Wengen

Glad to be home!

We arrived in Wengen on 28^th February and stayed at the Regina, a family-run hotel of Old World Charm dating from 1894. We had a south-facing balcony but the weather was so cold we only opened the door long enough to take a photograph. With a little sunshine it would have been marvellous, but one look at the pics will tell you we could hardly see the village, let alone the surrounding mountains.

We took the Mӫnnlichen lift next morning, disappeared into thick cloud and eventually broke through into bright sunshine and blue skies at about 7000 feet. We skied the two blue runs, which proved fairly easy except that each run disappeared into the mist and for two thirds of the run we skied blind. We stopped a lot, unable to see the way ahead and sometimes not even the poles marking the left and right of the run.  When we saw someone ski by and head off into the murk as if they knew the way, we followed them!

Both runs dropped down the slope in front of the north face of the Eiger, but we couldn’t see it. Nor could we see the JungFrau. Coming back up on the chair lift, freezing in the cold dampness, we watched cloud drift across the slopes and by the time we reached the lift head, we were in so much cloud we couldn’t see more than a few feet.

Five minutes later, the cloud blew away from the peaks, and we stood in brilliant sunshine and looked out over a valley filled with mist. Weird experience; rather like skiing of the edge of the world. We went off for a hot chocolate. At least that was normal!