Hello, we are visiting Switzerland in a few weeks. I have some questions about visiting Grindelwald First. My original plan was for one day to be leave from Lauterbrunnen > Wengen > Mannlichen > Panoramic Hike > KS > Grindelwald First. I'm not sure if this is leaving enough time for Grindelwald First. I don't want to do the lake hike. Just want to do the cliff walk and some activities. I've heard the lines can be very long for the activities. We will be there on Wednesday in October. Are the lines likely to be long at that time? I know it's not a peak time and it's during the week. I thought this would be a fun way to do it and include the Wengen to Mannlichen cablecar as well as the Panoramic Hike. However, I'm questioning it now. We will have a rental car so I'm considering that we could drive up to Grindelwald first thing one morning and do that experience. Then, on a separate day maybe we could combine the Lauterbrunnen waterfall hikes with going to Wengen > Mannlichen > Panoramic Hike. We're only in this area for two days and I really want to fit in all of these things as well as Harder Kulm. Any advice is welcome. Thanks!
Posted by
Green Bay
21141 posts
Play it by ear. You don't even know what the weather will be like at this point.
Posted by
Bend, Oregon
2545 posts
I think it depends on how many activities you want to do at First. When we were there in June, many of the activities were sold out a day in advance. We bought tickets in advance for the mountain carts, and the wait was about an hour. I would expect some wait time, even in October.
If you haven’t already, download the SBB app. Then you can see how long it takes to get from one place to another. The high lifts/trains stop running around 5 pm.
The weather will be a factor in what you can do. It started raining on us as soon as we got on our mountain carts. Then we couldn’t take the gondola down the mountain due to lightning! We were delayed at least an hour, and missed the last gondola up to Mannlichen to get back to Wengen. We took the train around via Lauterbrunnen. Prioritize what you want to do, then let weather dictate what you do when. Weather can change very quickly in the mountains.