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Grindelwald First, Switzerland

Grindelwald First

Grindelwald First in One Day with a Budget Guide

Morning — Up the mountain before the cloud arrives

  • The Firstbahn leaves from the top of Grindelwald village and climbs in three stages, through Bort and Schreckfeld, to First at 2,168 metres — the sign on the mountain restaurant gives it in feet, 7,100.
  • Go early. The Eiger, the Wetterhorn and the Schreckhorn are all clear first thing far more often than they are at two in the afternoon, and the cloud that builds over the Grindelwald basin tends to arrive from below.
  • The ride itself is worth looking up from. The cabins cross open pasture with hay chalets scattered across it, then swing over the trees with the glacier ahead.

What it costs — checked September 2026

  • Grindelwald–First return, adult: about CHF 76 in June to August, CHF 72 the rest of the year. That is the whole cost of the day; the walkway, the terrace, the views and the paths are all free once you are up there.
  • Half price with a Swiss Travel Pass, a Swiss Half Fare Card or a Bernese Oberland Pass. Free with a Jungfrau Travel Pass.
  • Prices move each season. Treat these as the shape of the cost, not a quotation.

Budget tips

  • Check the webcam before you buy the ticket. Paying to stand inside a cloud is the single most avoidable waste of money in the Bernese Oberland.
  • If you hold a Swiss Travel Pass or a Jungfrau Travel Pass, this is one of the rides where it makes a real difference. Work out which pass fits your week before you buy a single ticket.

Midday — The Cliff Walk, and the view it was built for

  • The First Cliff Walk is a steel walkway bolted to the rock face, running around the cliff below the station and out along a suspension bridge to a platform standing off the end of the ridge.
  • It is included in the price of getting up here, and it takes about twenty minutes if you stop at every railing, which you will.
  • The platform is where the Schreckhorn and the Upper Grindelwald Glacier line up, and on a warm afternoon there are paragliders launching off the slope behind you and crossing the face while you watch.
  • Nobody needs a head for heights to do it. It is a wide walkway with a solid rail, not a via ferrata — but the drop below the bridge is real and it is the reason people come.

Budget tips

  • The Cliff Walk costs nothing extra. Do not let anyone sell it to you as an add-on.
  • The mountain restaurant terrace has one of the best views in Switzerland, and you pay accordingly. A coffee bought there is worth it for the seat; a full meal is a decision, not a necessity.
  • Bring your own lunch and eat it on the grass above the station. Half the people up there are doing exactly that, and the view is identical.

Afternoon — Walk out onto the alp

  • The path north from the station leaves the crowd behind within ten minutes. It is open alp — cattle lying in the grass with the Wetterhorn behind them, meltwater running in small stone channels, hay huts every few hundred metres.
  • Bachalpsee is the classic walk from here, about an hour each way on a well-made path, and it is the reason many people come up at all.
  • If you would rather come down under your own steam than in a cabin, First is set up for it: mountain carts and trottibike scooters run down the mountain in stages, hired at Bort, the middle station. Reckon on about CHF 21 an adult for one of those, bought on the spot rather than in advance.

Ride a mountain bike down off the mountain

The single best afternoon we have had in the Bernese Oberland, and the one nobody plans for.

Everybody rides the gondola up to First and everybody rides it back down. You do not have to. You can hire a mountain bike in the village, send it up the mountain on the outside of the cabin, and ride the whole way back down to the valley floor yourself.

How it works, in order

  • Hire the bike in Grindelwald village. We used BikeBox, which sits in the middle of the village immediately beside the First cable car station — you walk the bike about thirty seconds from the counter to the lift. Helmets come with it.
  • The bike goes up on the outside of the gondola in a rack, and you ride up inside the same cabin watching it swing along beside you over the pasture.
  • Spend the morning at the top anyway. The Cliff Walk, the terrace, the alp — the bike is not going anywhere and the descent is better ridden in the afternoon light.
  • Then ride down. From the top station the track drops past the hay huts and the cattle on the open alp, swings through a long series of bends, into the trees, and comes out in Grindelwald a couple of hours later.

What it is actually like

  • It is a made road the whole way, not a technical trail. Gravel at the top, tarmac lower down. If you can ride a bike you can ride this — it is not mountain biking in the sense that phrase usually means.
  • It is downhill for almost the entire distance, so the effort is in braking and in stopping to look, not in pedalling.
  • It took us most of an afternoon and the distance did not warrant it. We kept stopping — for the cows, for the huts, for the Wetterhorn coming in and out of the cloud, for the sheer fact of being up there on a bike instead of behind glass.
  • It ends in the village, so there is nothing to carry back and no lift to catch.

Who it suits, honestly

  • Anyone comfortable on a bike, of any age, with working brakes and the sense to use them.
  • Not for small children on their own, and not for anyone who does not want a long continuous descent.
  • Weather matters more than fitness. Wet gravel and a two-hour downhill are a bad combination; if it is raining, take the cabin.

What it costs

  • Three separate things, and nobody tells you that in advance: the bike hire, carrying the bike up on the gondola, and your own ticket up. Ask at the shop for the combined figure rather than assuming the lift ticket covers the bike.
  • Judged against the mountain carts and scooters, which are charged per stage, a bike for the day covers far more ground for a comparable outlay.

Of everything on a nine-day trip through four countries — Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy — this is the afternoon the family talked about afterwards. If you take one suggestion off this page, take this one. And if you would rather someone else worked out the bikes, the timings and the weather window, that is the job.

Evening — Down into the valley

  • Take the last stage down in the low sun. The light comes across the valley from the west and the whole Grindelwald basin goes gold underneath the cabin.
  • Back in the village, the walk from the top station down the main street is ten minutes downhill and takes you past most of the places worth eating in.

Budget tips

  • Check the time of the final descent when you buy your ticket, not when you are standing on the alp. Missing it is an expensive walk.
  • Grindelwald village is where dinner belongs. Anything eaten at 2,168 metres carries the mountain on the bill.

Would we plan this exact day for you?

Almost certainly not. The day above assumes you are happy on your feet for most of it, that you have the whole day, that you are comfortable working out Swiss trains and buses as you go, and that nobody with you is managing a pushchair, a bad knee, or a six-year-old at four in the afternoon. Change any one of those and the order changes, the pace changes, and sometimes the valley changes.

Rearranging a day around the people actually travelling is the part we do.

Grindelwald First in photographs

34 images, every one taken on one of our own trips.

Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 1 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 2 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 3 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 4 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 5 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 6 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 7 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 8 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 9 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 10 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 11 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 12 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 13 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 14 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 15 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 16 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 17 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 18 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 19 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 20 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 21 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 22 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 23 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 24 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 25 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 26 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 27 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 28 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 29 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 30 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 31 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 32 of 33, taken on one of our own trips
Grindelwald First, Switzerland, photograph 33 of 33, taken on one of our own trips

This is one day. The trip is the harder part.

Notice what the guide above never tells you. It does not name a hotel, or say where to stay at all — it assumes you already have a bed. It gives you no way into Grindelwald First from wherever you woke up, no view on whether it belongs on the second day of your trip or the ninth, and nothing about the week it rains.

Those answers change with your dates, your budget and who is travelling with you. Working them out, and booking them, is the job.

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