Switzerland 3 - Mürren

Sage didn't sleep well last night. She only woke me up twice, but apparently her parents were up a dozen times, so all of them are feeling under the weather, particularly Sage who isn't happy with anything, at least not for long. So after a long and casual breakfast, my parents and I set off on a hike, while her parents stayed in to put her down and probably nap themselves.

We headed up the funicular to Almond-hubble <Allmendhubel>, where the sprinkle of rain at our chalet turned into sprinkles of snow on top. Not too bad though, and that wasn't going to stop us. To get away from the station required an uphill hike, but the trail we picked out ends over a thousand feet below the starting point, so... we sent it! We veered off to the left and immediately left civilization behind. We passed one couple headed the other direction and those were the last people we saw for over an hour.  The foreground looked almost like Ireland: rolling hills, green and rocks, but once you looked beyond that you saw very un-Irish mountains in every direction. To the left, the slope curved asymptotically  upwards until it became a sheer cliffs above us, at times showing the scars of avalanches. To our right, a quadratic downward slope starting with fields strewn with boulders before plunging into the valley - and then a sharp upwards inflection of more Alps across the valley. 

Thankfully, after the initial elevation gain and loss, the trail evened out and we maintained our contour-line for several miles across the valley. The snow turned to sleet, the mud began to freeze beneath our feet, but we were dressed for it and appreciated the changes. Eventually the precipitation gave way to clouds, and once we rounded the curve of the mountain into the windshadow I didn't even need my coat. We found wild blueberries (and ate them, of course), crossed a few rivulets, and just cruised. It was a delightful hike, mostly due to the views, so I'll let the pictures do the talking:

The last quarter of the hike was less delightful, as we had to lose 800' of elevation. We descended into the treeline, so it was a lot of work, sore toes, and no views. We also began running into hikers headed the other direction, but still pretty light traffic - no longer a private mountain, but not crowded by any stretch of the imagination. Suddenly (and thankfully) we were spat out onto a gravel road, and a few hundred meters later we walked into the train station and onto a train back to Mürren.  The group in the seats behind ours were base jumpers, so I eavesdropped their tales of various jumps and the sketchy hikes to reach them. Sounds amazing, a glimpse of a life I never chose. Then back to the chalet for lunch, and our turn to babysit Sage (still sleeping) and eat lunch while Adam and Dani head out for some trail-running. And just now, as I catch up to now, there's some nonsense being sung from the bedroom, so it sounds like naptime has ended. TTYL. <Break>

The rest of the day was babysitting, we made reservations for the Via Feratta (route of Iron), and some delicious swiss food (beef stroganoff tastes better than horse). Pretty chill afternoon and an early evening, which is fine by me.... but someone is screaming mad about it.