When we woke in Fiesch, we had no plans. I hadn’t researched much this far into the trip, thinking we would have time on planes and trains beforehand. It didn’t help that wifi and phone signal was spotty, and most of the websites for the Fietsch area were strictly in German, or had limited information on where to do all this “sporting activity” that the Aletsch Arena is known for.
The Aletsch Arena is some sort of organization that regulates or promotes (still not quite clear on that), sporting activity around the Aletsch Glacier, which is the largest glacier in the Alps. During the summer, the area is known for mountain biking, hiking, paddleboarding, tennis, golf, mountain climbing, fishing… basically anything you could want to do outdoors. But we struggled HARD trying to figure out where to actually go to rent mountain bikes, or paddle boards, or where the heck the golf course even was. So we decided since we were foot sore from walking approximately 60 miles in just a week, that we would take it easy and just take a gondola up the mountain for the view.
Apparently that meant hiking a mountain at 9,600 ft above sea level, which is the height of the Eggishorn peak. Thankfully, we only had to scale a few hundred feet of that from the second gondola up to the top.
From our vantage point, we could also see the Matterhorn:
Of course, we had to have a beer on the top of a Swiss alp before we decided to climb the mountain. This station was possibly the coolest place I’ve ever had a beer:
Finally, we started out on the trail to the summit of Eggishorn, still debating if it was a good idea. We weren’t acclimated to the elevation, we had both just drank a beer, and apparently there’s no tap water at the top of the mountain to refill water bottles (our waiter told us they haul tanks up in the Gondola and he “didn’t recommend it.”). However we (mostly I), stubbornly pushed on and suddenly had the realization at some point (even still considering turning back) that, OH. We’re at the top!
We hurried back down the mountain so as to not miss the last gondola back down to the valley.