Posts by
Troy Haines

The Hardergrat ridge, above Interlaken, is beginning to get some well-deserved buzz.  Dan Patitucci's evocative photos of running along the ridge are putting in on the hard-core trail runner bucket list.  But that's a big and challenging route, outside the scope of what most of us can do.  But the ridge itself is very accessible.  A funicular train leads up...

The Göschenertal is not all that well known, even within Switzerland.  But it's a fabulous valley in a very central location, just outside Andermatt, nestled amid the Oberalp, Furka and Gotthard passes.  It's very close to a lot of interesting rail journeys - the Glacier Express stops in Andermatt, and this would be a great journey to combine with either...

The Niesen is a very striking, almost perfectly pyramidal peak just south of Lake Thun, in Switzerland's Bernese Oberland.  It's not big on the tourist track, but that doesn't mean it's not worth a trip.  If you do want to visit, the ride on the 11,502 foot (3506m) long funicular railway known as Niesenbahn can be a lot of fun. ...

My kids really want to go back to Switzerland.  I know this because at least once a month, they'll say something like "Dad, are we going to go back to Switzerland sometime soon?" My kids are 6 and 10 now, and for 8 of the last 10 summers we have brought them to the Alps with us, sometimes for "short"...

The first time I went to Grindelwald, I didn't know what to expect.  It was 1991, I had just started working in Basel for a summer, and I went to Interlaken because I'd vaguely heard about it.  I got to Interlaken and, looking at the still somewhat distant mountains, I thought "This is nice, but I want to be there!" ...

There's a quote from Annie Dillard that I love - "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."  Having spent about a quarter of my days over the past 2 decades in the Alps, and thinking, talking and writing about them the rest of the year, they have become, of course, a very big part...