Solo Hiking Hardergrat

This intensive full-day hike was the "initiation hike" that kind of the kick-off to several more months of adrenaline.

Honestly, I was pretty nervous for this one. There are a million blog posts and hike logs about the Hardergrat and it is semi-notorious for how dangerous it is; while popular, it is not an "official" trail due to the high risk of serious injury and death. While it's not a very technical or confusing trail, it's dangerous because of the extremely steep dropoff on almost either side. The consequences for errors aren't just serious injury - it's death. I have little experience with dangerous hikes and certainly none by myself.

Standing on the ridge above Lake Brienz

(A tiny German lesson for the name. "Grat" is a mountain ridge and "kulm" is the top of a mountain... but just a small mountain. The taller and pointier mountains are called horns, like Matterhorn, Schilthorn, Augsmathorn, etc. So this hike is the 24km ridge/"grat" connecting Harder Kulm to Rothorn Kum, but on the way you cross over Augstmatthorn and a couple other peaks.)

1. The Planning

Up until the morning of, I'm still going back and forth on which direction to start from, what time to start, what all to bring along, whether to start at the top or hike the ascents/descents from the base, etc. 

Option 1: Start extremely early (like 4am) in the morning to start the hike from Interlaken and hike "the typical" direction from Harder Kulm to Rothorn Kulm, then take the train down to Brienz and back to Interlaken.

Option 2: Same as #1 but take the first funicular at 9am from Interlaken to Rothorn Kulm. Risk of missing the last train from Rothorn Kulm to Brienz or, even worse, still be hiking after it starts to get dark.

Option 3: Take the train from Interlaken to Brienz to catch the first steam train at 8.30am from Brienz to Brienzer Rothorn and the "reverse" direction from Rothorn Kulm to Harder Kulm. This cover the most dangerous/unofficial part of the trail at the beginning of the day before my legs are tired and, if I do end up getting stranded on the mountain at night or miss the last funicular down, I'd at least be walked in the direction of my hostel in Interlaken on an actual marked trail.

I go with Option 3. Why the hell is this supposedly the unusual option??

There are also one or two "exit points" along the trail if, worst case scenario, I'm not able to finish the whole thing. These are extremely steep downhill routes though, so let's hope it's not too difficult to just finish the thing.

At one point, the weather forecast looks like thunderstorms and I'm frustrated because of all the anticipation already built up. I determine to just bring an umbrella with me and barricade myself beside a rock if need be. My logic: "If I die, I die. I am NOT coming all the way here just to not even do the hike!"

(Luckily, there will be no rain so I won't have to test this excellent idea of standing atop an open mountain ridge in a thunderstorm desperately clutching what's basically a lightning rod.)

2. The Hike

In the morning, I take the regular train to Brienz in order to catch the 8:30 steam train up to Brienzer Rothorn. Reaching the top of Rothorn Kulm, I start to wander in the general direction of the trail. As it's not an "official" trail, there are no marked signs for it, resulting in many side trails as people have wandered around until they find it. Eventually, however, one solid trail begins to appear, and I realize there are several other small groups of hikers heading in the same direction. They'd (understandably) caught the same first train up to Brienzer Rothorn. This is reassuring; while it's not recommended to hike the Hardergrat alone, people hike the Hardergrat every day so it's unlikely you'll actually be alone.

View of the steam train at Rothorn Kulm.

The actual hike itself is probably the most spectacular hike I've ever done. Not only is it steep, scary, and loooong, but it's also stunning. The cloud cover to the north seems to stop as soon as it hits the ridge, resulting in an almost ethereal divide between the north and south sides of the ridge. There is a clear view of Lake Brienz and the mountains further to the south, such as Schynigge Platte, Eigher, Monc, and Jungfrau. Photos tell a better story of this hike than text though:

The stunning ridge of the Hardergrat blocking the clouds from passing

A hiking companion I found scoots his way down a very steep section.

There are also crosses marking the sites where people fell... (usually in the winter)

Standing on the Harder ridge

It's... steep.

Pretty sure the only reason there were no crosses in this section is because there's nowhere to put them.

I absolutely love the way the clouds just stopped on one side of the ridge.

The final peak to climb on this forever-ridge is Augstmatthorn. Having already trudged up and down multiple peaks along the ridge throughout the day, this final summit isn't pleasant. We grip the trail on all fours as the shale rock slides beneath us and we're too exhausted to catch ourselves. 

At some point during this exhausting sliding mess, someone notices the blue paint nearby. Blue paint! That means we've made it to an official trail! The last portion of the Hardergrat connecting Augstmatthorn to Harder Kulm is safe enough that the Swiss trail authorities (whoever they are) deemed it an official trail. This means it's regularly maintained, painted, and insurance will cover you if you injure yourself.

Reaching the peak of Augstmatthorn, there are suddenly more people around us. Harder Kulm is a major tourist attraction just outside of Interlaken and many people do the short official hike between Harder Kulm and Augstmatthorn. We stop for a while to take photos, before continuing down toward the treeline and finally Harder Kulm before 7pm. After 9 hours on the trail, we are ready to catch the funicular down to Interlaken, and onward to our hostels.

Stats from the final hike.

3. The Aftermath

If there's a God, I'm pretty sure her response to this was basically "OKAY okay wait, here, at least spend more time with a professional adrenaline junkie first." Because the evening after solo hiking (and successfully not dying on) the Hardergrat, I met up with Z for a drink to talk about the paragliding trip I'd asked to book with him for the following day. Z was a canyoning guide Skylar and I met back in March who'd recently gotten his tandem paragliding license as well. I'd messaged him to follow up on the paragliding since that was something I'd also wanted to try.

This was supposed to be the weekend of adrenaline, but then turned into several months of adrenaline. That paragliding flight turned into five, the train turned into Z's ever-moving van, one canyoning tour turned into 10, and a reckless dance with adrenaline addiction slightly brought under control... Slightly.

Solo Swiss Travels: Dead Bodies in Basel

There was one weekend near the end of May where I just needed to get away: escape a stressful living situation, demanding work responsibilities, and psycho-emotionally draining friendships. I just needed out.

FRIDAY

So. At around 5pm Friday afternoon, I booked a hostel in Basel for that same evening and the following two nights (Monday was a holiday). 

Why Basel? It's incredibly old (we're talking ancient Roman times), sits directly on the Rhine River at the crossroads between Switzerland, France, and Germany, and hosts the most museums of any other Swiss city (including your typical/kinda boring art and natural history museums but also more interesting ones, which we'll get to).

Catching the 7pm train from Cornavin, the 5-hour journey brought me to the hostel shortly after midnight. It took a bit of time to figure out the safe-system for late-checkins and the handwritten German instructions on how to find and open the room, but eventually the large 10-bed dorm was entirely my own for the next several hours. 

SATURDAY

My first day in Basel (Saturday) was very slow, calm, and unplanned (Tbh, I just needed to decompress from the week and couldn't be bothered to organize anything). Grabbing coffee from one of the small stands at a Saturday morning market, I wandered through the old city taking photos, watching people, sitting beside the Rhine river to write and nap, and wandering through the cathedral and its crypt.

Elisabethenkirche

Old City gates

Inside the courtyard of the Basel Munster

Jesus lookin' sexy

The Rhine River, where Switzerland meets both Germany and France

Accidentally buying fancy coffee and cakes during a writing break

Reading along the Rhine

There was a large market in central Old Basel, Basel Marktplaz, where people in traditional Swiss German clothing were playing these massive horns that sounded similar to a didgeridoo... but more Swiss. There was also an abundance of hard-pressed cheeses to choose from; I went with 100g of both Napfkäse and Sörenberger-Alpkäse to taste and add to my cheese chart (which is updated far more regularly than this blog - just a heads up). The Napfkäse was a classic good hard cheese but that Sörenberger-Alpkäse somehow managed to taste super-aged and sharp without creating any sort of granules (those tiny cheese crystals that show up inside aged cheeses), resulting in an incredibly smooth cheese with all the rich sharpness of a strong aged cheese.

Cool Swiss didgeridoo. They're flying the flag for Obwalden canton, which is... not where Basel is?

Cheese cheese cheese!

A classic, good hard alpine cheese.

One of the smoothest hard, aged cheeses I've tried! I have no idea how they managed to avoid the cheese crystals

That night, I brought the most delicious garlic fries (which were easily ordered and handed to me but weirdly complicated to find someone to pay for them?) to eat at my hostel while planning tomorrow's Sunday Adventure, which I'd already determined to be much more organized than today. After hours sifting through brochures (thank you, Basel Backpackers), this was the final itinerary:

10am - free walking tour of Basel Old Town

12:30 - walk to the Anatomical Museum (Anatomischesmuseum), grabbing something to eat on the way

1pm - explore the Anatomical Museum

3pm - walk quickly to the Pharmacy Museum (Pharmaziemuseum) before it closes

4pm - walk quickly to the Toy Museum (Spielzeug Welten Museum) before it closes next

5pm - find sausage to eat at a restaurant somewhere. Gotta enjoy classic wurst from the German part.

SUNDAY

Somehow (almost) everything went smoothly! Our tour guide was a sweetheart who adored Basel and I wish we'd had more questions for him. 

Tinguely Fountain: facing the new opera house, it is designed in the space and using the materials of the old opera house. The statue's face is shooting tears at the new opera house. Architect was not a fan of change...

Basel Town Hall. Such vibrant red!

Brains in the anatomy museum!

Tattoos last a long time...

Pickled sniffer

Bodily consent is obviously an important topic here with some weird gray areas in relation to its history. The legal requirement for medical consent to use/display someone's dead body for scientific purposes isn't that old; common practices used by average respectable doctors 200 years ago would now be completely illegal. Yet many of the body parts on display were significantly older than body consent laws. Apparently (according to the student running the ticket counter), universities are able to keep displaying bodies obtained before these consent laws - it is only new bodies that are required to meet the current standards. As a result, there are certain specimens on display right now that will only be possible to see until they disintegrate because current consent laws would not allow new ones. The most significant example of this was the fetuses: the museum had an entire wall depicting every stage of fetal development (no photos of this one - obvious reasons). Since a fetus cannot consent, this display will only be around until they naturally disintegrate.I ended up staying at the Anatomical Museum until it closed and had to skip the Pharmacy Museum but it was definitely worth it. The entire museum is just one room with several rows of specimens, but almost every specimen is utterly fascinating.

The Toy Museum was spectacular and I wish there were more than an hour to spend it in.

Mouse home

A monastery basement

Wildly intricate dollhouse!

Risqué artist's nook of the 1800s?

Tutus! So detailed

By a happy coincidence, the Toy Museum is right beside the street with all the outdoor restaurants and food stalls. It took a surprisingly long time to find a restaurant selling sausage (a common response: "you need a festival or sporting event for sausage - it's not a restaurant food." Oh well - I still want sausage). Eventually, I did find a restaurant selling sausage and enjoyed happily eating that sausage on a busy Basel restaurant patio.

I also met a fellow traveler on this restaurant patio - a young German man escaping the German COVID restrictions. We ended up exploring Kleinebasel, finding random paintings of Naked Jesus, trying Croatian ćevapčići, and wandering along the Rhine.

MONDAY HIKING

On Sunday, I went hiking in a more rural area outside of Basel (which took a while to get to - Basel is quite large).

I found...

Pfeffingen Castle, an abandoned medieval fortress

With a beautifully placed tree

One of the largest castle ruins in Basel canton

From multiple angles

A rock that was apparently a tactical Swiss location during WW1

A sign looking like it was from LotR

That evening, I boarded the long train back toward Geneva. Arriving around 2am, I snuck back into my house to avoid waking up the small children, tucked into bed, and fell fast asleep to recharge for the workday tomorrow.