Aare Gorge

One of the highlights of our trip was a visit to the Aare Gorge in the Hasli Valley of the Bernese Oberland. A section of the Aare river carves through the limestone ridge of Kirchet creating a channel between 1m and 30m wide. The gorge has been open to the public since 1889 and is accessed by a long walkway carved into the side of the ridge with short stretches of tunnel. The water is glacial blue and powerfully beautiful.

The gorge has several unusual features along it. A natural feature is the glacier mills, vertical shafts which acted as part of a glacier's internal "plumbing" system carrying meltwater down from the surface. The gorge is an indirect product of glaciation. 10 000 years ago, just as the Ice Age was coming to an end, torrential runoff water from melting glaciers eroded the deep narrow chasm through the limestone barrier. The gorge is only a mile long, but the cliffs on either side are 50m high, interrupted only by these mills.

Note the corkscrew features of the glacier mill

Another unusual feature in the gorge is manmade. On the opposite side of the gorge from the walkways lie two underground caverns from WWII. This military installation was built at the end of 1940. The larger cavern was to be used as a dormitory for 185 officers and soldiers. All the technical equipment was installed in the smaller cavern. Offices, recreation room and dining rooms were installed in a stationary train in the tunnel. It is not known why, but the installations were never used and still exist, hidden and unused in the Kirchet cliffs. The caverns have wood-lined walls, heating, running water, flushing toilets and electricity!

Outside the caverns, carved into the cliff face is the Hasli Eagle, which adorns to official seal, banner and flag of the Haslital. When you get there and see the power of the river carving through the gorge, it makes you appreciate the genius of Swiss engineering. How on earth did they build something like that in that place? And why? It boggles the mind!

The Hasli eagle is on the left, carved into the rock face

Reichenbach Falls

We based ourselves just outside of the town of Meiringen for the day, where our first adventure was to catch the funicular up to the famous Reichenbach Falls, a series of waterfalls in the Bernese Oberland region.

The Reichenbach Falls are famous in popular culture as the location of the final altercation between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty in Sir Conan Doyle's "The Final Problem". Holmes and Moriarty both plunge to their deaths down the 250m drop of the falls. However, it later emerges that Homes survived. We walked round the falls to the ledge where the fight took place, but unlike the many pilgrims who dress up as the characters and visit these falls, we did not conduct a reenactment of the final scene!

On a more practical note, the falls are one of the highest cataracts in the Alps and provide water for a hydro-electric plant, one of 40 along the river. The falls feed into the Aar river which is the longest river that both rises and ends entirely in Switzerland. The views from the top over the Reichenbachtal valley were spectacular!

The town of Meiringen

We were delighted to see some Toblerone blocks on our descent!