Lauterbrunnen Beckons--Monday Aug. 1

Bundesfeier!  Swiss National Day today (like USA 4th of July).  Kids are setting off firecrackers already, in early morning.  Fireworks are set for tonight.

Swiss flags are on the special breakfast bread.  The top part of this bun is sweet.

  
The weather is again perfect--clear, warm and little wind.  We set off by train for a 30 minute ride to Lauterbrunnen, which is in the valley just below Wengen.  It looks so close, if only we could base-jump off the sheer cliff beyond the bahnhof and pull open our parachute. 

 Lauterbrunnen's dressed up with Swiss flags.  We are walking up this street and then continuing down the valley on a walking path.  The Jungfrau (mountain) looms in the background.

Staubbach Falls.  We stop here to hunt for a geo-cache.  Jim's GPS is finiky, and the most accurate reading gives only a 300' radius.  Sitting on the low rock wall in the street-level park and contemplating, though, Jim locates the cache.







 





We climb up to the falls after we record our cache find.
I'm standing in the crook of the trail leading up to the falls, photo above.


The path gets wet as it goes behind the flow.  Awesome!  





This is the first time I've stood behind a waterfall.

 

The cool fountain in the little park at the foot of Staubbach Falls has the best water.  After the climb up to and down from the falls, this refreshes even more than a cold Pepsi.  And the rock basin is tempting for a foot soak.   
Lots of people gather at this shady park, at the edge of the town, to see the easily accessed falls.

 So many lovely gardens all along our hike.  We didn't know what kind of flowers these are--they are huge, and tower over the rest of the garden flowers.  
I don't remember the name of this fall.  There wasn't a trail to it.  The overhanging cliff to the left in the photo is an extreme base-jumping point.  We saw many base-jumpers on our hike; they jump off a cliff with a parachute strapped on and free fall a ways, soar through the valley and land in one of the many hay fields.

Jungfrau in the background.  Quaint mountain chalet.  Is this the Swiss image or what?  We pass other waterfalls along the way--there are about 72 in this valley.

  
This river carries the melt from the Jungfrau, Monch, and Eiger glaciers.  The color is the same  glacial blue that we saw in the ice cave at Jungfraujoch yesterday.

Jim's loving it.  We keep looking at each other and exclaiming at how glorious the day, the hike, the experience.  We are so lucky.

 Having crossed the Weisse Lutschine (the river), we're almost to our next waterfall, the famous Trummelbach Falls.  The 11 CHF fee is so reasonable considering the tunneling and engineering.

 Trummelbach waterfall is a series of mountain-encased tubes full of rushing glacial melt, waterfalls, and pools.  Some enterprising and ambitious tunneler found the cave and created a series of paths and lookout points within the mountain so we can spy on how the hidden river carves out its path to the outside.

The air vibrates with the water's roar.  It's a LOUD glacial voice from Jungfrau, Monch, and Eiger.  
Shivery cold.
Exhilarating. Breathtaking.  Glacier-spray-filled.  
Heart-throbbingly wild.  Wonder-full.

I stuck my shoe under the railing (I quaked inside) to give perspective to this viewpoint.  The rush of water has a pull to it.  Alive.  Beautiful.

The glacial melt emerges.

 And we have a river as we understand river.  And so it gets a name.  Tamed?

We walk back the way we came.  Peaceful meadow.

 At the level of Jim's sunglasses, on the mountain side on the right, is Wengen.  I assure Jim that we're not hiking back there.  There's a train seat waiting in Lauterbrunnen for my fanny print upon it.

It's a holiday today, and like a lot of us do, these folks work their 3-day weekend, getting the hay mowed and spread out to dry.  It's hot. They've got to be working up a real sweat.

The air smells just like the dessert we had at dinner on Friday night, that hay whip cup.  

Tonight after dinner, it's the Wengen parade, local music, and then fireworks.