Trip 43

September 21,2023

Running isn’t quite the word, more like walk with an occasional trot, but the cows coming down from their summer pasture is a ritual observed throughout the valley.

The cows go up into the higher alpine pastures in the summer, when the snow is gone, having spent the winter in their barns. They come back down mid to latter September to avoid the first freezes. Today in Lauterbrunnen, there were at least four separate cow parades down from Wengen (more about that later). We positioned ourselves along the road that leads down and waited. The first group appeared about 10:30am, but there were successive groups between 11:00 and 11:30. Good crowds appear, along with the inevitable guy who thinks he has to pat.every.single.cow (too bad he didn’t get stepped upon) . Some cows are decorated with headdresses and bells and others come “au natural”; there’re directed by herders to ensure they don’t go astray. The ones with cow bells on are loud, you could hear them coming blocks away (which is the purpose of course), but they’re also pretty big.

We came here in early June 2019 and saw the cows leave to go up to their summer pasture from the same place they came back to, today (church parking lot) . Once gathered into the parking lot, their headdresses and bells are removed as they await loading into the semi cow haulers waiting there to be delivered to their farms. The church parking lot is going to need a good hosing down.

The weather was still clear enough that we thought it worthwhile to go up to Wengen. Wengen is about 4200’ elevation, where Lauterbrunnen is about 2600’. The trains run to/from Wengen on a regular basis and there are no reservations, you just have to navigate the crowds on the platform to get a seat. It’s packed, maybe (hopefully?) many are going on up to Jungfraujoch, but a lot get off at Wengen. There’s a bit of strategy in choosing on which side of the train to sit going up and coming down. Do you want a view of the valley below (left side) or see some of the small waterfalls coming down on the other side? It’s all good.

Going up, on the other side of the valley wall is Murren. It’s got a curious bit of clouds nestled around it at the top of the funicular (the straight line to the right of center in the photo is the funicular)

At the Wengen station (4200’) , the rail track turns into cogwheel type tracks, since the train will make quite an ascent on its way up to Jungfraujoch (changing trains at Kleine Schediegg) then up to Jungfraujoch at 11,300’. We had not planned to make the journey today, if we were, we would have taken a much earlier train to avoid some of the crowds.

We did a little shopping and ate lunch in the park near the station. Its relatively quiet despite all the earlier people traffic.

We’re starting to see signs of fall, with some trees’ leaf edges turning brown, but the mountain slopes are still green and temperatures still mild (it was 53° this morning and got up to about 65°, but historically, the first snowfall isn’t far away.