The first thing I woke up was jumping down the bed and sliding open the curtains. The sky was a blue I had not seen for days, it was spotless without a cloud. I almost screamed in excitement and started packing. Breakfast was a swirl as we had no time to lose, for god knows how long this good weather would last.
Everyone stationed in different parts of Oberland was no different, the train to Kleine Scheidegg which is the stop to change trains to Jungfrau was packed with people. We were lucky enough to find a seat. It was noisy, people speaking in different languages relaying the same excitement. The Kleine Scheidegg station was hectic and a bit of a mess as people rushed to scramble on the shiny red Jungfrau trains, fearing they would miss it. There was no queue, no instructions, we had to squeeze and push between people to find an empty carriage. We managed to find seats. I started to get a bit nervous remembering how people had altitude sickness as the train climbs up a dizzying height of 3000 metres. The Jungfrau station is at 3,454 metres (11,332 feet), being the highest railway station in Europe, and the tunnel up was built way back in the early 20th century, a pioneering project back then. I took preventive meds 2 days before so nothing happened to me thankfully as the train does move up pretty quick.
There were two stops in between which gives you a panoramic views amongst the mountain ranges indoors. At the Jungfrau station, in the indoor area, it was filled with tourists.
Jungfrau, by the way, means Virgin in German. I was intrigued by such a pure and feminine name for a mountain of power and called “Top of Europe”, many tales and myths behind the names of these mountains, or whether it is purely geographical, Mark Twain says it best:
“It is a good name, Jungfrau — Virgin. Nothing could be whiter; nothing could be purer; nothing could be saintlier of aspect.”
– What is Man, Chapter 7 “Switzerland, the Cradle of Liberty”, by Mark Twain
He wrote this in 1891, but how very true he still is in 2015. The purity of these billions of snow glistening under the sun like a million little diamonds, like a velvet covering the hard edges and masculinity of the bare rock mountains beneath, yet without covering all, creating a stark contrast between the bright and the dark, the smoothness and thw roughness, the gentle and the stiff, the feminine and the masculine. It is breathtaking to watch such powerful elegance so close up.
With the sun above our foreheads, the clean infinite blue in the sky, we follow the people and set foot our little hike up the snowy mountains to a destination unknown (turned out to be the Mönchsjoch Hut). Living in the sub-tropics, my last experience with that much snow was back in Vancouver on Grouse Mountain in winter some good years back and I didn’t even walk that much back then, it was my first proper hike in pure snow.
Trudging in snow was tiring, every step one third of your boots sink into the snow and it takes twice the effort to get it back up and take the next step. The huge snow path was with different sizes and depths of shoe prints, this compacts the snow a bit and makes it slightly easier to walk. On the two sides of the path, it is just a pure white shiny canvas, the reflection of the sun was so strong that your eyes hurt. We tried diverting away and ruining the silky surface with our foot prints and half my leg sinked in. It was a real laugh. The texture of the snow was more icy and crumbly than its smooth and silky looks (like a kakigori – a Japanese shaved ice dessert) and I occasionally grabbed a handful to cool down, i (yes we wore too much clothes and it was starting to get tiring and hot). After some snowball fights, some snow angels in action, and lots of picture-taking, we still could not see our destination. Sometimes, winds would swept across the mountains causing a sheer scarf of whiteness across the land.
We walked almost 2 hours until we see the Mönchsjoch Hut, studded on the edge of a slope, which we correctly assumed, would be our lunch place to replenish our hungry stomachs. It was a painful “hike” up the hut. There were no stairs, no rails, no footpaths (probably buried in snow) and the hut entrance is not on flat ground, you need to climb up this icy and slanted slope to reach their platform. The slope was slippery and it was melting. And if you slipped hard, you can possibly just roll down the little slope, off the useless rail ropes and roll down a serious cliff-like slope. You can seriously get hurt and die (as was my state of mind then) by only one tiny error. I couldn’t help and yelped my way up on all fours, climbing in between the deeper shoe prints, which formed little holes so I can steady myself. My heart was pounding madly when I reached the platform. I looked down and thought, how the hell was I supposed to climb back down. Climbing up was easier, but getting down, in a slope like this, would be terrifying.
The hut was all metal and shiny on the outside, but wooden, warm and cosy on the inside with red and white checker table cloths and curtains. We had the most salty vegetable soup and a monstrous form of ham and cheese sandwich – the ham sandwich was basically bathed in a pool of baked melted cheese with tomato oil in a pottery container, there was so much cheese that you would not be able to tell there’s bread inside until you digged your fork in. Calories overloaded to the max. The Americans had to come over and ask what this was, because yes, they are mad about the cheese. Even for two people, it was too much to digest.
After taking a deep breath, I started tearing, I could not find the courage to get down the slope, there’s no room to slide, as it was too near to the cliff. Two backpackers (thank god) gave me a helping hand, they were tall and strongly built, grabbing my arms from both sides to take me down. I felt like I was hanging in the air, like a kid swinging between my parents. I heard one of the man said, “she sure isn’t enjoying this”.
Walking down the slope was a breeze, I even had a little roll in the snow. After a brief stop by the ice palace and the Lindt souvenir stop, we took the Jungfrau train back down. I was very tired but the good weather pushed us to do another downslope hike.
buttersaltandmilk
buttersaltandmilk 
Amazing!
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😃
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