Other activities

Fully 30 percent of winter visitors to Grindelwald are non-skiers, and there is plenty for them to do. Hikers, skinny skiers and snowshoers have their own trails throughout and around the ski areas. They’re even groomed, to a width of about eight feet, and good for sledding. You can hike or ride a lift up. There is even a restaurant above First, to which the lifts don’t even come close—you’ll have to walk, but as Mark Twain said in A Tramp Abroad, “There is no opiate like Alpine pedestrianism.”

The smart shops in Bern and the really charming Old-World center of the capital city merit a side trip.

Grindelwald offers the widest range of non-skiing activities such as ice skating, curling, hang-gliding, sledding, swimming and hiking.

The Grindelwald Winter Festival in mid-January has snow sculpture contests feature four-member teams from around the world.

The sports center, on the main street of Grindelwald, is excellent, with swimming, sauna complex, fitness rooms, climbing room and ice skating.

There are great toboggan runs from Bussalp—Bussalp to Grindelwald is eight km., the race course is 4.5 km. and Faulhorn to Bussalp to Grindelwald is 16.5 km. The postbus connects Grindelwald with Bussalp. Bus fare is €13.20.

The Jungfraubahn cog railway
The Jungfraubahn that takes skiers up the mountain is also a delightful outing for the non-skier. It bores through the Eiger’s north face to the Jungfraujoch. The entire route through the mountain took 14 years to build and was finished in 1912.

A stop inside the mountain allows pas-sengers to look through windows at the precipitous mountain face. At the top, the train arrives at 11,333 feet, the highest railway station in Europe. A spectacular building houses a restaurant, an ice palace carved into the glacier and outdoor observation platforms with views down over the glacier.

Be careful navigating your next path if you’re in ski boots! It’s an entanglement of pathways carved through an ice tunnel. Glittering passages, mysterious niches and stairways pass ice sculptures sprinkled along the route and end up at an ice bar where typical Swiss ice wine is served to giddy singing, playful children in adult bodies.

Piz Gloria and its revolving restaurant were chosen as the villain’s lair in the James Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The movie features a wild chase on skis from the restaurant to the car-less village of Murren below.

A series of cablecars and cog trains haul you up to the Schilthorn, a 9,748-foot- tall peak surrounded by a sea of 200 spectacular snow-covered Alps with a view of France, Germany, and of course, much of Switzerland. Along with a 200-mile-radius view on a clear day, the Piz Gloria restaurant offers a special local dish: rare, local mountain mushrooms or “steinpilz” over pasta. It’s as fabulous as the vista.