Rhône Glacier

Today’s adventure involved cyclists, motorcyclists, near death experiences, glaciers, more motorcyclists, and huge mountains. Just another day for these two broads!

On our way to Lauterbrunnen – where we’ll be spending the next three nights – we stopped by at the Rhône Glacier, located close to the Furka Pass road (you’d better believe we made a lot of Furk-ing puns). It was a balmy 7.5C when we got there (just what you’d expect for the middle of summer). The glacier is the source of the Rhône river, and also contributes to Lake Geneva. It is essentially a fascinating, very drippy, bright blue ice cavern (situated next to an equally interesting lake) that you can walk through whilst trying to dodge the ice water that drips rhythmically from the ceiling. However, getting to the glacier was also, in itself, an adventure. Yeah, let’s call it that…

…cue us once again setting off on a hair-raising journey up AND down ridiculously tall mountains, almost completely submerged in thick fog, with motorbikes overtaking, and (wait for it), bloody CYCLISTS on the roads too! We’ve seen cyclists everywhere from Death Valley to glaciers – they are unstoppable, and I mean that in the worst possible way! The fog was so thick we often couldn’t see anything other than white as we went screeching around hairpin bends that had little to no barriers saving us from certain death. I wondered if maybe the road wasn’t actually that bad, and the fog just made us THINK there was a sheer drop, but at an elevation of 2000 metres, Mum assured me that this was not the case. She’s probably right. Mum thinks it was the same as, if not worse than, Highway 1 (our most loyal blog readers should remember that post from the very beginning of our RV trip), but for me, not being able to see how close we were to launching ourselves off the cliff to our tragic demise was quite a load off my shoulders.

One of the things that really struck us was just how many waterfalls and rivers (all a beautiful shade of pale blue) there were along the way – every few hundred metres or so there was another cascading waterfall right beside the road.

We were also intrigued by the many layers of ice within the glacier – not only were the walls filled with bubbles, but they also seemed to have different shapes and angles within the wall itself, where some sections were more see-through than others.

The lake just outside the glacier truly looked like something from another world, especially when the fog was rolling in right over the waterfall; the green algae growing on the cliff face combined with the glacier and the greenish-blue water is like nothing we’ve ever seen!

Some vids of our treacherous yet beautiful drive: