Spring skiing in Switzerland, what a dream! At the beginning of March I went to Switzerland with a few friends and we used Interlaken as our home base to explore the Jungfrau Ski Region. In the Jungfrau region there are three main sections of the mountain: Grindelwald-First, Grindelwald-Wengen and Murren-Schilthorn. We started day one on the Grindelwald-Wengen side because it was the easiest to reach and it had a majority of the runs on the mountain. We spent two whole days of non stop skiing on the Grindelwald – Wengen side of the resort and I still don’t think we saw it all. We would take the first lift up in the morning and then spend two hours traversing routes down the mountain until we made it back to where we started. It was amazing! For the second half of our skiing adventures we ventured out to the other side of the resort by taking the train from Kleine Scheidegg to Winteregg and then taking a tram up to Murren and even further up to the peak. We spent a few hours exploring the runs on Schilthorn and watching paragliders fly off the side of the mountain before catching the train back to Männlichen and skiing home. The whole experience was actually insane, but it’s hard to grasp how crazy it all was because everything about skiing in Switzerland was insane. The giant mountains, the hour long runs, the paragliders and paraskiiers… all of it, insane.
INTERLAKEN is cute
The Yelp reviews of Interlaken said it wouldn’t be a cute town to stay in, but I politely disagree. Interlaken is a tiny town surrounded by snowy mountains and nestled in between two bodies of water – Lake Thun and Lake Brienz. To add to the magic, the sky is full of helicopters, paragliders and sunsets that make it feel even more unreal. As soon as we arrived in Interlaken Elinor and I went for a little hike around the town and to the lake for a little R&R.
Grindelwald-Wengen
This side of the mountain has 103km of runs and a majority of the routes are either beginner blues (13 routes) or medium reds (25 routes). There were about 14 black diamond runs, but they’re easy to avoid if you don’t feel like traversing a steep alpine black. To get to most of the runs in the Grindelwald-Wengen section of the mountain, you simply take the train train to Grindelwald terminal and then catch the Eiger Express to the top of Eigerletscher. From there you can take a handful of different routes down to the cute mountain pass area of Kleine Scheidegg. From there my favorite route is to take the long blue 36 piste all the way to the town of Wengen. From Wengen you can take the Wengen – Mannlichen gondola all the way to my favorite run on the mountain, the red 3. The red 3 route takes you all the way from the top of Mannlichen at 2,343m to ground level at Grindelwald terminal. The whole run looks out over the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau mountains and it’s simply beautiful! Elinor and I did that loop from the top of Eiger to Wengen, then Mannlichen to Grindelwald a few times and it’s an easy and beautiful way to kill a few hours. Especially if you stop along the way for a few brewskies.
Murren-Schilthorn
The experience we had on the Murren – Schilthorn side of the resort was completely different than the runs we had on the Grindelwald side. Murren and Schilthorn definitely felt more remote, more local and slightly more difficult than the Grindelwald runs. To get to the top of the mountain we took several forms of transportation, including a train to Lauterbrunnen, a gondola to Grutschalp, a train to Murren and then additional lifts to get to the top of the mountain. It was a fun adventure, but I can definitely see why it’s emptier on this side of the mountain. While we were skiing and exploring this side of the mountain, we also found an area for paragliders where people were ~casually~ jumping off the side of the mountain with a wing attached to their back and skis on their feet. Seeing people paraglide off the mountain was amazing, but it also added to the higher risk that we felt on all of the Murren – Schilthorn runs. From the top of the mountain to the bottom, Elinor and I were pretty silent because we could barely process the beauty that surrounded us at the top of the runs. When comparing the two sides of the mountain, I think Murren – Schilthorn has the prettier views. It feels funny even comparing the two sides of the mountain though because they’re both breathtaking in their own ways.
APRES SKI
Obviously, when in Switzerland… you come for the skiing, but stay for the apres! The apres skiing was so much fun and we were able to squeeze in different styles of apres each day. Our apres varied from Grindelwald bars with overpriced pizza and live band karaoke (Wagon Wheel, duh) to DJ’d parties at the base of the mountain. We were also able to ski down the mountain and stop at several off piste bars, which made sure we were always ready to apres by the time we hit Grindelwald terminal.
