I’d booked my accommodations in Wegen. It’s a small alpine village which I found to be the perfect base to explore the Jungfrau area, much better than Interlaken. It’s centrally located to most hiking trails. I’ve never hiked a day in my life, but I felt so inspired I decided I’d try a full day hike. I planned an excursion that would’ve taken me from a village called “First”, “BachAlpsee”, “Bussalp” finishing with a hike back to “Grindelwald”. This never happened.

My plan was rubbish. I was imbued with a fake sense of confidence the amazing mountains gave me. Also when planning my hikes, the distance on paper looked reasonable. How many amateur hikers have made that mistake? Anyway, I was hit with reality right from the start.

Somehow, don’t ask me how, I ended up going the opposite direction from my first stop of BuchAlpsee. I quickly suspected something was wrong, this was supposed to be the easy part of my hike. Yet five minutes into the walk, I was huffing and puffing like someone who was 80 AND suffered from bad hips and knees.

The second mistake I made involved a fork in the road. I had two choices: one was a well marked and cleared path and the other was a lightly used and unmarked trail. False confidence still intact, I took the lightly used trail since it looked like the shorter path.   BIG mistake.   That path quickly became wet, slippery and covered with snow. Luckily I realized the error of my ways and doubled back.

An hour later I was back at the starting point, tired and a little embarrassed with myself.

As I stood at the beginning of the trail I found VERY clear signs that marked the trail to BuchAlpsee. How I missed them I’ve no idea. My only defense is that I was temporarily color blind and couldn’t see the brightly colored signs that where right in front of my face.