Each More Beautiful Than the Last

In college, I had the opportunity to travel in Europe for a week. I'd never been outside North America before, and really only outside the USA to border towns while very closely supervised. After taking care of business in Paris with my research team, I struck out alone for the Alps. I love mountains, and this was a chance to play in some really, really incredible mountains.

My first stop on my solo journey was Chamonix in France near the Swiss border. It was shoulder season, between winter skiing and summer whatever you do in summer in the Alps. Temperature was extremely dependent on altitude. I was freezing on the Mer de Glace, the not-quite-so-giant-any-more glacier on Mont Blanc, but very warm in the Alpine Meadows where I went hiking without enough water (I survived. It's ok).

I had never seen anywhere so beautiful.

A veiw while hiking around Chamonix.

After a few days of adventures there, I took a train into Switzerland with a very delightful and very partnered pair of gentlemen, one each from England and Spain. My destination was the Jungfrau region; my next journey began in Grindelwald.

I had never seen anywhere so beautiful.

The view of Eiger out my hostel window at sunrise.

It was exponentially more beatiful than Chamonix. I was constantly stopping and staring in awe at the landscape before me. The view out my hostel window was Eiger, and I promised myself that I would climb it one day. Still working on that one. I explored there briefly before setting out on the 6 mile hike up hill to Kleine Sheidegg.

I had seen many, many places more beauitful. Oy.

The view out my hostel window at Kleine Sheidegg.

Kleine Sheidegg was thankfully a very momentary stopover, the mid-point between Grindelwald and Lauterbrunen. Setting out that morning was awesome. I'd had a hot meal, a ridiculously expensive bed in a teeny tiny hostel room, and adventures in learning German words for the genders, but the crush of tourists and crowded feel was everything I had fled when leaving Paris. Once I was on the road, everything was glorious.

Leaving Kleine Sheidegg and very happy about it.

Except my knees. Today was the downhill day. My pack was approximately 50-55lbs, and today's trail was nine miles of walking and 4000 feet of elevation loss. Most of that loss was in the last three miles. Thost last miles were a disjointed mix of pain, breathtaking scenery, constant map-checking, and pain. I was almost dilrious with how much my knees hurt. By the time I reached the last vista before descending into Lauterbrunen, all my energy was being poured into simply walking. Now utterly uninterested in anything but the path in front of me and my mental map of how much farther I had to go, I glanced up and froze.

My first view of Lauterbrunen.

To this day I have never seen anything anywhere so beautiful. Ever.

Lauterbrunen is a spot that looks like a giant (an Eiger, perhaps?) swung a sword into a hill, cleaving it in half. He stuck his hands in the middle and nudged the halves apart until there was a valley with sheer sides and a lush, flat, green bottom. All the streams that used to run over that hill? Are now crashing waterfalls every few hundred yards along the walls of the valley. These waterfalls drain into a little river that snakes through the floor with a little town nestling in its curves. Off in the distance are even more mountains, and if you look ever so closely you can see another waterfall, too big to comprehend, coursing down and out of sight.

I had many, many adventures on my journey in Europe, but that first sight of Lauterbrunen was the keystone and the focal point of the entire trip.