A Wild Trip to the Bernese Alps (Part 2)

After a comfortable night in the trailer, we had a quick breakfast with our couchsurfing host and decided that we are going to visit the Trift glacier (Woohooo!), which is about 30 minutes further up the Bernese Alps. It was quite foggy that day, snowdrifts passed over the mountains and we could barely see the sun. Coming from warm and pleasant middle autumn days in the city was quite a frosty shock. As we walked toward the road to get a lift up the mountain, the cold was crawling slowly into our thin jackets and unsuitable converse sneakers.

The only way up to the Trift glacier, is with a car (which we don't have) or with the bus (which only go halfway to the glacier) so we were kinda forced to hitchhike again. There were barely cars passing the Susten pass (a small mountain road), but we were lucky that after 10 minutes we got picked up by a young Chinese couple, who do not quite understand why we wanted to hike further up the mountain in such a stormy, icy weather.

We got dropped off at a small chalet house, which we knew was the spot to hike from. We were surrounded by giant cliffs covert in snow, the wind blew violently and the landscape seemed both inhumane and beautiful in a very untouched, essential way. Beside the abandoned looking hotel and the frozen road, there were no other signs of civilization. And as we observe our wider environment, we couldn't spot any other wanderers. The last perceptible sign of humanity was the car of the Chinese couple winding up the serpentines in the far distance.

The loneliness was a bit intimidating and it was still snowing a lot, but we decided to give it a try and hike to the glacier. The glacier itself is 5 km long situated in the central alps of Switzerland. Because of the heavy melting of lower ice parts, a lake has formed. It is called Steinsee which is located at the bottom of the glacier, known for it's bright turquoise color. Further up and stretched over the lake, is the longest pedestrian-only suspension bridge in the Swiss Alps, named Trift bridge. It spanning 170 meter at a height of 100 meter. Unfortunately the weather conditions were to bad to visit the bridge. Fortunately, we made it to the lake and the glacier after 45 minutes of hiking.

It was a pretty surreal feeling, walking through this cold and stony environment with barely a sign of any living creature but a sense of being at a rare place of pure, untouched nature. We climbed on a small hill to get a better view over the mountain plateau. Before we decided to head back, the fog became denser and it started to get dark. We spotted two climbers in a very far distance hanging on an icy rockface making there way up to the top on our way down.

Back at the road, the snow dust turned into a shallow rain shower. We were a bit worried if we could make it down the mountain before it gets dark. Within the next 45 minutes there were around 6 or 7 cars, none stopped. Our concerns started to grow and we were pretty much frozen through, but finally a young guy from Morocco picked us up! He was on the way to Milan to watch a football game and happy to help us in our miserable situation. We had a short chat and everybody agreed that we would rather lay under the Moroccan sun at this moment than be in this paralyzing cold climate! We thanked him as he dropped us at our couchsurfing host's house, straight into a hot shower!

If you want to read the first part: A Wild Trip to the Bernese Alps (Part 1)!

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