Knocking off the Gemmenalphorn

It's Friday, normally a hiking day, but for various reasons our little hiking group isn't out there today, so I'm filling the space with recollections of last week's hike, a five hour trek from Beatenberg up to the Gemmenalphorn and down to Niederhorn. The Gemmenalphorn, soaring above the Thunersee at 2061m, features in my friend and hiking companion Hilary's book of Switzerland's beautiful mountains, all of which we're attempting to "knock off", in the immortal words of that other high-flying Hillary, Sir Ed.

We started at Beatenberg, and the first couple of hours were a doddle, a stroll through an alpine valley of streams and freshly cut meadows. At the head of the valley was a "Beizli" selling alp cheese, so we stopped to buy some, stepping back a few centuries into a dark cellar with wood fire burning under a huge copper cauldron of curdling milk. After this our path went up, steep and tortuous, to a flower-covered plateau, and lunch on a sun-warmed rock. Then came the assault on the Gemmenalphorn, truly a "horn", a rock needle up which we threaded, passing a family of ibex en route. Alert but calm, they sat beneath their rock staring at us sweaty, camera-waving humans. We came across several more of these majestic creatures, some perched atop rocks, others resting with their young in the shade, as we clambered from one peak to the next, until eventually the trail flattened out to another plateau leading to the Niederhorn cable car, back down to Beatenberg and a welcome beer.