Swiss Alps Hiking: Brisen

To hike up the Brisen, we started in Wolfenschiessen, which is about a 10-minute drive from Engelberg (where we were staying). We first took a cable car up from Dallenwil to Niederrickenbach, then we walked a 30-minute more-or-less flat path to Alpboden where we took a chair lift up to Haldigrat. This is where we started hiking up to the Brisen summit.

This hike consists of walking along a long ridge (2km), up 500m of ascent, with a steep dropoff on both sides of the trail. The trail was narrow, most of the time only wide enough for a single person, and it was steep with loose rocks that made you have to watch every. single. step. that you took. After the first few ridges, we debated turning around but Martin soldiered on and summited while I only made it halfway up the last ridge before the summit. I was too nervous about going back down the trail to make it all the way up.

All that being said, the views from this hike were amazing. We had lake Lucerne and the Rigi on one side, Titlis on another, with panoramic views of all of the peaks in central Switzerland from the summit.

Here's a picture of the whole hike, taken from our walk from Niederrickenbach to Alpboden between the cable car and the chairlift we took to start the hike. We hiked over the three wavy ridges on the right side of the photo and summited the high peak towards the middle of the range.



A few pictures of the views we had on the way up:



And some pictures of how steep the trail and dropoffs were. In the first picture below the peak in the top left is the Brisen.



Some views from the top:



On the way back down ... the trail was even scarier when going downhill.



Taking a break from worrying about falling to my death! The rock face behind me actually had a chunk break off and fall while I was sitting here, which was pretty exciting.



Naturally, people come up here and basically run off the cliff to paraglide. Definitely not my cup of tea.



Martin enjoying some coffee schnapps from the Haldigrat restaurant after we had finished the hike. Note the chair lift operating behind him with the box in place of the usual chair. We rode down in that and it was a fun time. Mostly just sporty trying to get in and out of it.