Hiking - Melchsee-Frutt to Jochpass

This is a catch up blog!  We actually took this hike on October 4th, but I came down with the flu that week and I was still working on my parent's trip blogs, so I never wrote about it (even though I am back dating it to October on the blog).

Here are the details -
- Train Zürich HB to Stöckalp
- Gondola Stöckalp to Melchsee Frutt
- Hike from Melchsee Frutt to Jochpass
- Gondola from Jochpass to Trübsee
- Gondola Trübsee to Engelberg
- Train Engelberg to Zürich HB

This was supposed to be a 4 hour hike and we knew that the last gondola down from Jochpass was at 17:15 so we had a goal.  But this was a Swiss 4 hours so we thought it would be more like 5 with lunch.  Miriam, Nathan and I had gone together, but the Meet Up group we were with consisted of about 30 people.  And of course with that many people you have some folks that aren't as fit as others, so they take longer.  We got a little annoyed with this early on in the hike, so a group of about 7 of us took off ahead of everyone else. 

The scenery was so beautiful filled with mountains and lakes (like all Swiss hikes I guess:))!  You could even see the glacier Titlus from the trail once we got closer to Jochpass.

Start of the hike

First lake we saw right after getting of the gondola

Most of our group - yes it was a big one!

Let's do this!

I think this is about the time we decided to go it on our own!

Great - now which we do we go?

And then Nathan saw these markers - but what do they mean?  Take the trail on the top - oh okay

Group shot!

You can't build your own markers Nathan - we really don't know what they mean - we can seriously mess someone up!:)

Another lake - I think there were 5

Okay we picked the wrong trail - I think we want that one down there - oops!  The hill you see here is deceiving in the picture - it was VERY steep so we basically had to run down it and hope for the best!

At some point Nathan was done with us and put on his ipod!

I love this shot!

And this one!

I'm pretty sure that is the glacier - this is pretty zoomed in and we couldn't have gotten there from where we were (well at least not for several more hours!)

And finally Jochpass - yeah!!!

I remember this being a pretty difficult hike (however I did get the flu the next day so maybe I was just sick), and it took our group a little over 5 hours to complete it.  Thank goodness we went on in front of everyone, because we got to the gondola right at 5:15 p.m..  And thank goodness Miriam speaks German because she had to tell the gondola operators that we had about 25 people still hiking in this direction!  They waited for everyone (about another 45 minutes) but they weren't happy! 

One of the two gondolas we had to take down.  I think this was right before some Swiss guy totally made fun of our group saying that his 6 year old could do that hike in less than 4 hours.  I'm glad I didn't understand what he was saying (Miriam told me later) or I would have told him where to stick it!

Not my happy face.  We were DONE with this hike by the end!

However, even with the drama - this hike was one of the most picturesque we have seen - loved it!

Here is a link to the rest of the pics!