Schilthorn

After Niesen, there was one other mountain on my “must do” list for this summer: The Schilthorn. This mountain features in the James Mond movie “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, where it the headquarters for the evil villain Blofeld. As a result, it gets a steady stream of tourists, nearly all of them going there by cablecar. That is not my method of going up mountains, though I do use them for going down.

After some planning, I decided to start the ascent of Schilthorn from the village of Mürren. It is the last village on the way up the mountain. Checking things out, I noticed that there is a southern route up the mountain and a northern route. The southern route is gentler, but longer, so I chose the northern route.

Unfortunately, it is quite a long way from Basel to Mürren. That meant that I was not able to do my usual early start on the mountain, and it was well passed nine-thirty in the morning when I stepped onto the Bergwanderweg out of Mürren.

The day was sunny, though there were wisps of cloud on the higher slopes, but I hoped that they would disperse before I reached the summit. There were spectacular views to the south as I left Mürren. However, the way was steep, and soon I was concentrating on the ascent rather than the views. The trail itself is more of an agricultural road than a walk trail on this part of the route, leaving me wondering why it is marked in red on the map.

Eventually, I reached a point where I could see Birg. Birg is the junction point for cablecars between Mürren and the Schilthorn. If going up, one has to step out of the cablecar from Mürren and change to another cablecar for the rest of the journey to the Schilthorn. But for me, the most important thing about Birg was that if I was near Birg, I was not far from the Schilthornhütte and refreshments.

When I ordered a beer in the Schilthornhütte, the man there asked me if I was from the Netherlands. I have been asked that before. I explained that I am Irish, and asked why he thought I might be from the Netherlands. He explained that I spoke German like a Dutchman. I am not sure if that is good or bad.

I took a rest and enjoyed my beer before heading on. As I sat there, I could still see that the top of the Schilthorn was clear of cloud. I hoped that it would stay like that, but I couldn’t be sure.

The route after the Schilthornhütte is relatively gentle. I passed several expanses of snow off to my left as I went. A little below the 2700m contour, the route becomes a bit more challenging, taking to the ridge for the final stretch. At times, there was even a bit of scrambling involved, though nearly all of the more difficult parts were equipped with fixed ropes.

The final stretch is a little bit exposed, with a steep fall on either side of the trail. But the summit was well in sight, and nothing was going to stop me now, not even an occasional rumble of thunder somewhere in the distance. There is construction work going on at the summit station, and the very last few metres involved climbing scaffolding rather than the mountain itself. And once that was done, I was in the summit station.

The summit station and its facilities were crowded with tourists. There is a restaurant on the top floor, that revolves around and around. I went there for some refreshments, and watched the world go around outside. At least, I would have watched the world going around, but all that was visible outside was cloud.

After that, I took the cablecar back down, stopping at Brig. By this time, even Brig was under grey skies, but there were still good views. And after that, I simply went all the way down to Mürren and the start of the journey back to Basel.

My step count for the day was modest enough, just 23,810.