Riederalp - Switzerland

The first week of August i went to Switzerland. For me it had been many years since i was in that beautiful country. Via a colleague, Lieve, i heard about this plan to do a 2-day glacier trekking at Riederalp (which is in the south of the country) and spend in total around a week in "Berghaus Toni". The glacier is no other than the Aletsch Glacier, the longest in Europe.
The story is that a friend of Lieve, Sven, had recently bought the hotel Toni and is planning to run it from now on. He has been going to the region of Riederalp ever since he was a child, he even speaks the swiss german dialect.

So i hooked up with two other people who were going to Riederalp and we started of together in a car. The plan was to join a family that was also on their way towards Switserland and we were to meet up somewhere in the Elzas. We ended up together on a campground in Kandersteg, only a few dozen kilometers from Riederalp.
The next day we took advantage of our position to do a very lovely walk around the Oeschinensee (with 'see' being the german word for lake, not sea).

It was so nice to see the impressive mountains again. It had been from when i was 17 that i last saw them (then i went skying, the last time i actually walked in the mountains of Switzerland was when i was 14 years old).


I was also thrilled to see the typical cows, with their enormous bells around their necks. I always feel a bit sad for them, it must be maddening to run around the whole day with that noisy thing around you.

It was a lovely day, sunny and the swiss national holiday. The forest around the lake provided us with some shelter from the sun and made for a lovely hike.

Once we arrived in Riederalp and settled in the hotel the fun began. It was a very lively group with very creative people among them (actors, musicians, ...), which means there is always someone around to entertain the group. The evenings were filled with songs and music, since we had a couple of very skilled guitar players in our midst (one of them only 11 years old!).

And a plan was unfolding to create a movie about our adventures in Riederalp. Did i mention already we had creative people in the group? Still haven't seen the end result though, looking forward to it.

In the picture below you can see on the left side the little town of Riederalp. As you can see Riederalp is situated on the mountain and can normally only be reached via one of the two elevators. There are no cars in Riederalp (with the exception of two electrical cars that are used for all kinds of things, amongst other a kind of taxi service for people who don't get around easily). Just imagine, if any construction works need to be done, they need to haul all the equipment up by elevator.


We scouted the surroundings with a little hike to the nerby Riederhorn (horn being the name for the mountain peaks).
There was one day of rain, but to be honest i didn't even mind too much. I spend it in good company playing some games and learned an entirely new one, called 'jungle speed'.
On sunday we went and watched the 'yodel mass', i kid you not :-)

The next day, we went on a beautifull walk through the mountains.
The path took us to a breathtaking bridge, that we needed to cross.
And it gave us our first clear sight of the glacier we were to climb within two days.I was really excited for the coming 2-day hike.