Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

In Part 1 of this account , we outlined the project (hiking roughly 1/3 of the Via Alpina across Switzerland with Tom, Carol, Bob, and Diane), and covered our first two days, hiking from Mels to Elm (and taking transport to Braunwald). Part 2 took us on to Klausenpass and to Altdorf, home of William Tell. In Part 3 we climbed over the Surenenpass and enjoyed rest days in Engleberg. Part 4 took us over the next pass or two to Meiringen. And now for Part 5.   Day 8: The Death of Holmes, and on to Grindelwald I admit that I was at most vaguely aware that Conan Doyle had bumped off Sherlock Holmes in what was to have been his last story about the great detective. (Note: Doyle did this because he felt Holmes distracted him from his more serious literary pursuits. Can you name anything Doyle wrote besides the Sherlock Holmes stories? Me neither.) I didn't realize until we got there that the great event had happened in Meiringen, at Reichenbach Falls, and that we would walk right past the

In Part 1 of this account , we outlined the project and covered our first two days, hiking from Mels to Elm (and taking transport to Braunwald). Part 2 took us on to Klausenpass and to Altdorf, home of William Tell. Part 3 climbed over the Surenenpass and enjoyed rest days in Engleberg. VA Day 6: Jochpass to Engstlenalp (I'm continuing my day count of only the days when we made forward motion, so this skips the two "zero days" in Engleberg.) The uninspiring weather from the day before continued through the night, and we woke to fog--but no rain, so it was an improvement. We had talked of doing the Titlis lift ( see last week's post ) on this very short hiking day, and were glad we hadn't waited! Visibility all morning was, to put it mildly, limited. View up along the Jochpass lift. Those funny chairless lifts are for mountain bikes. It was only a little more than a 3 mile walk from the top of the pass down to our hotel. We took our time, enjoying the mystic look