Bunderspitz

We finally did it. That's right, we went up Bunderspitz. It was awfully steep (well, it is a mountain, I'm not sure what we expected), and we nearly died.




On the way up, we passed a cheese maker's hut. There were some other people visiting and so the CheeseMaker had gotten out his alphorn. While we were passing the Lohners about an hour later he started to play it (those are the big mountains that you can see from the Chalet--the spiky looking ones). The alphorn music was echoing off the rock face and we stopped to listen to it while gazing at the valley below. It was really beautiful and quite Swiss. I've heard the alphorn played quite a few times, and I never thought that it sounded especially nice--every Tuesday night at the Chalet, Fritz plays a concert for us--but I think it sounds pretty from about a mile away and with mountains to reverberate off of.





We were planning on going back down to Adelboden after we summitted, but we got distracted by the sign that said "Kanderstag--this way" and we followed that.

I am pleased to report that we saw some wildlife on this hike. This salamander is the only live wild animal (besides raptors) that I've seen since arriving in Switzerland.
When we got to the bottom of the mountain on the Kanderstag side we stopped into the Kanderstag International Scout Center (KISC) which is the boy's version of the Chalet. Their building is much more institutional looking than ours, but they can house and feed a hell of a lot more people. While we were in the reception area, we ran into some of Laura's friends from work. That was a bit surprising. We took the train back to Adelboden and passed out from exhaustion. The hike took us around 7 1/2 hours, covered about horizontal 15 kilometers (I think), 1300 meters up and 1400 meters down. I spent 2 days waddling afterwards, but it was worth it.