We’ve lived in Switzerland for more than 2 years now and we realized there’s so many spots in our backyard that we haven’t explored yet! We had a couple free weekends this month and decided to take advantage of what surrounds us. The first weekend adventure took us to the Hardergrat above the city of Interlaken. A quick google of “Hardergrat” will give insight to what excited us. It’s a 22-mile-long ridge that any daring person can hike along. The views are spectacular but many points of the trail are ominously narrow… with 5,000 feet to fall on your left or right!

Being such a long hike, we chose to do only a portion of the ridge. We aren’t exactly risk adverse but after watching some videos of others along the hike we decided that some bits may be too wild for our flavor that weekend. We stuck to the “less aggressive” section while still getting a taste of what was to come if we continued. Trail running seemed to be popular along the path, assuming because once on the ridge its relatively flat.

Camping sounded appealing; however, we imagined a steep ridge with limited flat areas so a bit risky bringing all the gear only to potentially find out we can’t stay overnight. We luckily found one tiny spot for our tent, but it certainly had its imperfections. It was full of holes, on a slant (over a cliff I might add), and was clearly a favorite place to stop for the local Swiss ibex. The view and experience made up for it though. We shared dinner time with 3 of the ibex that stopped to graze nearby. It was surreal! Maybe we’ll be back to tackle that nasty section of Hardergrat trail someday… maybe. Fingers crossed that the weather doesn’t turn to winter too quickly so more hiking is in the future. For our next Swiss adventure we headed to Basel, post to come!