ordering a cheese fondue and followed that with a chocolate fondue. Mind you, we were the first ones at this restaurant – we were seated the moment it opened. So, despite the fact that we had a beautiful view of the valley and the mountains beyond, by the time we were done with dinner we had a way lot of time between us and the sunset. Spoiler alert: we didn’t wait it out. We went back to the room, laid in bed, and watched the sunset from mostly horizontal positions.
Okay, what did we learn? The hike to Glecksteinhütte was scary, but if exposure is not an issue for you, or you have a strong desire to test yourself, get out there and do it! Will you?