Our choice to
visit the Lauterbrunnen Valley hadn't been entirely by chance as we
had visited this area once before on our 2003 Interrail Tour ofEurope. On that tour we didn't have the luxury of a motorhome so had
pitched our tent in Interlaken and taken the train as far up the
valley as our Interrail ticket would allow, reaching Lauterbrunnen
and walking to visit the Trummelbach Falls (we had wanted to visit
the Jungfrau, but that was far too expensive). The Trummelbach falls
had left a big impression on us and we couldn't resist the
opportunity of revisiting them when they were only 6km back down the
valley from our campsite.
With ten glacier
waterfalls that have cut their way right inside the solid rock of the
mountain over tens of thousands of years. The Trummelbach alone
drains the mighty glaciers of the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau, with a
drainage area of more than 24 square kilometres delivering over
20,000 litres of water per second. These are the only glacial
waterfalls in Europe that are inside a mountain and are an awesome
demonstration of the power of water to cut through even solid rock
over time.
We felt excited
and nervous to be returning after so many years with such fond
memories. Would the falls feel the same 10 years on, having seen so
much, or would they disappoint us and dim our fond recollections?
Stepping out of the furnicular about halfway up the falls and
starting the steep staircase cut through the mountain to access the
closest of the 10 sections, we felt a thrill as we immediately heard
the loud gush of the water thundering and echoing inside the
mountain. First reaching 'chute 6' we looked up into the the murky
light at a funnel of water shooting out from high above us and
twisting into a smoothed out plunge pool below. We needn't have
worried, they were just as we remembered.
Over the next hour
and half we made our way up the tunnelled out stairways to chute 10
where the water enters the mountain and right down to chute 1 where
it jets into the remarkably gentle looking stream to be carried
serenely down the valley. Lingering at each viewing point, we
marvelled not only at the water, the noise and spray but also the
rock forms left by the thousands of years long ago when the water
used to take a very different course. Looking up from the viewing
points, where the light weakly enters from the outside, you can see
all of the smoothed rock surfaces and staining that shows the flow of
water from ages past. It's like looking back in time and gives a
strange feeling of how staggeringly different the timescale of these
geological changes are to our own daily experiences.
Spending some time
reminiscing over the past 11 years and how much had changed since our
first visit, later that evening we also compared todays photos with
those from 2003. The falls themselves certainly hadn't changed much
(although there was less water in the photos, probably due to the
different month of our visit), but we certainly had – hopefully for
the better? It had been a really nice trip down memory lane and a
great way to spend a slightly drizzly day in the Lauterbrunnen
Valley.
Have we changed much!?
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