Grindelwald holds a special place in my heart, being the first place I traveled to after arriving in Switzerland back in July 2020. Since that warm week of hiking through wildflower-strewn meadows down the Mannlichen side of the mountain, I have returned to Grindelwald in lots of different seasons with lots of different people and regardless of the fact that it is a little touristy, I love it.

This weekend, Dan and I joined our friends Kelly and Michael for two days of snow activity and general fun. The weekend getaway was the brainchild of several servings of raclette back in November (and several glasses of Fendant). As they say, the best laid plans…are born of melted cheese and cheap white wine?

In any case, Friday evening saw Dan and I driving a very packed car straight from school toward Grindelwald while Kelly and Michael were en route via Switzerland’s reliable rail system. It was like a heist movie where all the key players are zoning in on the casino from various origin points, or a math problem. (If Dan and Nicole leave Basel at 4:30pm traveling 80 kmh, but hit traffic outside Bern, and Kelly and Michael depart Basel at 6:00pm traveling 140km, approximately who will most require a cold beer upon arrival in Grindelwald?)

The weather was depressingly warm for February. I left Basel wearing a sweater and jeans and unpacked our car at Hotel Alpenhof wearing a sweater and jeans. Grindelwald valley was a concerning shade of green, though the towering rock face of the Eiger visible from our balcony showed stripes of snow near the top. My trusty app promised snowy slopes and open lifts, even if the balmy valley temperature suggested we might be nuts to go skiing this weekend. The woman at the front desk reported good conditions based on feedback from hotel guests.

Tired and not enthusiastic about tromping down the hill to Grindelwald Dorf for dinner, Dan and I decided to be lazy and dine in the hotel restaurant. It was charming enough, with Swiss chalet style: blonde wood, red checkered curtains, dim lighting. Kelly and Michael would arrive around 8:10, and the idea of sharing a beer with them sounded marvelous until it was nearly 8:10 and all I wanted was a firm pillow beneath my head. Increasingly I feel older and older.

Over dinner – meatloaf for Dan and a crunchy hockey puck doing its best to be a “beetroot burger” for me – we discussed our plans for the morning. It should have been simple: wake up at 7, breakfast at 7:30, hike ten minutes to the Firstbahn gondola, and be on the first gondola up the mountain by 8:30.

However, upon arrival, Dan realized that his wallet was missing. After a search of the car and several bags, we determined the wallet was at school (hopefully), which wasn’t terrible news financially (I had my cards with me) but cast some doubt on whether or not our lift passes would work.

In some Swiss resorts, you can purchase lift tickets and load them onto your SwissPass, a card that, for a fee of just a little over a hundred a year, allows you half-price travel on trains around the country (and trams and buses, for that matter). Dan had purchased our lift tickets from school and loaded them onto our SwissPasses, which was great for me (I’d already slipped mine into the hidden pocket inside my snowboard jacket) but not so great for him (his was tucked safely away in his wallet which remains to be found, even as I write). We hoped the mobile app would work well enough, but only time would tell.

We were polishing off our dinner when Kelly and Michael arrived, and I was thrilled when Kelly suggested we hang out in the rooms instead of venture down to town for our celebratory drinks. We all shuffled out onto the balcony attached to mine and Dan’s room and shared a glass of wine (Kelly and Michael had come prepared, with seasonal beers, wine, and whiskey) and stories of our dinner SNAFUs (they had their own laugh-worthy and very Swiss tale) before making a plan and going to bed.

We reconvened in the morning over a delicious breakfast buffet (even more delicious given it was included in the hotel price), which Michael summed up very well to our waiter: sehr lecker. Fresh bread, jams, hardboiled eggs, a variety of cheeses, mixed fruit, mueseli, yogurt, granola, and coffee brought to the table by the kind waiter who popped around halfway through our meal to offer me another cappuccino.

Outside the window was the Eiger, which never gets old and always leaves you feeling small in all of its enormity.

From breakfast, we layered up, grabbed our equipment, and headed down the hill into town for our ten minute walk to the gondola station. By the time we got there, we were all sweating. It was sunny and 50 degrees, and everyone we passed on the street was walking around gear-less in jeans and light jackets or boarding a ski bus in the opposite direction, toward Mannlichen. It was not very encouraging.

First Gondola station was empty when we arrived, whether because we got the time wrong and it opened at 8am or because we were out of our minds hoping for snow. We used the opportunity for Michael and Dan to get their passes sorted out. A very helpful woman managed to look Dan up through the SwissPass system and find evidence that he’d purchased a lift ticket, and then print out an actual lift pass for him.

Then it was onto the gondola and up to First!

The first time Dan ever snowboarded in Switzerland was here in Grindelwald in January of 2021, when we traveled up with Rebecca and J and stayed in their apartment. I never blogged about it because it was during COVID and most European resorts had closed due to the pandemic. All of Europe was watching Switzerland with undisguised loathing as Switzerland, not part of the EU, kept its resorts open. I felt guilty enjoying empty runs with my friends while people all over were locked down. All of this to say, Dan was spoiled for his first time snowboarding because there had been no one around. (We also went up to Jungfraujoch, the “Top of Europe”, and there was no one there, either, except for a watch salesman.)

Kelly and Michael had done some skiing in Pennsylvania before, and Kelly was just coming off a week of ski camp (a school-run trip for students over a week in January – Dan had also come off one the week before, also). They had both just skied in Gstaad over the holidays, as well, but for some reason I thought they were more on the beginner side.

Maybe it was because Kelly was asking about starting out on some blues to warm up on, or because it was both of their first time in Grindelwald, but this was my perspective going into the day.

We got to the top of First, got off the gondola, and then walked to the chairlift to Oberjoch, our favorite place to start the day. The chairlift takes you up as high as you can go on the First side, and we were thrilled to see snow. (The snow had begun to appear in patches just above the Bort station, but didn’t seem reliable until we were passing Shreckfeld.)

From there, there’s a beautifully wide blue that eventually turns and splits into a red and a more narrow winding blue with a hill you need to get speed to get over, which I never can. The run continues down to the bottom of the chairlift, and up you go again.

It was overcast on our first run, and I wasn’t feeling the most confident, but everyone else was feeling good. On the chairlift again, the sun came out, and we rode up over snow and rock where we spotted a herd of some kind of goat or ibex. Kelly had taken one of the breakfast placemats, because it was also a piste map, and pointed out that the map had marked, in exactly that spot, a goat icon. I guess they’re pretty reliable.

With the sun up, we could see the hills and dips in the snow, and our second run was way more fun. We were feeling so confident that on our next one, we decided to try out the Lily Fun Slope, a serpentine run whose curves were marked with blue lines that seemed to be encouraging you to work on your turns. At each bend, there was a cheerful-looking cartoon cow with an enlarged hand sticking out into the path so you could high-five or slap it as you whizzed by.

“Let’s try it,” said Kelly, and I’m glad she did. I would have eyed it up wonderingly and kept on doing my regular run, but this was way more fun.

The Lily Fun Slope ran alongside a snow park with rails, boxes, and ramps to jump. Michael surprised me by saying, “I think I’m gonna go try some jumps over there.”

Who was this beginner skier venturing off to a park? I watched him ski off with a mixture of worry and envy, but then we were all heading down the Lily slope so I focused instead on the giant cow hands and slapping them without falling over.

Honestly, it was super fun. The bends in the run make you consider your turns, and it was surprisingly satisfying to land a slap on one of the cow hands. I was the last one down, and the three of them were already convened.

“That was tough,” Michael was telling us. “I clipped my foot on one of those jumps back there and lost my ski.”

How long had I been on the Lily slope, that he could lose a ski, put it back on, and be waiting there for me, the picture of relaxation?

On the next run, we decided to try the Lily fun slope again, and this time Michael decided to do a different park.

“They’re different levels of difficulty,” he told us. “It goes from small to medium. I just did the small. I think I’m gonna try the medium.”

Once again, I watched him ski off to the park to try his jumps. Once again, we reconvened at the bottom of the Lily fun park.

“I broke my ski,” Michael told us. “I fell after one of those jumps and both my skis came off. The plastic part broke off of this one.”

As we rode the chairlift up again, Kelly suggested Michael not try the even larger fun park, home to a half-pipe.

“The key to the half-pipe is to cut in facing the mountain,” Kelly was telling us.

“You did a half-pipe?!” I asked incredulously.

“At ski camp, with the kids.”

If my first thoughts of Kelly and Michael as beginner skiers were not disproven then, they were when Michael decided to try the speed test on this next run. We boarded down to the bottom of this ski run that parallels our favorite run, and we waited for Michael. The run had the different slalom flags and the skier had to descend from a gate at the start of a timer and navigate around the flags. Passing through the finish line, their time would appear on a clock for all to see – we’d watched several skiers from the chairlift and everyone was clocking in at about a minute. Michael flew down in just over 50 seconds, executing a very cool stop that included snow spray. Oooh!

What a day, though. It was sunny, there was snow on the ground, and even if it was a little slushy, it was a joy. Dan suggested Adi’s for lunch, a wooden hut you kind of have to know is there because it’s a little tucked away. It was a great suggestion because it wasn’t crowded. We got seats outside at a picnic table, basking in the sunshine and listening to a range of music from ABBA to traditional Irish to techno Swiss yodeling.

After lunch, we did our run again, but Dan and I were feeling about ready to turn in (maybe me more than Dan, since he was cruising along with more speed and confidence than me this time around). We took a blue down to Shreckfeld and considered a hot chocolate, but unlike Adi’s, Shreckfeld’s restaurant was jam-packed with people and there were no free seats we could see. The line for food was “40 people”, according to Dan (a possible exaggeration but it sure looked like that from where we were standing). We debated taking the gondola back down to Grindelwald, but we also noticed a cool-looking red that went further down to a chairlift below.

We ended up really enjoying the red, so much so that we took the chairlift back up to Shreckfeld and decided to do it again. (For future reference, the blue from Oberjoch to Shreckfeld was the 3 to the 4, and the red we liked was maybe the 7? The piste map is unclear.)

Then we decided to gondola down, which was a very windy affair. My app had warned us of wind speeds up to 60 kmh, and we had experienced those at the top – all four of us talked about pointing straight down the mountain on some of our runs and being buffeted up to a stop by this powerful wind. At one point, as I was going down a red, the wind picked up so hard, flinging sharp snow at my face, that I had to put my arm up to protect my cheeks.

The gondola seemed to swing back and forth in the wind, and our snowboards, slotted into the outside holders, slammed back against the gondola and rocked side to side. I’m sure they wouldn’t have fallen out, but Dan and I felt better sticking our hands through the gondola window to hold them steady.

Back down in Grindelwald, it was back to warm sunshine and a sweaty hike back up to our hotel. Kelly and Michael had declared they were on their way back also, so we suggested an early dinner.

After much-needed showers, a Toblerone from the mini-fridge and a lemon soda that was delicious until I found chunks in the bottom, we all walked down into the town for dinner. It was nearing 5pm, and the restaurants along the main road through town were heaving. But we were headed to one of our favorite restaurants just a bit on the outskirts, a delicious pizzeria called Onkel Tom’s Hutte. Perhaps not the greatest name, from an American perspective, but I imagine this family-owned restaurant is named for a beloved Swiss uncle and not for the 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe novel.

Our timing was perfect, and so was the pizza. This is a small, cozy restaurant with candles on every table and a very cool seating area in a loft upstairs, which Dan and I sat in last time we went. This time, the four of us sat downstairs with a view of the kitchen, where the chef made pizza after pizza after pizza. The place wasn’t jam-packed, but there was a good amount of people there. They don’t take reservations, so you either get lucky or you have to come back. We got lucky.

We also got 4 medium-sized pizzas and local Swiss beers to wash them down. I got a veggie one, Dan got the raclette style, Kelly got the chef’s, and Michael got one with spicy salami. All of us were very happy, and by the time the bill came, there was a throng of people at the door, hoping for a table.

I took out my debit card to pay – it had cracked in half right over the chip – hoping the contactless payment would work. It did not, but inserting the fractured chip into the chip reader was just fine. A relief, since Dan was wallet-less and now I have a broken debit card. (It must have cracked in half in my pocket when I was sitting down on the slopes or something.)

We made our way back toward our hotel, stopping for an apres apres ski beer at the Avocado Bar, the best place to get beers in Grindelwald. Michael ordered a delicious, local pale – I remembered then that the owner of the Herberge we stayed at during the Jungfrau Marathon bought a pitcher of this beer for Carly and me after we came back from the race – just as four people vacated their bar stools.

Our timing, all day, had been perfect.

We met up with some people from work who bought another round before ducking out for 8pm fondue reservations, and then we headed back up to our hotel. It was colder now, and stars were out, so we enjoyed a nightcap on the balcony again.

On Sunday morning, it was delicious breakfast, the reprise. First, we loaded up the car with all of our gear. Then, it was breakfast, followed by Kelly and Michael taking the free ski bus to Grindelwald Terminal and Dan and I driving down with all the gear. We determined that we will officially invest in a luggage bubble so we can put our things up there and put our friends in the car next time.

Today was an adventure day. Dan and I had never skied on the Mannlichen side before and had heard mixed things. The blues were lovely, long, but flat. This side doesn’t get much sun, so its often icy and dark. But Kelly spun it positively: it was someplace new to all of us.

We parked in the parking garage at Terminal (for 6 CHF it was a great deal), layered up, and walked into Terminal and straight up to the Eiger Express. It had opened at 8am and it was now 8:30, but it was still pretty empty.

The Eiger Express is a behemoth of a gondola, with space for 26. The journey to the top, Eigergletcher, takes 15 minutes. It took me nearly 6 and a half hours to run up there from Lauterbrunnen a few years ago, so this was a real win. (The gondola from Grindelwald to First takes 25 minutes and covers a shorter distance.)

We emerged at Eigergletscher to an icy, narrow blue that took us to Kleine Scheidegg before we veered right and down to the Eigernordwand chairlift. I didn’t love it. Where First was wide and gently sloping, with soft snow or groomed pistes, this was narrow and cobbled with snow chunks. Here and there, blue ice peeked out and the sound of skis and snowboards scraping over it felt ominous.

Kelly and Michael were faster and more adept at the blues and ended up taking one, the 22, all the way back down to Terminal. Dan and I scoured our map and tried multiple chairlifts, but no matter what we tried, we always ended up in the same place, like some kind of unforgiving video game maze. I was getting frustrated – less than ideal conditions, lots of narrow downhills where you had to get speed and keep it before the trail curved uphill, lots of people whizzing past or pizza-french-frying slowly ahead, a downed skier who looked in quite a bit of pain – and so was Dan. The best moment on our run was choosing a red rather than the narrow blue just before the chairlift, where along the piste on the sides was beautiful, powdery snow. Fed up with the rocky ice of the piste, I rode alongside it in the powder instead. It was a few very welcome seconds of joy. (Note to self: the Arven ski area is meh, as is the 22 along the Arven ski area, the 25, and the 26.)

Our timing, yet again, worked out perfectly. As Dan and I crested the hill to take the 22 down to Terminal, we came over the top and there were Kelly and Michael, standing at the piste themselves.

They’d done another few runs that weren’t overly joyful, so we all decided to take the 22 back into town.

What a decision. Apart from the beginning, which was flat and led into an uphill, this was a glorious run. It wasn’t super steep, but a gradual descent through trees, over bridges, under bridges, over streams, and slowly meandering back down to Grindelwald.

It was too warm for perfect conditions, but Kelly and Michael reported no ice, so I was game. What a joy. Not many people on the run with us, lots of space to play and carve, lots of powdery slopes alongside the piste to glide off in. When the snow turned slushy toward the bottom, I still felt happier than I had in the clogged, icy bottleneck at the top of the mountain.

At one point, the 22 met a road, and someone had laid down some fake-grass mats, half-covered in slush, that took us across the street and down the rest of the path. Dan and I both made it across but got stuck in a slushy puddle. With the right conditions, this would be a dream. (Doing some math, I learned that we snowboarded 9.7 km down that 22, from Arven to Terminal.)

Either way, it was something of a dream for all of us. We were aching, very sweaty from the run (it’s fun and cruisey, but you have to work for it – a rewarding, fun work), and ready for lunch.

Grindelwald Terminal is quite the place, with shops and cafes and lots of places to store your skis. We ate sandwiches and chili at a cafe, reminisced about the joy of that long run back down to Grindelwald, and talked about our next ski trip. We don’t know when or where it will be, but we will have a luggage bubble and Dan will hopefully have his wallet and ski pass.