The day after our Elsigbach hike, and despite being a little sore from the previous day’s adventure, we decided to head out on a longer hike up at the Engstligenalp, which is the plateau above the Engstligen waterfall. We knew a storm was coming in for the weekend and didn’t want to waste our last beautiful, sunny day of the week. We took the tram from the bottom of the falls up to the top, feeling no envy for the brave souls who we could see taking the steep stairs from the top to the bottom of the valley. As we planned to hike a trail that was several hours long, we decided hiking from the top of the falls to the bottom would be too much, so we had purchased a round trip ticket.

Engstligenalp is the summer pasture for all the local cows, and as such we were treated to a chorus of cowbells almost as soon as we stepped off the tram. (Yes, they do really wear those big bells!) There is a huge, grassy bowl at Engstligenalp, dotted with one hotel, one restaurant, and several local shepherd cottages. It is surrounded by sharp and dramatic peaks of varying shapes and sizes.

We had pre-selected a route that according to the map was supposed to be about a 3.5 -hour hike, 350 meters (1,150 feet) of vertical climb, and with a beautiful tour of the alpine flowers. Unfortunately the signs on the trail heads were not entirely clear for the route we wanted to take, the two different maps we were consulting seemed to conflict each other, and as such we immediately set off on the wrong path.

Mistakes can sometimes turn into serendipitous occasions, and before we realized we must be on the wrong path, we enjoyed a stunning view while hiking up the ridge, with verdant grassy bowls on either side of us. Even up high on the ridge we could clearly hear the music of the cows as they moved across their summer pastures.

We even ran into a few cows on our trail, one of whom took a great liking to Larry, following him up the trail while trying to eat his walking stick. We weren’t sure if his/her intentions were pure, so we didn’t stay too long to chat.

Click the ‘play’ button below for video of our friends.

It was here that we realized we were definitely on the wrong trail, one that would lead us on a very steep and long climb up to the ridge and across to one of the peaks that surround the Engstligenalp, rather than through the Alpine flora and lake that we had planned for.

At this point we had a decision to make: go back the way we came, which would assure that we would lose all the altitude we had climbed and never have time for the trail of our original intent, or take a path that seemed to veer off in the direction we needed to go. We opted for the latter – which, in hindsight, was not such a bright idea. After some descent and a ravine over, the trail petered off into nothing and we were forging our own path dodging cow patties, critter holes, and ankle-breaking knolls buried within the Alpine grasslands. Again, it might have been smart to turn back to the marked trail even at this point, but we didn’t. We instead decided we’d follow a stream through a ravine and back down into the Engstligenalp bowl.

As is often the case in these situations, looks can be deceiving, and what appeared to be a hike of moderate difficulty turned into a periodically harrowing 3 1/2-hour experience hiking down and traversing nearly 70 degree loose-rock slopes leading to the bean-cracking rocky stream below. Larry did his Eagle Scout best to navigate us through the tricky parts and find the best way down, talking me off the ledge (literally and metaphorically) more than once when things got a little dicey. Unfortunately we don’t have many pictures of this part of our adventure because we were too busy trying not to die!

We realized not far into our precipitous descent that should we escape our afternoon without any major broken bones, the real battle we were fighting was the clock. The last tram down the mountain was at 6 pm and we had precious little time to find out way down off the slope and get to the station. Once we got out of the hairiest part of the descent we checked our watches and discovered we had only 45 minutes left to make the tram, and still some distance to climb down through more of the knobby and ankle-breaking Alpine turf.

By this time my legs and arms were beyond making mere complaints – they were screaming at me. Still, the thought of having to take all those steep stairs down the mountain kept us both going at it hard. For those of you who know Larry well, you know that he has legs of steel – thick and solid muscle (thanks to his many years of wrestling and cycling). His legs were holding up a little bit better than mine. My legs had grown a mind of their own, intent on collapsing underneath me. Intense concentration kept them up against their will. Finally we were able to find a game trail on ground that was more even and made the descent a little bit easier.

We broke out of the ravine at last and onto the flatland of the Engstligenalp with 10 minutes to go – and we still had to make our way all the way across the plateau through muddy cow patties to get there. I waved at Larry to leave me behind – I was distinctly lagging behind at this point – and try to catch them and hold them. We both raced and I got to the tram station right as the last tram was unloading its passengers who had come up from the bottom. Larry had gotten there too late as well. We had missed it.

The caretaker of the tram station told us in the about 5 words of English he knew, sorry, last one, there’s another one in the morning. He told us there was a hotel and pointed us the way to the steep stairs to climb down. It was starting to rain at this point and though we were prepared to climb down if that’s what it took, neither one of us were very excited. I wasn’t sure my legs could take it. After a bit of pestering on Larry’s part, the caretaker then said (or at least Larry thought he was saying – as neither of us speak any German) that there was going to be a special tram at 7:00 and it cost 20 Francs. We’re still not sure if that was a real fee or just his “fee” for getting us down. Frankly it didn’t matter to us, as long as we didn’t have to walk. Unfortunately we had only a 10-Franc note and a bunch of coins on us. We scrambled, literally counting out the last few francs in 20- and 10-cent pieces. Larry handed him our money and he showed us over to the tiny “special” tram, which, unlike the large car that brought us up, was literally was built to hold only a few people. He showed Larry how to lock and unlock it, as we’d be taking ourselves out of the car at the bottom, and then told us he’d be back at 7 (or, at least that’s what we thought he told us). We sat and munched on granola and dried apples, thanking the heavens above that we weren’t walking down 600 meters in the rain on jelly legs.

At 7:00, our friend returned and loaded us into the car, again showing Larry what to do with the lock and how to unlock it at the bottom. He said something in German and then said “fermez la porte” – which is French for “close the door”. It hadn’t ever occurred to either of us to ask him if he spoke any French – it would have made our earlier communications much easier! Because Switzerland is largely divided between a French speaking and German speaking population (with a bit of Italian and Romansch thrown in the other parts) – the populace often knows at least a bit of the other.

We happily watched the mountain fall away as we descended down, wincing as we glanced at the stairs that we almost had to endure – and passed the other car going up which was full of passengers – maybe it was a last “special” tram for those idiots who missed the official last tram. Regardless we got to the bottom and almost kissed our car when we got to the parking lot. I think after this experience, we can both cross “hiking in the Swiss Alps” off our life lists.